| Summary: | Previous cross-linguistic research has well established that transfer in the literacy development of English-as-the-second-language (ESL) students exists. Less extensive is the research on the effect of diverse first languages (L1) on the specific reading-related cognitive abilities and academic performance in the second language (L2). In the current study, Study Part One investigated English reading and spelling skills of students from different language backgrounds (English, Chinese- and Persian-speaking ESL) in Grade 6 by examining a variety of cognitive skills, and reading and spelling. The results showed similar performance on most of the cognitive tasks, however, the Chinese L1 group performed lower than the English L1 group on the oral syntactic awareness test, and the Persian L1 group performed lower than English L1 group on the written syntactic awareness task. Furthermore, the Chinese L1 group performed at a higher level than Persian L1 group on the two reading comprehension tasks, and no difference was found between English L1 and the two ESL groups. Study Part Two was a retrospective analysis of reading and syntactic skills from Grade1 through Grade 6 across the same groups. Comparable performance was found on the word reading task but not on syntactic awareness task (oral cloze). Specifically, in lower grades (i.e., Grade 1 and 2), both ESL groups performed lower than English L1 group on the syntactic awareness task, whereas heterogeneous performance was found in middle and upper grades (i.e., Grades 3, 4, 5 and 6). The Persian L1 group caught up with English L1 peers in these grades, and the Chinese L1 group showed less efficiency than English and Persian L1 group in Grades 3 and only performed lower than Persian L1 group in Grade 5 and English L1 group in Grade 6. Taken together, these results clearly suggested (1) the weakness in both oral proficiency and syntactic awareness in ESL groups in lower grades; (2) possible L1 influence on linguistic tasks with higher demands in middle and upper grades across ESL groups.
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