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The role of the Arabic orthography in reading and spelling

Salim Abu-Rabia University of Haifa

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Questions

1) What are the main characteristics of the Arabic orthography ?

2) How does this orthography influence reading and spelling?

3) What are the types of reading and spelling errors as a result of this specific orthography?

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The Arabic Orthography

1. The diglossic situation of Arabic2. 28 letters, all consonants except three: the long vowels

( ي و، .(أ،3. Most Arabic letters have more than one written form.

( / ف،ـفـ،ـف ـع ـعـ، (ع،4. Letters are divided into categories according to basic

letter shapes, and the difference between them is the number of dots on, in or under the letter(/ / / / / / غ،ع/ ، ج،ح،خ ، س،ش ، (/ب،ت،ث

5. Diacritical marks/ short vowels that contribute phonology to the Arabic script

،ًب ،ًب� ،ًب� ،ًب ،ًب� ،ًب� ،ًب� ًب�

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6. Words are a combination of consonants and short vowels ( �ٌك� َم�ِل (َم�َر�ٌض�،

7. Skilled readers are expected to read mainly texts without short vowels ( في الطالًب يتعِلم (المدرسة

8. Beginners and poor readers read with short vowels.

ة�) س� ًب� ف�ي الم�د�ر� 'م� الط&ال �عِل �ت (ي Vowelized Arabic is considered shallow orthography

and unvowelized Arabic is considered deep orthography.

6. Reading accuracy in Arabic requires vowelizing word endings according to their grammatical function in the sentence, which is an advanced phonological and syntactical ability.

ة�7. �أزه�ار�هـا، ف�ف�ي الَح�ديَقـ� ة� ِب ـ� ة� َج�م�يِل ار� الَح�د�يَقـ� ازهـ��ة� �َو�َن َم�ِل

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The homograph phenomenon:

قبل

�ل� ق�ب

�ل� ق�ب

' ق�بل�

�ل� ق�ب

�ل ق�ب

�ل ق�ب

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12. The complex Arabic morphology: Derivational and inflectional morphology. Derivational morphology.

(a) Short vowels (phonological patterns) built onto roots, the phonological pattern does not break the orthographic order;

(b) Phonological patterns that include vowel letters, which are inserted between the root consonants. Here the phonological pattern of the infixes breaks the orthographic order of the consonantal roots; (ح� -فاِت �ح� - ِك�تاًب) (ف�ت �َبـ� �ت (ِك

(c) Additional patterns with vowel letters that may come as prefixes or suffixes. The root conveys the initial lexical access and the combination of roots and phonological patterns convey specific semantics: أ) �بَم�)ك.ت.ًب= دخل� ( )د،خ،لةكت =

13. Word and sentences; اُت�موأَك�َّل�، ُه�َن�اَك�َّل�م َه�

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Inflectional morphology

In contrast to the derivational process, in which the basic constituents are roots and word patterns, the inflectional morphology system is constructed by attaching prefixes and suffixes to real words. It considers person, number, gender and time.

The combination of morphological units in Arabic is not linear, but it relies on intertwining between two independent morphemes (the root and the word pattern. The order of root letters is dependent upon the word pattern and its way of intertwining with the root). 1) ات� �ب �تان، ِكاِت �ب �ة�، ِكاِت �ب ِكاِت

'اًب2 �ت �بان، ِك ، ِكاِت �َب� ( ِكاِت

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The effect of short vowels on reading and reading comprehension

1. Research indicated that short vowels affected reading accuracy among beginners, poor, dyslexic, and skilled readers in reading isolated words and texts. The same result was replicated among adult university students and university graduates who specialized in Arabic (Abu-Rabia, 1996, 1997a, 1997b, 1998, 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002).

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2. Similar results were obtained when beginners, poor, dyslexic and skilled readers of different ages were tested for reading comprehension (Abu-Rabia, 2001; Abu-Rabia, Share & Mansour, 2003; Abu-Rabia & Taha,

2004). Further, some studies indicated a nonsignificant correlation between reading accuracy and reading comprehension (Abu-Rabia, 2001).

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Reading errors

012345678M

ean

of

Rea

din

g E

rror

s

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Type of Reading Error

Reading and spelling error analysisMeans of scores of all readers in reading isolated words

DYSLEXIC

Reading-level-matched readers

Age-matched readers

Abu-Rabia & Taha (2004)

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Reading pseudowords

0123456789

Mea

n o

f R

ead

ing

Err

ors

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11

Type of Reading Error

Reading and spelling error analysis Means of errors of all readers in reading pseudowords

DYSLEXIC

Reading-level-matched readers

Age-matched readers

Abu-Rabia & Taha (2004)Abu-Rabia & Taha (2006)

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Spelling Errors

012345678

Mea

n of

Spe

lling

Err

ors

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Type of Spelling Error

Reading and spelling Error AnalysisMeans of speling errors of groups in isolated words

DYSLEXIC

Reading-level-matched readers

Age-matched readers

Abu-Rabia & Taha (2004)Abu-Rabia & Taha (2006)

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Conclusions

Reading:

It seems that because both literary and spoken Arabic are rich with morphological structures, and because when the similarity of written words, visually and phonologically, usually relate to the same root, this causes morphological types of errors while reading real words. This finding indicates that the reader of Arabic relies on word recognition strategies that involve phonological decoding skills, visual-orthographic recognition, and high morphological mapping.

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Written word

Phonological decodingGrapheme-phoneme

Orthographic lexical knowledge of words,Morphological patterns, pronunciation rules

Semantic system ofliterary and spoken Arabic

Phonological lexicon Phonological outcome

E

L

H IF

B

C

D

J

A

G

K

Abu-Rabia & Taha (2004)

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Conclusion

Spelling:The most prominent type of spelling error among all

types of readers was the phonetic. This result indicates that the reliance on lexical orthographic knowledge

was not sufficient to enable successful spelling.There was also an intervention of the spoken language into the spelling error patterns. When deficient lexical processes operate, the retrieval of exact orthographic

units does not represent the exact orthographic units of the target word, which brings over reliance on

phonological spelling. Usually we find almost 50% of all errors is phonetic

(Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006).

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A number of studies carried out in different writing systems have reported high accuracy scores for reading words toward the end of grade 1. Such high accuracy rates indicate the fast and natural transition of readers from the phonological stage to a more direct visual-orthographic stage. For example, Greek children read on average 90% of real words correctly (Porpodas et al., 1990).

Italian children read on average 94% of real words (Cossu et al., 1995). French children read about 87% of real words.

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Words (Sprenger-Charolles et al., 1988). Even in Hebrew, decoding accuracy was found to be around 80% at the end of grade 1 (Share & Levin, 1999).

However, these high scores for phonological decoding stand in sharp contrast to the performance of English children a year later, at the end of grade 2 (Share & Levin,

1999).

Children learning to read English scored no more than 70% correct word reading (Frith et al., 1998).

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Word (phonological representation)

Internal phonological repetition

)phonological loop(

Acoustic stimulus

Phonemic analysis

Grapheme-phonememapping

Final Orthographic

representation

Spelling rules Pronunciation and mediation

mechanisms to the literary Arabic

Lexical Knowledge

F

D

B

A

C

E

Abu-Rabia & Taha (2004)