C.M. de Glopper

Linguistic Knowledge, Metacognitive Knowledge And Retrieval Speed In L1, L2 And Efl Writing A structural equation modelling approach

This chapter presents an analysis of the Dutch and English writing proficiency of students who learned Dutch as a second language, compared to students for whom Dutch is the first language. Participants are 13/14 year-old secondary school students. The point of departure in the analyses is a regression model in which writing proficiency is decomposed into three types of constituent subskills: linguistic knowledge (vocabulary, grammar, and orthographic knowledge), speed or fluency of processing linguistic knowledge (word retrieval and sentence building), and metacognitive knowledge of both text characteristics and reading and writing strategies. This study investigates whether there are structural differences in both the Dutch writing and the English writing of the non-native speakers of Dutch compared to their native Dutch-speaking peers. Our hypothesis is that the two groups will differ in their Dutch writing, but not so much in their English writing. Using structural equation modelling, we firstly test whether the writing model for the native Dutch writers, with respect to the explanatory value of the constituent skills, holds for the non-native Dutch writers as well. Secondly, we test whether the English writing ‘decomposition’ is the same across the two student groups. Despite the differences in writing proficiency, no essential differences between the two groups were found in the pattern of weights of either Dutch or English writing proficiency on the three types of predictor variables (language knowledge, retrieval speed, and metacognitive knowledge).

The validity of international surveys of reading literacy: the case of the IEA reading literacy study

In the last twenty years the interest in international comparative surveys of educational achievement has increased as can be seen from the number of studies and participating nations. As the number of participating countries increases, the range of cultural differences becomes larger, and it becomes increasingly difficult to obtain internationally comparable data. Especially when it is no longer possible to use the same questionnaire in each group. This article describes the requirements that measures of reading literacy must meet to be comparable across nations, and the conditions that affect the usefulness of international comparisons. Before discussing the methodological problems of comparative surveys in Section 4 and 5, we discuss the definition of reading literacy in Section 2, and the possible reasons why comparative educational research has become so popular in Section 3. In Section 6 to 8 we consider the conditions that affect the comparability of measurements of reading literacy in more detail. In the final sections we summarize our findings. As an illustration we consider an international comparative study, which was recently conducted by the International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement (IEA). The results of this study were reported in detail by Elley (1992, 1994), Postlethwaite and Ross, (1992), Lundberg and Linnakyki (1993), Wagemaker et al. (1996), the IEA (1995), and the US Department of Education (1995). We will refer in less detail to the ZntemationaE Adult Literacy Study (IALS), which was conducted in the autumn of 1994 by the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). The results of this study were published by the OECD in 1995 and 1996.