Yassin Rana, Share David L, Shalhoub-Awwad Yasmin
Department of Learning Disabilities, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
Front Psychol. 2020 Aug 25;11:2059. doi: 10.3389/fpsyg.2020.02059. eCollection 2020.
Learning to spell is a challenging process, especially for young learners, in part because it relies on multiple aspects of linguistic knowledge, primarily phonological and morphological. However, alongside these universals, there are significant writing system specifics, namely, language-specific and script-specific factors that may also challenge young readers and writers (Daniels and Share, 2018). The current study focuses on the impact of four distinctive visual-orthographic features of the Arabic abjad on spelling, namely, (i) the similarity of many basic letter-forms, (ii) allography (the positional variants of the letter forms), (iii) ligaturing (the joining of letters), and (iv) non-linearity (extra-linear diacritic-like signs used to mark consonantal, short vowel and morpho-syntactic distinctions). We examined the distribution of visual-orthographic spelling errors across three grade levels as well as the developmental changes in these errors. We predicted that these errors would account for a significant proportion of children's spelling errors. Ninety-six Arabic-speaking pupils from three elementary grades (1st, 2nd, 4th grades) were presented with a sequence of six pictures and asked to write a story or several sentences about the events depicted. All spelling errors were analyzed and categorized according to two types of categories: six visual-orthographic categories and six additional categories that relate to the more traditional error types (e.g., phonological). The results showed that the visual-orthographic category was the second most common error category across the three grade levels, accounting for over one quarter of all spelling errors. Ligaturing and letter shape formation errors emerged as the two most prevalent types of errors in this category. These findings clearly demonstrate that visual-orthographic features of the Arabic abjad pose significant challenges in learning to spell.
学习拼写是一个具有挑战性的过程，尤其是对于年幼的学习者来说，部分原因在于它依赖于语言知识的多个方面，主要是语音和形态学方面。然而，除了这些共性之外，还存在显著的书写系统特性，即特定语言和特定文字的因素，这些因素也可能给年轻的读者和写作者带来挑战（丹尼尔斯和沙尔，2018）。本研究聚焦于阿拉伯字母表的四个独特视觉正字法特征对拼写的影响，即：（i）许多基本字母形式的相似性，（ii）字母变体（字母形式的位置变体），（iii）连写（字母的连接），以及（iv）非线性（用于标记辅音、短元音和形态句法区别的类似附加符号的超线性符号）。我们研究了视觉正字法拼写错误在三个年级水平上的分布情况以及这些错误的发展变化。我们预测这些错误将在儿童的拼写错误中占很大比例。来自三个小学年级（一年级、二年级、四年级）的96名讲阿拉伯语的学生观看了一系列六张图片，并被要求就所描绘的事件写一个故事或几句话。所有拼写错误都根据两种类别进行了分析和分类：六个视觉正字法类别和六个与更传统错误类型（如语音方面）相关的附加类别。结果表明，视觉正字法类别是三个年级水平中第二常见的错误类别，占所有拼写错误的四分之一以上。连写和字母形状形成错误是该类别中最普遍的两种错误类型。这些发现清楚地表明，阿拉伯字母表的视觉正字法特征在学习拼写方面构成了重大挑战。
