Beginning Readers in Arabic and the Distance between Literary and Spoken Arabic

Abstract

<p style="text-align:justify;"> <span style="font-size:12px;">Two groups of kindergarten children received a battery of phonological awareness, reading, and general abilities tests across a two-year period. One of the groups received phonological training whereas the other (control) group did not. Results indicated that children who received intervention improved in cer</span><span style="font-size:8.5pt;"><span style="font-size:12px;">tain phonological awareness skills tested at the end of kindergarten but not in reading skills tested at the end of 1</span>^{<span style="font-size:12px;">st</span>}<span style="font-size:12px;"> year. These findings are in contrast to findings compared to those found by Carlisle (1995) and Lyster (2002) in English, but were in line with the findings found by Ibrahim et al. (2007) in Arabic and support the notion that normal Arab child encounters special difficulties in reading acquisition. The psy</span></span><span style="font-size:12px;">cholinguistic basis and implications of these findings are discussed.</span> </p

Effects of an Adaptive Phonological Training Program on Reading and Phonological Processing Skills in Arabic-Speaking Children With Dyslexia

“…While Arabic letters represent consonants, vowels occur in print as a set of diacritical marks which facilitate reading accuracy. In un-vowelized Arabic, all diacritical marks are absent and vowel identity must be restored as an integral part of word identification (Ibrahim, 2013). Beginners need to read diacritic signs before developing a lexical strategy relying less and less on the diacritic system after three years of schooling.…”