Asadi Ibrahim A, Asli-Badarneh Abeer, Ibrahim Raphiq, Hamzah Hussein
Department of Learning Disabilities and Special Education, The Arab Academic College for Education, Haifa, Israel.
Unit for the Study of Arabic Language, Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities, University of Haifa, Israel.
J Speech Lang Hear Res. 2024 Feb 12;67(2):496-510. doi: 10.1044/2023_JSLHR-23-00318. Epub 2024 Jan 16.
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.
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).
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.
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.
本研究调查了学龄前儿童在阿拉伯语中屈折变化（性、数、所有代词和时态）结构使用方面，口语阿拉伯语（SpA）和标准阿拉伯语（StA）之间的差异。此外，我们测试了幼儿园所学屈折结构对一年级阅读技能的贡献，并研究了这种形态学贡献在SpA和StA之间是否存在差异。
我们对261名讲阿拉伯语的幼儿园儿童进行了为期1年的评估，直至一年级结束，评估内容包括幼儿园的屈折知识以及一年级的阅读技能（阅读准确性和流畅性、拼写和阅读理解）。
研究结果显示，在屈折变化中，性结构的表现普及率最高，其次是数和所有代词，时态结构的表现最低。虽然在所有结构中SpA的表现都高于StA，但观察到了相似的模式，StA中性和数之间的情况除外。此外，结果表明，幼儿园所学的几乎所有屈折结构（所有代词除外）对一年级的所有阅读技能都有显著贡献。然而，时态对阅读理解没有贡献，所有代词对任何阅读指标都没有贡献。关于双言现象，尽管有人声称StA中的语言成分在心理词库中没有体现，但在所有阅读指标中，StA在第二步（检查统计显著结果的实际意义）中额外解释了2%-3%的方差。
本研究强调了双言现象特定的形态学差异（SpA与StA中阿拉伯语形态结构使用的普及率）对阅读和读写能力指标的影响，特别是SpA中形态意识的贡献，这可能为StA阅读技能提供更坚实的基础。我们讨论了这些结果的意义，特别是关于让儿童接触SpA和StA形式的形态学表征以促进阿拉伯语阅读和读写能力的问题。
