| Purpose: The purpose of this study is to investigate the extent to which the results of covalent, parallel oral narrative language comprehension and reading comprehension measures reflect the same construct for 2nd and 3rd grade diverse students who have adequate decoding ability. Method: One hundred and twenty-three second and third grade students participated in a narrative retell and comprehension assessment which included oral language comprehension and reading comprehension. The participants engaged in three parallel passages to measure oral language comprehension and three parallel passages to measure reading comprehension. The passages used were from the Narrative Language Measures (NLM; Petersen & Spencer, 2012, 2014), which measures reading fluency, story grammar elements, comprehension questions, and tier two vocabulary in context. Results: There was a high correlation of oral and written language comprehension with all participants combined as well as within the subgroups of 2nd grade, 3rd grade, preferred English speakers, and preferred Spanish speakers. The factor analysis determined that all variables of oral language comprehension and reading comprehension loaded onto a single factor, which was labeled language comprehension. Conclusion: The results of the data suggests that oral language assessments such as the NLM could be administered to all children, including diverse children, who cannot yet read. This information could then be used to identify children, including diverse children, who struggle with oral language comprehension and provide early oral language comprehension intervention to possibly impact their future reading comprehension. |
