The Contributions of Kindergarten Oral Language Skills to Reading Comprehension in Second Language German Bilinguals

This longitudinal study investigated how kindergarten oral language skills predict second-grade reading comprehension in bilinguals with second language (L2) German, as well as the moderating role of word-decoding skills in this relationship.

Fifty-nine Russian-German and Turkish-German bilingual children were followed from kindergarten to Grade 2. Oral language skills, including vocabulary and morphosyntax, were measured in kindergarten, and word-decoding speed and sentence- and text-level reading comprehension were assessed in Grade 2. Age in kindergarten, age of onset (AoO) of L2 German, and phonological short-term memory were included as covariates.

Generalized mixed-effects models showed that vocabulary significantly predicted sentence and text reading comprehension in Grade 2 after controlling for age, AoO of L2 German, and phonological skills. Morphosyntactic skills were not significant. Moderation analyses revealed that the positive association between early vocabulary and text-level comprehension was more pronounced among children with average to strong word-decoding skills. For sentence-level comprehension, the interaction between word decoding and vocabulary was not significant.

Word decoding speed and kindergarten vocabulary emerged as the strongest predictors of later reading comprehension in bilingual children acquiring L2 German, with the impact of vocabulary being more pronounced among children with more developed word-decoding skills. This study highlights the importance of supporting early vocabulary and decoding skills in bilingual children to promote later reading comprehension.