Differences and Similarities in Component Skills Reading Profiles for Native and Immigrant Fifteen-Year-Old Students in Sweden

The present study aims to investigate differences and similarities in the component skills reading profiles (CSRPs) of 15-year-old native, second-generation and first-generation immigrant Swedish test-takers, focusing on processes related to fluency and processes related to awareness of reading strategies. The results revealed significant differences in the impact of these processes, in particular, in the comparison between Swedish-born students and first-generation immigrant students. The most striking results showed that, although reading fluency is very important for all students, it has a much larger impact on reading comprehension for first-generation immigrant students than for second-generation and native Swedish students. Furthermore, the analysis showed that students at the same level of reading proficiency but with different language backgrounds still differed significantly with regard to their CSRPs, even at relatively high ability levels. This indicates that students in the different categories who appear to have similar reading comprehension ability might nevertheless need different kinds of reading instruction to maximize their development of reading comprehension.