Arabic Spelling and Curriculum Based Measurement

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to assess the effects of the Curriculum Based Measurement of Spelling (CBM-S) and direct spelling instruction on students' achievement in spelling. A total sample of 95 third-grade students participated in the study. This article presents a comparison study of three classrooms: CBM-S and direct spelling instruction, CBM-S with no direct spelling instruction, and a control group that used the traditional way of spelling assessment. The intervention was implemented for 18 weeks. The results indicated that students achieved the greatest gains in spelling when both direct spelling instruction and the CBM-S were applied.

Arabic metalinguistic knowledge predicts reading comprehension: A scoping review

“…Results of this review support the role of orthographic knowledge as a strong predictor of Arabic reading comprehension, increasing with age from the initial presentation of unvowelized text. Given the importance of orthographic skills, the majority of Arabic national curricula focus on the teaching of orthographic skills seems to be in alignment with the available evidence (Alsamadani, 2012;Abu-Hamour, 2013). For example, the National Reading Curriculum of early grade levels in Saudi Arabia (2021) requires children rst to identify letters by their alphabetical names, then read and spell out one syllable and gradually increase the number of syllables, leading to a point where children are required to recognize a substantial number of whole words before any work focusing on comprehension is carried out.…”

“…One possible explanation for these differences may be a result of differences in reading comprehension measures used in each study. In their reading comprehension assessment, Asadi (2020) (Table 1: 15) used a full vowelized transcript which has been shown to reduce reading errors in children (Abu-Rabia, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1999Abu-Hamour et al, 2013;Abu-Rabia and Taha, 2016). is contrasted sharply to the added task demands of Elbeheri et al 's (2011) (Table 1: 2) timed non-vowelized reading comprehension measure which may have compromised the overall performance of younger readers resulting in reduced variance within groups.…”

“…In addition, an understanding of the contribution of each of these variables is important for curricula design. For instance, in Saudi Arabia and Jordan, morphology is only addressed in middle and high school (Alsamadani, 2012;Abu-Hamour, 2013). In addition, the current form of morphological instruction represented in the national curricula does not present morphological instruction as a speci c word or textlevel reading skill but instead is delivered as part of grammar instruction.…”

“…Instruction on the use of morphological awareness as a means of facilitating the identi cation of unknown derived words is absent. rough the exclusion of early morphological and phonological skill instruction, reading instruction in some Arab countries does not re ect current theoretical reading models in the Arabic language, potentially impacting later reading comprehension achievement (Taibah and Haynes, 2011;Abu-Hamour, 2013;Al Ghanem and Kearns, 2015).…”

“…Given the uniqueness of the Arabic language as described above, this gap in knowledge has a direct impact on limiting the design of evidencebased explicit metalinguistic pedagogies and teacher training programmes. For instance, in the Saudi Arabian education system, as well as in other Arab countries such as Jordan and Kuwait (Abu-Hamour, 2013;Saiegh-Haddad and Everatt, 2017), reading instruction initially focuses on orthographical skills with instruction focusing on letter recognition and reading whole words as units; thus, neglecting phonological skills and the teaching of letter-sound mappings (i.e., decoding) in the early years. Furthermore, morphological awareness is not explicitly mentioned in the National Framework For Public Education Curricula Standards in Kingdom of Saudi Arabia (2021) until 5th grade, only to emphasize the spelling of roots, their in ections, and their derivations as they relate to grammar and syntax.…”