An Early Reading Assessment Battery for Multilingual Learners in Malaysia

The aim of the study was to develop a new comprehensive reading assessment batteryfor multi-ethnic and multilingual learners in Malaysia. Using this assessment battery,we examined the reliability, validity, and dimensionality of the factors associated withreading difficulties/disabilities in the Malay language, a highly transparent alphabeticorthography. In order to further evaluate the reading assessment battery, we comparedresults from the assessment battery with those obtained from the Malaysian nationalscreening instrument. In the study, 866 Grade 1 children from multi-ethnic andmultilingual backgrounds from 11 government primary schools participated. The readingassessment battery comprised 13 assessments, namely, reading comprehension,spelling, listening comprehension, letter name knowledge, letter name fluency, rapidautomatized naming, word reading accuracy, word reading efficiency, oral readingfluency, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, elision, and phonological memory.High reliability and validity were found for the assessments. An exploratory factoranalysis yielded three main constructs: phonological-decoding, sublexical-fluency, andvocabulary-memory. Phonological-decoding was found to be the most reliable constructthat distinguished between at-risk and non-at-risk children. Identifying these underlyingfactors will be useful for detecting children at-risk for developing reading difficulties in theMalay language. In addition, these results highlight the importance of including a rangeof reading and reading-related measures for the early diagnosis of reading difficulties inthis highly transparent orthography