Beyond Vocabulary Breadth: Homonym Knowledge and Reading Comprehension Among Multilingual Learners and English-Monolingual Elementary Students

This study examined (a) the development of vocabulary breadth and vocabulary depth, operationalized as homonym knowledge, across one academic year (fall to spring) in Grades 1–4 for multilingual learners and English monolinguals and (b) the concurrent and longitudinal relations between homonym knowledge and reading comprehension. Participants were 758 elementary students (60% multilingual learners) who completed measures of vocabulary breadth, homonym knowledge, word identification, and reading comprehension in fall and spring. Two 2 (Time) × 2 (Language) × 4 (Grade) mixed ANOVAs and hierarchical regressions were conducted. Both multilingual learners and monolinguals showed significant growth in vocabulary breadth and homonym knowledge over the academic year, but growth rates were comparable across language groups and grades, indicating a persistent vocabulary gap between multilingual learners and monolinguals. Hierarchical regressions showed that fall homonym knowledge uniquely contributed to fall reading comprehension after controlling for fall vocabulary breadth and word identification. Longitudinally, fall homonym knowledge also predicted spring reading comprehension after accounting for fall reading comprehension, word identification, and vocabulary breadth. These results highlight homonym knowledge as an aspect of vocabulary depth that is associated with reading comprehension in early elementary grades for both multilingual learners and monolinguals, and point to the potential value of explicit instruction on homonyms to support multilingual learners’ literacy and content-area learning.