Reading Arabic Shallow and Deep Genres: Indispensible Variables to Science of Reading

Abstract

Most principles and propositions in the science of reading are derived from research on Latin orthographies, usually, in English while much less is known about Semitic orthographies, namely, Arabic. This study investigated the effect of vowels and type of genre on oral accuracy, oral rate, and oral comprehension in reading Arabic orthography. A convenience sample of 85 children (34 fifth male graders and 51 tenth male graders) was selected from two public schools in Saudi Arabia. The researcher developed two reading measures; the Fifth Grade Reading Measure and Tenth Grade Reading Measure. Each measure has two genres (informational and poetic) and two versions (shallow/vowelized and deep/unvowelized). Each child individually completed the two versions of the measure in his grade. The results revealed that the students read the shallow genres (informational and poetic) more accurately and with more comprehension but less rapidly than reading the deep genres. In addition, the students read the informational genre (shallow and deep) more accurately, rapidly, and with more comprehension than the poetic genre (shallow and deep). The discussion concludes that a) the nature of Arabic orthography, mainly vowels, is an indispensible variable to the literature of science of reading, b) oral reading accuracy, oral reading rate and oral reading comprehension are affected by the unique characteristics of the genre, and c) vowels in Arabic are important to improve oral reading accuracy, and oral reading comprehension for the first grades in primary school and later grades in secondary school as well.

The Effect of Learning English (L2) on Learning of Arabic Literacy (L1) in the Primary School

“…105-106;Taouk & Coltheart, 2004, p. 31). Thus, word decoding is not simply an autonomous process like English rather it is a holistic process that requires processing of letters and vowels, visible or guessed, disambiguating identical forms of a word, the phenomenon of homograph, and recognizing changes of vowelization of the end of a word, the inflection process, according to its function in a sentence (Abu-Rabia, 1998, p. 107;Hussien, 2014b). Another critical difference is that Arabic, in contrast to English, is a consistent orthography that has predictable sound-letter and letter-sound conformities (Abu-Hajaj, 2006;Abu-Rabia, 1997Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 1995;Lervåg & Hulme, 2010;Mahfoudhi, Everatt, & Elbeheri, 2011;Taibah & Haynes, 2011) whereas, English has less consistent orthography (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003;Venezky, 1970, p. 11) e.g., buy and by.…”

Arabic Spelling: Errors, Perceptions, and Strategies

“…However, their use in most Arabic texts is optional, which further complicates the learner's progress in reading, writing, and spelling. Thus, Arabic textbooks that use unvowelized texts (known as deep orthography) pose a challenge, especially for novice learners, who need to rely on other contextual clues when decoding words to make sense of orthographic patterns (Abu‐Rabia, ; Abu‐Rabia & Siegel, ; Abu‐Rabia & Taha, ; Elkhafaifi, ; Hussien, ; Mahfoudhi, Everatt, & Elbeheri, ; Taibah & Haynes, ). According to automaticity theory, spending more time focusing on decoding negatively affects reading comprehension (McKenna, ; Nicholson & Tan, ; Samuels, ).…”

Could an Interactive-Balanced Environment for Reading Acquisition Overcome the Triad Risk Factors: Low Socioeconomic Status, Low Literacy Skills and Language Properties?

“…However, when socio-economic factors adjoin Arabic Diglossic circumstances and its orthographic complexity, the development of emergent literacy skills is obstructed, affecting later reading and writing acquisition and academic success (e.g. Abu-Rabia, 2000;Hussien, 2014aHussien, , 2014bLundberg, Larsman, & Strid, 2012;Makoul, 2006;Morgan, Farkas, Hillemeier, & Maczuga, 2009;Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004. Cunningham & Stanovich (1997) have documented the long-term implications of reading acquisition difficulties where reading performance in first grade correlated with reading comprehension, vocabulary and general knowledge in 10th grade.…”