The Role of Phonology and Morphology in the Development of Basic Reading Skills of Dyslexic and Normal Native Arabic Readers

Salim Abu-Rabia,Nariman Abu-Rahmoun

doi:10.4236/ce.2012.37185

Abstract

This study is an investigation of the role of some basic reading skills of dyslexic (n = 27) and normal readers of Arabic: A reading-age-matched group (n = 29) and a chronological age-matched group (n = 31). The children were tested on reading and cognitive measures, all of which had vowelized and unvowelized versions: phonological, orthographic, reading, spelling, syntax, and working memory skills. The results of the MANOVA revealed significant differences between the dyslexic readers and the two control groups on most measures. Moreover, main effects of vowels and roots were found. In other words, subjects were much better at the vowelized than the unvowelized tests and used morphology to assist their reading accuracy. However, the Stepwise Regression analysis revealed that syntax, reading measures (isolated words, real roots and false roots), morphology and spelling were the most powerful predictors of reading accuracy among dyslexic and normal readers.

Highlights

Reading is a complex process that includes the development of phonological, orthographic, syntactic and working memory skills
Among the dyslexic readers pseudoword reading with real roots was the consistent
two regression procedures and pseudoword reading with real roots was the best predictor

Summary

Introduction

Reading is a complex process that includes the development of phonological, orthographic, syntactic and working memory skills. Readers with reading disabilities show difficulties in their phonological decoding process (Bradley & Bryant, 1983; Siegel & Ryan, 1984; Shankweiler et al, 1995) and in their syntactic abilities (Ben-Dror, Bentin, & Frost, 1995; Carlisle, 1995; Henry, 1993; Leong, 1999; Siegel & Ryan, 1988; Tyler & Nagy, 1990). AbuRabia (2002) claims that dyslexia is a delay in all language skills (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004) and that such a delay causes a gap between the chronological age of the reader and his/her reading age. This gap could reach two or more years. Dyslexic readers in grade 4 would read at the level of grade 2 (Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Genard et al, 1998; Sprenger-Charolles et al, 2000; Stanovich, 1991)

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