The language and literacy profile of young Polish children learning English as an additional language in the UK school system

Children’s reading comprehension difficulties can lead to lower performance at school and limited access to the curriculum. Reading may be a particular challenge for those children who are learning English as an additional language (EAL). While a number of studies have been conducted on the development of literacy in children, this research aimed to add to a growing avenue of investigation into the population of children learning EAL. The aim of this research project was an in depth examination of the language and literacy performance of the population of Polish children learning EAL in the UK school system both in their first and second language. The three hundred and nineteen children who were assessed in this study were sampled from three language backgrounds: Polish children learning EAL and two monolingual groups of Polish and English native speakers. The children were assessed with a range of standardised and bespoke tools assessing pre-literacy abilities, oral language, decoding, reading comprehension and higher level comprehension skills. This thesis benchmarked the performance of children learning EAL against their monolingual peers in both languages spoken, along with investigating the relationships between reading comprehension, decoding and language comprehension in this language pair and in comparison to their monolingual peers. Cross-language transfer both within and between language and literacy constructs was also investigated in the EAL group. Finally, the issue of low language performance in this group and the necessity of conducting assessment in both languages spoken by the EAL child were explored. The relevance of these findings for this group of EAL learners in the school setting as well as practical implications and future directions were also discussed.