From kindergarten to fourth grade: Predicting reading comprehension difficulties amongst Arab children Dr. Bahaa ’ Makhoul The Eighth Biannual Gulf Comparative Education 1 Oranim College for Education Society Symposium The Hebrew Univerity,Jerusalem Public, Private, and Philanthropy: Exploring the Impact 2 Centre for Educational Technology (CET) Arabic Academic College for Education of New Actors on Education in the GCC Centre for Educational Technology (CET )
* The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem The NCJW Research Institute For The Innovation In Education senior researcher Literacy and intervention programs development specialist Head of program : MED Learning disabilities program Arabic Academic College for Education * Director of the Arabic Section Literacy and Language Arts Department CET.THE CENTER FOr EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY Dr. Bahaa ’ Makhoul The Hebrew Univerity,Jerusalem Arabic Academic College for Education Centre for Educational Technology (CET )
Reading acquisition: The case of diglossic Arabic
The diglossic Nature of Arabic Spoken Arabic Written Arabic Mutual influence • Acquired by oriented and directed learning process. • Utilized in everyday interactions • Acquisition of reading and writing • Children are mainly exposed to the commences upon beginning spoken variation of the Arabic formal schooling. language. Due to the linguistic gap between spoken and written Arabic, as seen across several linguistic structures, reading instruction requires is more demanding and necessitating special pedagogical approaches (Ayari, 1996; Saiegh – Haddad, 2005; Ferguson, 1959; Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2007).
Arabic Orthographic Complexity The visual complexity of Arabic script Letters’ Visual resemblance Letters’ shape variation according to their Location in the word: separated, at the beginning, end or in the middle of a word. خح ج بتث Arabic script is cursive روفصع (Bird)
Phonological constrains The phonological features of the Arabic language seem to affect reading acquisition. Arabic language includes 35 phonemes, represented by 29 consonants (letters) and 6 vowels. Based on articulation manner, consonants are distributed into three sound categories: Fricatives, Plosives, Emphatics in addition to diglossic sounds:
Phonological constrains
Phonological constrains
Morpho-Syntactic structure of Arabic Morphology is a prominent characteristic of Semitic Languages. In Arabic, morphological knowledge seem to distinguish between Skilled and poor readers ( Abu- Rabia, Share, & Mansour, 2003; Al-Ghanem & Kearns, 2014). One word in Arabic can Represent a As other Semitic languages, words whole sentence. in Arabic are constructed from: Roots and patterns اهومتيأر (i.e. You Have seen it) The root provides the reader trigger Arabic language is characterized by a dense morphological constructions into orthographic-lexical knowledge that enables decoding of the word as due to its is interwoven and linear structure (Feldman, Frost, & Pnini, word roots are an independent semantic units (Abu-Rabia, 2012). 1995)
Morpho-Syntactic structure of Arabic هاخأ يداش َرَكَش ةيدهلا ىلع . Shadi Thanked his brother for the gift. انْدَهاشةانق رابخلؤلؤا . We watched the news channel. انْدَهاشةانقلا ُلصفت يتلا ةيرحبلا نيتلودلا نيب . We saw the water canal that
Vowelized vs. Un-vowelized Script Un-vowelized Script Vowelized Script Novice readers Skilled readers No vowels and diacritical signs. Vowels and diacritical signs The reader is supposed to provide information about the conclude the syntactic functio0ns syntactic function of the words in of the words based on the context a given sentence. and his syntactic knowledge
Socio-Economic Status and Literacy Development “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The Matthew’s Effect
Socio-Economic Status and Literacy Development Reading achievements of Arabic-speaking fourth National Exams grade students were significantly lower than their Hebrew-speaking peers. In International Exams, Low Achievements were also observed amongst Arab students in different International Arab Countries. This can be attributed to the Exams (PIRLS) diglossic nature of the language at its complex features.
The study aims The study aims at examining early predictors (in kindergarten) for latter reading comprehension difficulties. For this purpose, the current study follows the development of literacy knowledge and skills among Arabic native speaking children from kindergarten to fourth grade. Second Fourth kindergarten grade grade
Participants The current study is a longitudinal study that followed literacy skills’ development among 79 Arabic native speaking children from kindergarten to fourth grade in two different schools. Follow-up literacy assessments were carried at two time points (second and fourth grade) Based on reading comprehension performance, participants were identified either as skilled (N=66) or poor readers ( N=130) with the latter deviating 1 SD from the group mean average (Adolf, Cats, & Lee, 2010). Additionally, A chi-square test for independence was conducted, revealing no significant relationship between gender and group ( χ 2 (2) = .24, p = .63).
Procedure One-hour literacy assessment battery was administrated for each participant individually at two time points: in kindergarten, in 2nd grade. In 4th grade, 50 minutes in-class reading comprehension test was administrated. Third assessment: 4 th grade Second assessment: 2 nd grade First assessment: kindergarten
Instruments Oral language skills
Instruments Oral language skills
Instruments Arabic Reading and Comprehension Measure (ARCM) Pseudo-word reading Context-free oral word naming Text reading and comprehension
Instruments Fourth Grade Reading comprehension
Results First, normality test was performed to examine whether the different groups samples (i.e. good readers and at-risk for reading difficulties children) is normally distributed. Shapiro-Wilk test favored the assumption of normality across groups ( ps > .05). Accordingly, analysis of variance and regression were used to analyze the data.
Differences in literacy skills between the groups over time Table 1. Means and standard deviations in the different literacy domains as a function of group and time.
Differences in literacy skills between the groups over time Alphabetic Knowledge Good Readers > Poor Readers One-way analysis of variance pointed to a significant effect Kindergarten between the two groups [F (1,78)=21.36, p<.001; F(1,78)=5.48, p<.05, respectively). Reading Comprehension Good Readers > Poor Readers Second One-way analysis of variances pointed to a significant difference Grade between the groups in reading comprehension questions [F (1,78)= 13.94, p< .001 but not in story recall measure [F<1]
The contribution of early literacy skills to reading comprehension performance in 4 th grade Table2 . Early predictors for reading comprehension performance in 4 th grade as a function of age group (kindergarten and second grade).
Discussion Morphological knowledge as a predictor for reading achievements In line with previous studies, morphological awareness was found to predict reading achievement beyond phonological awareness (e.g. Carlislie, 1988, 1995; Frost , Deutsch, & Froster, 2000; Casalis, coole, & Sopo, 2004). In the case of Arabic , morphological awareness seems to play a key role in reading acquisition, differentiating between good and poor readers (Abu-Rabia, Share, & Mansour, 2003).
Discussion Print Concepts predicts later literacy performance Additionally, and in line with Scarborough (2009), knowledge of print concepts has been found to predict later literacy performance.
Discussion Phonology always plays a role… (Aram, Korat, & Hassunah-Arafat, 2013; Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 2001; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004; Scarborough, 2001; Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis, Carlson, & Foorman, 2004; Adams, 1990; Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985; Saiegh-Haddad, 2004; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008; Spector, 1995 ). This is also supported by: Abu-Rabia, Share & Mansour (2003) have found significant lag in phonological awareness skills among Arabic native speakers with reading difficulties when compared to normally developing readers.
Conclusion The current study stresses the importance of early preventive programs that stress in the three main domains of phonological awareness, morphological awareness and alphabetic knowledge.
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