Factors Affecting the Writing Performance in Hearing and Deaf Children: An Insight into Regularities and Irregularities of the Arabic Orthographic System

Abstract

This study aims to account for the underlying causes of spelling errors in hearing and deaf children who speak a dialectal form of Arabic that substantially differs from the standard written one. It presents a general overview of the spoken Arabic language and its written system, drawing attention to some of the phonological and orthographic regularities and irregularities used in constructing and decoding Arabic words and sentences. It also accounts for the diglossic factors that interfere with the process of phoneme-to-grapheme mapping. The spelling outcomes of a group of hearing children are compared with another group of orally educated deaf children, who in addition to the complexity and diglossity of Arabic, have limited hearing abilities. Both groups performed two written tasks, one representing the standard form and the other representing the dialect. These tasks identified the types of spelling and segmentation errors and the effects of the committed errors on children’s awareness of the concept of word and word boundaries. Analysis of the results reveals their spelling errors’ nature and frequencies, and progressively categorizes the most prominent errors in practicing each language form. The deaf group ( n = 30) produced significantly more errors than the hearing group ( n = 36) in the dysphonetic errors and the word omission categories. The findings indicate that the sociolinguistic context of the Arabic language and the orthographic nature of the Arabic script are both important factors affecting hearing and deaf children’s awareness of the concept of word as well as their spelling performance. These results may enable educators to understand the underlying factors of Arabic spelling and produce targeted error correction strategies to maximize children’s learning outcomes.

Theoretical and Practical Knowledge of Central Auditory Processing Disorder ‎among Primary School Teachers

“…Further to the focus on auditory training and functioning, paying attention to cognitive and language skills such as working memory and phonological processing skills is also recommended (for a review: De Wit et al, 2016). Explicit and direct instruction in the beginning stages of reading practice is believed to be indispensable for the intended inclusive practices in the state of Kuwait (Almusawi, 2014;Almusawi et al, 2019), and is universally needed for those with specific learning difficulties or disabilities (Berninger & Wolf, 2009), as well as those with hearing impairment (Almusawi, 2014;2022;Colin et al, 2007). Adopting these national standards will gradually compensate for the reportedly poor performance of Kuwaiti students on the international stage (UNESCO, 2015), which currently persists despite concerted efforts and large budgets allocated to Kuwaiti institutions (Ahmad & Greenhalgh-Spencer, 2017).…”

The Writing Difficulties of the Difference between Graphemes and Phonemes in Arabic and English

“…Table 2 shows the various forms of several Arabic letters in various word places. The next six characters, however, are disjointed and force spaces between words ‫,"ر"(‬ " ‫ز‬ ", ‫,"د"‬ ‫,"ذ"‬ ‫,"ا"‬ ‫)"و"‬ (Almusawi, 2022). For instance, the letter Alif only connects with the letter before it, resulting in a space following it that separates any other letters (ibid.).…”

Morphological awareness and DHH students’ reading-related abilities: A meta-analysis of correlations

“…It is particularly noteworthy that many of the included studies, in addition to examining how MA correlated or predicted reading abilities, also included a "classic" focus on comparing the level of MA and reading performance in DHH and age-matched hearing students. More important, many of them also purposefully compared the two groups on the pattern of correlations between MA and reading, sometimes with other variables such as cognition (e.g., working memory), PA, and grammatical knowledge also included (e.g., AlMusawi, 2014;Bharadwaj & Barlow, 2020;Chan, 2023;López-Higes et al, 2015;Spires, 2021), to explore how reading and its underlying processes may show qualitative similarities and/or quantitative differences between the two groups (refer to Paul, 2012;Paul &Lee, 2010 andPaul et al, 2013 for discussions on the QSH). 4 These are all very notable strengths in the research on MA and reading in DHH students, even though, as discussed later, there is still much to expand the current literature.…”