Salim Abu-Rabia

The role of vowels in reading Semitic scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew

This study investigated the effect of vowels and context on readingaccuracy of skilled adult native Arabic speakers in Arabic and inHebrew, their second language. Their reading comprehension was alsotested in Arabic and Hebrew texts as a function of vowels. Theparticipants (n = 65) read fully vowelized and unvowelized lists ofArabic words, and vowelized and unvowelized paragraphs of Arabic.Further, they, read pointed and unpointed lists of Hebrew words, andpointed and unpointed paragraphs of Hebrew. They were also administeredtwo stories, one in Arabic and one in Hebrew, in two reading conditions,a fully vowelized and unvowelized Arabic story and a pointed andunpointed Hebrew story. The results revealed a significant effect forvowels and for context across all reading conditions in Arabic andHebrew. The surprising result was that the vowelized texts in Arabic andthe pointed and unpointed texts in Hebrew were comprehendedsignificantly better. Further, Pearson correlation procedures andmultiple regression analysis indicated no positive significantrelationship between oral reading accuracy results and silent readingcomprehension results. These findings are explained throughcharacteristics of the Semitic languages Arabic and Hebrew, and thetriliteral/quadriliteral-root model is suggested toexplain reading in unvowelized/unpointed texts in Semitic languages.

Reading, Syntactic, Orthographic, and Working Memory Skills of Bilingual Arabic-English Speaking Canadian Children

This study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 56 bilingual Arab-Canadian children ages 9-14. English was their main instructional language, and Arabic was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program in Toronto where they were taught to read and write Arabic. The children were administered word and pseudo-word reading, language, and working memory tests in English and Arabic. The majority of the children showed at least adequate proficiency in both languages. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo-word reading working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The poor readers in Arabic had lower scores on all linguistic tasks, except the visual task. There were no significant differences between bilingual English Arabic children and monolingual English-speaking children on the reading, language, and memory tasks. However, bilingual English Arabic children who had reading problems in English had higher scores on English pseudo-word reading and spelling tasks than monolingual English-speaking children with reading disabilities, probably because of positive transfer from the regular nature of Arabic orthography. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of language reading skills in both languages—Arabic and English—despite the different nature of the two orthographies.

Word recognition and basic cognitive processes among reading-disabled and normal readers in Arabic

This study investigated word identification inArabic and basic cognitive processes inreading-disabled (RD) and normal readers of thesame chronological age, and in younger normalreaders at the same reading level. The studyfocused on the word identification processes ofphonological decoding and orthographicprocessing and the cognitive processes ofsyntactic and morphological awareness, workingmemory, and visual processing. RD children werecompared with normal readers on a battery oftests developed in Arabic on the basis of thoseavailable in English and Hebrew. The presentresults revealed deficiencies among the RD childrenin phonological decoding, in contrast torelative strengths in orthographic processing. These data were consistent with English-languagefindings. The analysis of basiccognitive processes indicated significantdeficiencies in morphology, working memory, andsyntactic and visual processing, with the mostsevere deficiencies observed for phonologicalawareness. The results are discussed in lightof international RD findings and the nature ofArabic orthography.

Reading in a root–based–morphology language: the case of Arabic

The reading process in Arabic as a function of vowels and sentence context is reviewed. Reading accuracy and reading comprehension results are reviewed in the light of cross–cultural reading, in order to develop a more comprehensive reading theory. Phonology, morphology and sentence context are considered key variables in explaining the reading process in Arabic orthography. Phonology (in the form of short vowels) affects reading accuracy as well as reading comprehension, regardless of reading level, age, material and reading conditions. Initial visual–orthographic processing identifies the morphology (i.e. the triliteral/quadriliteral roots of Arabic words) which then enables access to the mental lexicon. Sentence context is also essential in reading Arabic orthography regardless of the reader’s level, age, material and reading condition. The phonology, morphology and sentence context of Arabic are presented in two suggested reading models for poor/beginner Arabic readers and for skilled Arabic readers.

Effects of exposure to literary Arabic on reading comprehension in a diglossic situation

Reading difficulties in Arabic in elementary schoolare usually attributed to the diglossia of the Arabiclanguage, whereby the spoken language is totallydifferent from literary Arabic, the language of booksand school instruction. Educators, teachers, andparents still believe that exposure of young Arabicspeakers to literary Arabic in the preschool period isa burden for them, and is not useful. The presentpost hoc study examined the influence of exposure toliterary Arabic of preschool children on their readingcomprehension of literary Arabic stories in grades 1and 2. Participants in the study were 282children, 135 from grade 1 and 147 from grade 2. Ofthe participants, 144 constituted the experimentalgroup, and were exposed to literary Arabic throughouttheir preschool period. The 138 participants of thecontrol group were exposed not to literary but tospoken Arabic during that period. These children weretested for reading comprehension at the end of grade1 and grade 2 and compared with the control group. The results generally indicate better readingcomprehension results for the children who wereexposed to literary Arabic than for the children whowere exposed only to spoken Arabic.

Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers

This study investigated the effect of Arabic vowels and Arabic context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers reading narrative stories and newspaper articles. Central to this study is the belief that reading theory today should consider additional variables, especially when explaining the reading process in Arabic orthography among poor and skilled readers. This orthography has not been studied: reading theory today is the sum of conclusions from studies conducted in Latin orthography. The subjects were 109 tenth-grade native Arabic speakers, 39 of them poor readers and 70 skilled readers. Subjects had to read Arabic narrative stories and newspaper articles. There were four reading conditions for each text type: vowelized text, unvowelized text, vowelized word naming, and unvowelized word naming. The results showed that vowels and contexts were important variables to facilitate word recognition in poor and skilled readers in Arabic orthography. A new Arabic reading model for skilled readers is suggested.

Reading Arabic Texts: Effects of Text Type, Reader Type and Vowelization.

While much is known about Latin orthography little is known about Arabic orthography. This study investigates the effect of vowels on reading accuracy in Arabic orthography. Participants were 64 native Arabic speakers. Four kinds of written Arabic texts were administered: narrative, informative, poetic and Koranic. Three texts of each kind were presented in three reading conditions: correctly vowelized, unvowelized and wrongly vowelized. Results indicated that vowels had a significant effect on reading accuracy of poor and skilled readers in reading each of the four kinds of texts. The results are discussed in light of the concept that more cross-cultural considerations should be made in reading theory today.

Reading in Arabic Orthography: The Effect of Vowels and Context on Reading Accuracy of Poor and Skilled Native Arabic Readers in Reading Paragraphs, Sentences, and Isolated Words

This study investigated the effect of vowels and context on the reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers in reading paragraphs, sentences, and words. Central to this study is the belief that reading theory today should consider additional variables, especially when explaining the reading process in Arabic orthography among poor and normal/skilled readers. This orthography has not been studied. Reading theory today is the sum of conclusions from studies conducted in Latin orthography. The subjects were 77 native Arabic speakers, 34 of them poor readers and 44 normal/skilled readers. The subjects had to read in Arabic 15 paragraphs, 60 sentences, and 210 words. There were three reading conditions: fully vowelized, partially vowelized, and unvowelized texts. The results showed that vowels and contexts were important variables to facilitate word recognition in poor and normal/skilled readers in Arabic orthography.

LEARNING TO READ IN ARABIC: READING, SYNTACTIC, ORTHOGRAPHIC AND WORKING MEMORY SKILLS IN NORMALLY ACHIEVING AND POOR ARABIC READERS

ABSTRACT While many studies point to a positive relationship between phonological skills and reading in English, little is known about these relationships for children learning to read in Arabic. Arabic orthography is considered deep if it is not vowelized but shallow if it is vowelized. The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among reading ability, phonological, semantic, orthographic and syntactic skills in Arabic. The participants were 143 Arab children, aged 8‐11, in Arab villages of central Israel. They were administered working memory, visual, oral close, phonological, word recognition, spelling, orthographic, and word attack tests. The results showed that word recognition test was highly correlated with phonological skills, semantic processing, syntactic knowledge and short‐term memory. Poor readers showed a significant lag in the development of these skills, the problems being most significant at phonological and semantic levels and less so at the visual levels. The similarities and...

Testing the Interdependence Hypothesis Among Native Adult Bilingual Russian-English Students

English and Russian are two different orthographies, the former being an opaque orthography, the latter being considered a direct letter-sound language. This study investigated the relationship between reading, syntactic, orthographic, and working memory skills in the two orthographies. Participants were first-year BA students of English (age range 25-30) at the University of Haifa who had completed high school in Russia. They were tested individually, in Russian and English, on working memory, spelling, oral cloze, visual condition, phonological condition, orthographic skills, word attack, and word identification. The results indicated positive significant correlations within and across languages, except for the orthographic skills and some of the correlations of the visual skills. The orthographic skills correlated highly significantly within each language but not across languages. Almost all the other linguistic skills correlated significantly within and across languages. Multiple regression procedures revealed that phonological and spelling skills in Russian, the first language, were strong predictors of word identification in English, the second language. These results are discussed in light of the interdependence and the script-dependent hypotheses.