Assessing Reading Comprehension in Bilinguals

A new measure of reading comprehension, the Diagnostic Assessment of Reading Comprehension (DARC), designed to reflect central comprehension processes while minimizing decoding and language demands, was pilot tested. We conducted three pilot studies to assess the DARC's feasibility, reliability, comparability across Spanish and English, developmental sensitivity, and relation to standardized measures. The first study, carried out with 16 second-through sixth-grade English language learners, showed that the DARC items were at the appropriate reading level. The second pilot study, with 28 native Spanish-speaking fourth graders who had scored poorly on the Woodcock-Johnson Language Proficiency Reading Passages subtest, revealed a range of scores on the DARC, that yes-no answers were valid indicators of respondents' thinking, and that the Spanish and English versions of the DARC were comparable. The third study, carried out with 521 Spanish-speaking students in kindergarten through grade 3, confirmed that different comprehension processes assessed by the DARC (text memory, text inferencing, background knowledge, and knowledge integration) could be measured independently, and that DARC scores were less strongly related to word reading than Woodcock-Johnson comprehension scores. By minimizing the need for high levels of English oral proficiency or decoding ability, the DARC has the potential to reflect the central comprehension processes of second-language readers of English more effectively than other measures.