Foreign Language Attainment of Children/Adolescents with Poor Literacy Skills: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis
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Foreign Language Attainment of Children/Adolescents with Poor Literacy Skills: a Systematic Review and Meta-analysis Alexa von Hagen 1
& Saskia Kohnen
2
& Nicole Stadie
3
# The Author(s) 2020
Abstract
This systematic review investigated how successful children/adolescents with poor literacy skills learn a foreign language compared with their peers with typical literacy skills. Moreover, we explored whether specific characteristics related to participants, foreign language instruction, and assessment moderated scores on foreign language tests in this population. Overall, 16 studies with a total of 968 participants (poor reader/spellers: n = 404; control participants: n = 564) met eligibility criteria. Only studies focusing on English as a foreign language were available. Available data allowed for meta-analyses on 10 different measures of foreign language attainment. In addition to standard mean differences (SMDs), we computed natural logarithms of the ratio of coefficients of variation (CVRs) to capture individual variability between participant groups. Significant between-study heterogeneity, which could not be explained by moderator analyses, limited the interpretation of results. Although children/adolescents with poor literacy skills on average showed lower scores on foreign language phonological awareness, letter knowledge, and reading comprehension measures, their performance varied significantly more than that of control participants. Thus, it remains unclear to what extent group differences between the foreign language scores of children/adolescents with poor and typical literacy skills are representative of individual poor readers/spellers. Taken together, our results indicate that foreign language skills in children/adolescents with poor literacy skills are highly variable. We discuss the limitations of past research that can guide future steps toward a better understanding of individual differences in foreign language attainment of children/adolescents with poor literacy skills. Keywords Poor literacy . Dyslexia . Foreign language . Bilingualism . Meta-analysis
Electronic supplementary material The online version of this article (https://doi.org/10.1007/s10648-02009566-6) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.
* Alexa von Hagen [email protected]–frankfurt.de Extended author information available on the last page of the article
Educational Psychology Review
Introduction While research has investigated native language abilities of children/adolescents with poor literacy skills quite extensively, less attention has been paid to their success in learning a foreign language in formal educational settings. Relatives, teachers, and allied health professionals often assume that the difficulties children/adolescents with poor literacy skills experience in their native language will transfer to the new language being learned (Sparks 2016). As a consequence, children/adolescents with poor literacy skills receive less support and are even exempted from foreign language ins
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