Abstract
The present study examined the impact of diglossia, a characteristic of the Arabic language, on the developmentof phonological abilities in the spoken and the literary language forms. Participants were 571 children from 10grade levels (1-7, 9, 11 and 12), which were recruited from 10 schools by taking into account two importantfactors: the accent factor (Bedouins, Druze and Arabs) and the geographical factor (south, Haifa, center andnorth). All participant were administered phonemic segmentation and phonemic deletion tasks, each comprisedof two types of stimulus: spoken and literary words. The results indicated an opposite effects of the stimuluswhere in the phonemic segmentation tasks, an advantage was found for the spoken stimulus over the literary andin the phonemic deletion task, the advantage was recorded in the literary stimulus. In addition, a significant maineffect of grade was found for both tasks. An interaction between grade and the type of stimulus was observedonly in the phonemic deletion task. These differences between the two tasks may suggest that they are processeddifferently via the auditory and the visual modality. In addition, our findings provide evidence concerns thedevelopmental capacity of phonemic awareness. The results, as a whole, support the notion that the effect oflexical distance on phonological awareness depends on modes of stimulus presentation.
Highlights
During the past decade, many researchers have become increasingly interested in reading processes and reading acquisition in the Arabic language
Despite the common understanding with regard to the different cognitive and linguistic components that underlie reading in different languages (Vellutino, Fletcher, & Snowling, 2004), some researchers have claimed that the core component is related to the phonological processing skills (Stanovich, 1988), such as phonological awareness, i.e. the ability to think about the sound of a word rather than just the meaning
The impact of diglossia on the development of phonological awareness has been examined in the current study through measuring the phonological distance that exists between the spoken Arabic language and the literary Arabic language
Summary
Many researchers have become increasingly interested in reading processes and reading acquisition in the Arabic language This interest has largely been motivated by the difficulties that native Arabic-speaking children face during reading acquisition, as attested by their relatively low achievements in international reading tests (Pirls, 2006). Researchers claimed that this low level of reading skills among the Arabic-speaking population is related to the uniqueness and the complexity of the orthography and to the rich and dense morphological and syntactic system, but it seems to be related mainly to the challenging diglossic situation of this language. Phonological awareness is considered to be a strong predictor of reading in different languages including Arabic (Elbeheri & Everatt, 2007; Gillon, 2004; Shatil & Share, 2003; Snowling, 2000; Taibah & Haynes, 2010)
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