There are two primary objectives of the proposed study. Firstly, we aim to examine the longitudinal predictors of children's comprehension of written and spoken text (i.e. reading and listening comprehension). More specifically, the study seeks to examine the predictive relationships between cognitive-linguistic skills and children's listening and reading comprehension development across different developmental periods. As the simple view of reading posits (Gough, Hoover, & Peterson, 1996; Hoover & Gough, 1990), spoken text comprehension and decoding are two central subcomponents of reading comprehension. There is an abundance of research evidence showing that once word reading proficiency increases and therefore, ceases to constrain comprehension processes, listening comprehension becomes the most powerful of reading comprehension skills (Adolf, Catts, & Little, 2006; Babayi?it & Stainthorp, in press; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Kendeou, Savage, & Broek, 2009). Currently, the longitudinal research into children's comprehension of both spoken and written text is highly limited (Oakhill & Cain, 2007). The findings from the proposed study will have implications for furthering our understanding of the causal antecedents of text comprehension skills as well as highlighting early markers of text comprehension difficulties. Furthermore, the findings will help to elucidate the evolving relationships of different oral language and cognitive skills with text comprehension skills. It is widely acknowledged that different subprocessing skills may play different roles along the trajectory of children's literacy development (Tilstra, McMaster, Van den Broek, Kendeou, & Rapp, 2009), hence the importance of longitudinal research that spans wider developmental periods.

Our second aim with this study is to examine the role of socio-economic background in children's text comprehension. More children from disadvantaged backgrounds have been found to underachieve on the measures of reading where the focus is on reading comprehension of complex text rather than accurate decoding of words, such as the reading SATs at Key Stage 2 (SFR, 2009). Similar findings have also been reported by studies that used standardised measures of reading comprehension (e.g., Kieffer, 2008). There is a consensus in the literature that broader oral language skills such as vocabulary and syntactic skills play a central role in children's reading comprehension levels (e.g., Catts, Adlof, & Weismer, 2006; de Jong & van der Leij, 2002; Dickinson, McCabe, Anastasopoulos, Peisner-Feinberg, & Poe, 2003; Kendou, Van den Broek, White, & Lynch, 2009). The observed text comprehension difficulties of some children from disadvantaged backgrounds have primarily been associated with weaknesses in oral language skills (e.g., Chall, Jacobs, & Baldwin, 1991; Snow, Barnes, Chandler, Goodman, & Hemphill, 1991). However, it is also widely acknowledged that any study examining home background factors also need to take into account educational aspirations as well (see Sinclair, McKendrick, & Scott, 2010). The proposed study will address these issues and examine in more detail the developmental trajectories of children's oral language, cognition, and text comprehension skills from diverse home backgrounds. Hence, the findings from this investigation will clearly have important far reaching implications for the development of preventative educational practices in order to address the reported educational achievement gap of children from disadvantaged backgrounds.

For this purpose, the proposed study seeks to examine the developmental relationships between oral language, cognition, literacy, and text comprehension skills from five years to fourteen years of age (KS3). Powerful statistical tool such Structural Equation Modeling and Multilevel Modeling will be used to examine the outlined complex developmental relationships. For instance, SEM involves the use of latent variables and enables to address the issues of measurement error as well as reciprocal relationships between the predictor variables. Hence, the use of a large dataset from the ALSPAC will enable us to use statistical tools like SEM and thereby, undertake more complex data analysis.

In conclusion, with this study it will be possible to address several important research questions as regards to the development of children's text comprehension skills, which in turn is expected to produce several outputs and thereby make a significant contribution to this area of research and educational practices of text comprehension.

References

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