Results from the Ontario Secondary School Literacy Test (OSSLT) indicate that English
as a Second Language (ESL) and English Literacy Development (ELD) students have
comparatively low success and high deferral rates. This study examined the 2002 and
2003 OSSLT test performances of ESL/ELD and non-ESL/ELD students in order to
identify and understand the factors that may help explain why ESL/ELD students
failed the test at relatively high rates. The analyses also attempted to determine
if there were significant and systematic differences in ESL/ELD students' test
performance. The performance of ESL/ELD students was consistently and similarly
lower across item formats, reading text types, skills and strategies, and the four
writing tasks. Using discriminant analyses, it was found that narrative
text type, indirect understanding skill, vocabulary strategy of
reading, and the news report writing task were significant predictors of
ESL/ELD membership. The results of this study provide direction for further research
and instruction regarding English literacy achievement for these second language
students within the context of having to complete large-scale English literacy tests
designed and constructed for first English language students.
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