The simple view of reading in French second language learners

Abstract This longitudinal study examined the relative contributions of word reading accuracy, word reading fluency and linguistic comprehension to reading comprehension from Grade 1 to Grade 2 in Canadian children who speak French as an L2. French is an opaque orthography but it is more consistent in how graphemes are mapped to phonemes than English. A total of 183 Non-Francophone children enrolled in French immersion programs in Canada (M = 80.91, SD = 3.61) were followed for one year from Grade 1 to Grade 2. The participants completed French measures of word reading accuracy, fluency, receptive vocabulary, and reading comprehension in each grade. The results showed that word reading fluency was a significant predictor of reading comprehension in both Grades 1 and 2. Additionally, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency and vocabulary all contributed to reading comprehension in Grades 1 and 2 and the magnitude of the contribution of each component remained similar across the two grades. Our findings provide support to the SVR model in young French L2 learners and highlight the importance of word reading fluency in reading comprehension in French.