Validation of the Simple View of Reading in Hebrew—A Semitic Language

Abstract

The Simple View of Reading (SVR) in Hebrew was tested by administering decoding, listening comprehension, and reading comprehension measures to 1,002 students from Grades 2 to 10 in the northern part of Israel. Results from hierarchical regression analyses supported the SVR in Hebrew with decoding and listening comprehension measures explaining much of the variance in reading comprehension. Further, commonality analyses showed that decoding and listening comprehension contributed differently at different grade levels with decoding generally contributing more at the early grade levels and listening comprehension contributing more at the higher grade levels, which is observed in other alphabetic languages as well. However, unlike in transparent orthographies, such as Spanish and Finnish, decoding seems to play an important role in reading comprehension for a longer period due to the nature of Hebrew orthography of using unpointed script after the fourth-grade level.