What are the cognitive-linguistic skills that influence reading in English for Chinese adolescent readers with dyslexia?

This study examined the relations between cognitive-linguistic skills and reading for Hong Kong Chinese-speaking adolescent readers with dyslexia learning English as a second language. These readers learn both Chinese (L1) and English (L2) language beginning at the age of three. One hundred and five adolescent readers including 35 with dyslexia, 35 chronological age (CA) controls, and 35 reading-level (RL) controls participated and were administered measures: reading comprehension, word reading, word fluency, rapid naming, vocabulary knowledge, visual-orthographic knowledge, and morphological skills in both L1 and L2. Results showed that the readers with dyslexia performed significantly worse than the CA in all reading and cognitive-linguistic measures in L1 and L2. In addition, hierarchical regression analyses indicated that the cognitive-linguistic measures in Chinese contributed significantly to the reading in English, suggesting cross-linguistic transfer from L1 to L2. These findings have implications for understanding the reading skills of adolescent readers with dyslexia, and the nature of reading Chinese and English in general. Copyright © 2017 Society for the Scientific Study of Reading (SSSR). All rights reserved.