The impact of Diglossia-Effect on Reading Acquisition Among Arabic-Speaking Children: A Longitudinal Study

Asadi, Ibrahim A.; Asli‐Badarneh, Abeer

doi:10.1007/s10936-023-09969-w

Cited by 7 publications

(2 citation statements)

References 74 publications

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“…The advantage in reading identical words compared to cognate and unique words across ages highlights the impact of diglossia on reading. This result aligns with earlier research demonstrating the impact of Arabic diglossia on reading performance (Asadi & Asli-Badarneh, 2023;Saiegh-Haddad, 2003;Saiegh-Haddad & Schiff, 2016;Schiff & Saiegh-Haddad, 2017;Taha & Saiegh-Haddad, 2017) and other linguistic skills (Asli-Badarneh & Leikin, 2019;Tallas-Mahajna et al, 2022). Indeed, this finding is reasonable and reflects the salience and availability of identical word forms, similar to the SpA form children typically use and are exposed to from birth.…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

“…The implications of diglossia for reading acquisition have been discussed in recent studies (Asadi & Asli-Badarneh, 2023;Asadi, Atila, & Saleh, 2023;Asadi & Kawar, 2023;Saiegh-Haddad, 2003;Saiegh-Haddad & Schiff, 2016;Schiff & Saiegh-Haddad, 2017;Taha & Saiegh-Haddad, 2017). Evidence underscoring this claim comes from the study of Saiegh-Haddad and Schiff (2016), which examined the impact of the linguistic distance between SpA and StA on the fluency of reading words and pseudowords among 100 children from second, fourth, sixth, eighth and tenth grades.…”

Section: Diglossia Effect and Literacy Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The impact of lexical and phonological distance on reading acquisition: The diglossic context of Arabic

Asli‐Badarneh

Asadi

2023

Journal Research in Reading

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BackgroundArabic is recognised as diglossic; one manifestation of diglossia is the co‐existence of two varieties of the language used in different social settings: standard (or literary) Arabic (StA) and spoken Arabic (SpA).The study investigated the impact of lexical–phonological distance in Arabic (identical, cognate, unique, which are different types of words) on reading accuracy and fluency across grade levels.MethodsThe participants were 180 native Arabic‐speaking children first and second graders. Participants were asked to read three‐word lists comprising words of three different lexical distance from spoken Arabic (identical, cognates and unique) and three text selections representing similar lexical distance (mostly identical, mostly cognates and mostly unique).ResultsThe findings showed a main effect of the word and text lexical distance fluency and accuracy reading scores. There was also a main effect of grade level on both scores. In addition, a significant interaction between the word and type words text lexical distance and grade level was found. The results revealed a more significant gap between the identical and the other two lexical distance categories (cognates and unique) in the second grade than in the first grade. Similarly, a more significant disparity was observed between the mostly identical type words and mostly cognate type word texts compared to unique type word texts in the second grade than in the first grade.ConclusionsThe results highlight the importance of StA knowledge and the centrality of diglossia lexical–phonological distance categories in reading, especially the contribution of reading StA words to text reading. The higher performance levels when reading identical compared to unique and cognate words and texts are discussed in light of the theoretical approaches to diglossic lexical–phonological distance. The results point to the centrality of diglossia lexical–phonological distance categories in reading.

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Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 91%

Section: Diglossia Effect and Literacy Skillsmentioning

confidence: 99%

The impact of lexical and phonological distance on reading acquisition: The diglossic context of Arabic

Asli‐Badarneh

Asadi

2023

Journal Research in Reading

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Children's Command of Four Inflectional Constructions in Arabic: Differences and Development With Age

Asadi,

Asli-Badarneh,

Elhija

et al. 2023

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This study examines whether differences in acquisition exist among the inflectional constructions of number, gender, possessive pronouns, and tense. Moreover, the study investigates whether these inflectional patterns develop with age. Method: The participants were 1,020 Arabic-speaking kindergartners from K2 and K3. Children were assessed in morphological tasks, which targeted four different morphological inflectional constructions both in real words and pseudowords: gender, number–plural, possessive pronouns, and tense. Results: Findings reveal the differences between all inflectional constructions. In other words, children demonstrated higher performance in gender construction, followed by construction of numbers and possessive pronouns, while the lowest performance is shown among tense construction. In addition, the results indicate that all inflectional constructions develop with age, that is, there was higher performance in K3 than in K2 in all inflection constructions. Conclusions: This study contributes to our knowledge about early language development by showing that the acquisition of gender and number–plurals is faster and more advanced than the acquisition of possessive pronouns or tense. The implications of these results are discussed, especially the need to develop children's inflectional forms such as possessive pronouns and tense, which may eventually also impact narrative understanding and production.

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The Impact of Diglossia on Inflectional Morphological Constructions and Their Relation to Literacy Skills: A Longitudinal Study

Asadi,

Asli-Badarneh,

Ibrahim

et al. 2024

J Speech Lang Hear Res

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Purpose: This study examined the differences in spoken Arabic (SpA) and standard Arabic (StA) in inflectional (gender, number, possessive pronouns, and tense) construction use in Arabic among preschoolers. Moreover, we tested the contribution of the inflectional constructions possessed in kindergarten to reading skills in the first grade and examined whether this morphological contribution differs between SpA and StA. Method: We assessed 261 Arabic-speaking kindergartners for 1 year until the end of first grade for inflectional knowledge in kindergarten and reading skills in first grade (reading accuracy and fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension). Results: The findings revealed that among inflections, prevalence of performance on gender constructions was the highest, followed by number and possessive pronouns, and lowest performance for tense constructions. Although the performance for SpA was higher than for StA in all constructions, similar patterns were observed except similarity between gender and number in StA. Moreover, the results indicate a significant contribution of almost all inflectional constructions (except possessive pronouns) possessed in kindergarten to all reading skills in the first grade. However, tense did not contribute to reading comprehension, and possessive pronouns did not contribute to any of the reading measures. Regarding diglossia, although the claims that linguistic components in StA are not represented in the mental lexicon, StA accounted for an additional significant 2%–3% of the explained variance in Step 2 (which checked the practical significance of statistically significant results) in all reading measures. Conclusions: This study highlights the impact of diglossia-specific morphological differences (prevalence of the use of the morphological construction in Arabic in SpA vs. StA) on reading and literacy measures, especially the contribution of morphological awareness in SpA, which may provide a stronger basis for StA reading skills. The implications of these results are discussed, especially regarding exposing children to the morphological representations of both the SpA and StA forms to promote reading and literacy in Arabic.

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The impact of Diglossia-Effect on Reading Acquisition Among Arabic-Speaking Children: A Longitudinal Study

Cited by 7 publications

References 74 publications

The impact of lexical and phonological distance on reading acquisition: The diglossic context of Arabic

The impact of lexical and phonological distance on reading acquisition: The diglossic context of Arabic

Children's Command of Four Inflectional Constructions in Arabic: Differences and Development With Age

The Impact of Diglossia on Inflectional Morphological Constructions and Their Relation to Literacy Skills: A Longitudinal Study

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