Perspectives on Reading Comprehension for Multilingual Learners

The purpose of this chapter is to provide insights into recent research in the area of reading comprehension for students who are learning English as an additional language. We share multiple perspectives, primarily from US contexts, that contribute to the overall understanding of reading comprehension for the multilingual learner. We acknowledge “that reading research can never be truly rigorous, indeed truly scientific, until and unless it privileges all of the empirical and theoretical methodologies that characterize the scientific disciplines”. We agree with the need to consider multiple lines of inquiry among the overlapping constructs of cognitive, linguistic, psychological, and sociocultural domains to more fully explain how multilingual learners make meaning from what they read.