Reading Arabic Shallow and Deep Genres: Indispensible Variables to Science of Reading

Abdelaziz M Hussien

doi:10.5539/jel.v3n1p60

Abstract

Most principles and propositions in the science of reading are derived from research on Latin orthographies,usually, in English while much less is known about Semitic orthographies, namely, Arabic. This studyinvestigated the effect of vowels and type of genre on oral accuracy, oral rate, and oral comprehension in readingArabic orthography. A convenience sample of 85 children (34 fifth male graders and 51 tenth male graders) wasselected from two public schools in Saudi Arabia. The researcher developed two reading measures; the FifthGrade Reading Measure and Tenth Grade Reading Measure. Each measure has two genres (informational andpoetic) and two versions (shallow/vowelized and deep/unvowelized). Each child individually completed the twoversions of the measure in his grade. The results revealed that the students read the shallow genres(informational and poetic) more accurately and with more comprehension but less rapidly than reading the deepgenres. In addition, the students read the informational genre (shallow and deep) more accurately, rapidly, andwith more comprehension than the poetic genre (shallow and deep). The discussion concludes that a) the natureof Arabic orthography, mainly vowels, is an indispensible variable to the literature of science of reading, b) oralreading accuracy, oral reading rate and oral reading comprehension are affected by the unique characteristics ofthe genre, and c) vowels in Arabic are important to improve oral reading accuracy, and oral readingcomprehension for the first grades in primary school and later grades in secondary school as well.

Highlights

It is unequivocal in the literature that reading accurately, rapidly and with comprehension requires processing of many variables, chief among them, the knowledge of language conventions and context (e.g., Abu Rabia & Siegel, 1995; Stanovich, 1980, 1986, 1991; Stanovich & Freeman, 1981).1.1 Orthographical VariablesThe nature of orthography is an important factor to be considered in the context of reading theory
The current study investigated the impact of vowels on oral reading comprehension since, no attention is dedicated to this issue in reading Arabic orthography
‐ What is the effect of the degree of transparency of Arabic orthography on oral reading rate, oral reading accuracy and oral reading comprehension of the fifth and tenth grade students?

Summary

Introduction

It is unequivocal in the literature that reading accurately, rapidly and with comprehension requires processing of many variables, chief among them, the knowledge of language conventions and context (e.g., Abu Rabia & Siegel, 1995; Stanovich, 1980, 1986, 1991; Stanovich & Freeman, 1981).1.1 Orthographical VariablesThe nature of orthography is an important factor to be considered in the context of reading theory. In most printed media, without visible short vowels and skilled readers are expected to deduce these vowels depending on context, but vowelized scripts should be presented to beginning readers (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006; Hussien, 2014; Mahfoudhi et al, 2011; Taibah & Haynes, 2011). The important issue here is that Arabic is a shallow orthography, if presented vowelized, and is a deep orthography, if introduced unvowelized (Abu-Rabia, 2000; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006; Mahfoudhi et al, 2011; Mohamed, Elbert, & Landerl, 2011). The current study examined the effect of both vowelized and unvowelized genres, informational and poetic, on oral reading accuracy, oral reading rate, and oral reading comprehension

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Conclusion