Abstract
The current study attempted to investigate the development of Arabic academic vocabulary knowledge among middle-school Arabic native speakers, taking into account the socioeconomic status of the Arab population in Israel. For this purpose, Arabic academic word list was developed, mapping the required academic words that are needed for adequate coping with informational texts as appearing in the different content areas text-books. Six-hundred Arabic speaking middle school pupils from the different areas in Israel, representing the different Arab subgroups: general Arab community, Druze and Bedouins, have participated in the current study. Two academic vocabulary tests, including receptive and productive academic vocabulary evaluation tests, were administrated to the students across the different age groups (7th, 8th and 9th). The results pointed to no significant difference between 7th and 9th grade in academic vocabulary knowledge. In contrast, significant difference was encountered between the different Arab sub-groups where the lowest scores were noted among the Bedouin sub-group, characterized by the lowest SES. When comparing receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge between 7th and 9th grade, the results pointed to improvement in receptive academic knowledge towards the end of middle school but not on the productive knowledge level. In addition, within participants’ comparison indicated a gap between the pupils’ receptive and productive vocabulary. The results are discussed in relation to the existing scientific literature and to its implication of both research and practice in the domain of Arabic literacy development.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Abu-Asba, H. (2005). The Arabic educational system in Israel: Development and present picture. In A. Haidar (Ed.), Arab society in Israeli population, society, economy (pp. 201–221). Jerusalem: Van Leer Jerusalem Institute, The Institute of Israeli-Arab Studies, Hakibbutz Hameuchad Publishing House (Hebrew).
Abu-Bader, S., & Gottlieb, D. (2009). Poverty, education and employment in the Arab-Bedouin society: A comparative view. Jerusalem: National Insurance Institute, Research and Planning Administration.
Allen, J. (1999). Words, words, words: Teaching vocabulary in grades 4–12. Portland: Stenhouse Publishers.
Aram, D., Korat, O., Saiegh-Haddad, E., Arafat, S. H., Khoury, R., & Elhija, J. A. (2013). Early literacy among Arabic-speaking kindergartners: The role of socioeconomic status, home literacy environment and maternal mediation of writing. Cognitive Development, 28(3), 193–208.
Aviram, T., Cafir, R., & Ben Simon, A. (1996). National Mashov [feedback system] in 8th grade mathematics. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture, Chief Scientists Bureau and the Center for Testing and Evaluation (Hebrew).
Bailey, A. L. (2007). The language demands of school: Putting academic English to the test. New Haven: Yale University Press.
Bailey, A. L., & Heritage, M. (Eds.). (2008). Formative assessment for literacy, grades K-6: Building reading and academic language skills across the curriculum. Thousand Oaks: Corwin Press.
Cafir, R., Aviram, T., & Ben Simon, A. (1999). National Mashov [feedback system] in 6th graders’ science and technology. Jerusalem: Ministry of Education and Culture, Chief Scientists Bureau and the Center for Testing and Evaluation (Hebrew).
Caldwell, G. P., & Ginther, D. W. (1996). Differences in learning styles of low socioeconomic status for low and high achievers. Education, 117(1), 141.
Chamot, A. U., & O’Malley, M. J. (1994). The CALLA handbook: Implementing the cognitive academic language approach. Reading, MA: Addison Wesley.
Constantino, R. (2005). Print environments between high and low socioeconomic status (SES) communities. Teacher Librarian, 32(3), 22.
Corson, D. (1997). The learning and use of academic English words. Language Learning, 47(4), 671–718.
Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238.
Cummins, J. (1979). Cognitive/Academic language proficiency, linguistic interdependence, the optimum age question and some other matters. Working papers on Bilingualism, no. 19.
Cummins, J. (1981). The role of primary language development in promoting educational success for language minority students. In California State Department of Education (Ed.), Schooling and language minority students: A theoretical rationale (pp. 3–49). Los Angeles, CA: California State University.
Edi-Rokah, A., Biran, H. & Fridman-Goldberg, S. (2011). Junior high school: Characteristics and challenges, an ordered review as a background material for a language and literacy committee. http://education.academy.ac.il. (in Hebrew).
Ensminger, M. E., & Fothergill, K. E. (2003). A decade of measuring SES: What it tells us and where to go from here. In M. Bornstein, & R. Bradley (Eds.), Socioeconomic status, parenting, and child development (pp. 13–27). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
Fang, Z., Schleppegrell, M. J., & Cox, B. E. (2006). Understanding the language demands of schooling: Nouns in academic registers. Journal of Literacy Research, 38(3), 247–273.
Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word, 15(2), 325–340.
Guerrero, M. D. (2004). Acquiring academic English in one year an unlikely proposition for English language learners. Urban Education, 39(2), 172–199.
Hakuta, K., Butler, Y., & Witt, D. (2000). How long does it take English learners to attain proficiency? Policy report 2000–2001 for the University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute.
Heller, R., & Greenleaf, C. L. (2007). Literacy instruction in the content areas: Getting to the core of middle and high school improvement. Washington, DC: Alliance for Excellent Education.
Hiebert, E. H., & Lubliner, S. (2008). The nature, learning, and instruction of general academic vocabulary. What Research Has to Say About Vocabulary Instruction, 106–129.
Hoff, E. (2006). How social contexts support and shape language development. Developmental Review, 26(1), 55–88.
Hoff, E. (2009). Effects of dual language exposure on early lexical growth. In Poster session presented at the Biennial meeting of the society for research in child development, Denver, CO.
Hoff-Ginsberg, E. (1991). Mother-child conversation in different social classes and communicative settings. Child Development, 62(4), 782–796.
Ibrahim, R., & Aharon-Peretz, J. (2005). Is literary Arabic a second language for native Arab speakers? Evidence from semantic priming study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 34(1), 51–70.
Ibrahim, R., & Eviatar, Z. (2009). Language status and hemispheric involvement in reading: Evidence from trilingual Arabic speakers tested in Arabic, Hebrew, and English. Neuropsychology, 23(2), 240.
Irvin, J. L., Meltzer, J., & Dukes, M. (2007). Taking action on adolescent literacy: An implementation guide for school leaders. Virginia: Ascd.
Kan, P. F., & Kohnert, K. (2005). Preschoolers learning Hmong and EnglishLexical-semantic skills in L1 and L2. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 48(2), 372–383.
Karmarski, B., & Mevarech, Z. (2004). Reading literacy, mathematics and science. PISA study: 2002. Scientific report. Ramat Gan: School of Education, Bar Ilan University.
Laufer, B. (1998). The development of passive and active vocabulary in a second language: Same or different? Applied Linguistics, 19(2), 255–271.
Lawrence, J. F., White, C., & Snow, C. E. (2010). The words students need. Educational Leadership, 68(2), 23–26.
Lesaux, N. K., Kieffer, M. J., Faller, S. E., & Kelley, J. G. (2010). The effectiveness and ease of implementation of an academic vocabulary intervention for linguistically diverse students in urban middle schools. Reading Research Quarterly, 45(2), 196–228.
Mevarech, Z., & Karmarsky, B. (2007). Preliminary results of PISA 2006 in Israel. Retrieved from:http://rama.education.gov.il.
Milne, A., & Plourde, L. A. (2006). Factors of a low-SES household: What aids academic achievement? Journal of Instructional Psychology, 33(3), 183–194.
Morales, A., & Hanson, W. E. (2005). Language brokering: An integrative review of the literature. Hispanic Journal of Behavioral Sciences, 27(4), 471–503.
Mullis, I. V., Martin, M. O., Foy, P., & Drucker, K. T. (2012). PIRLS 2011 international results in reading. Amsterdam: International Association for the Evaluation of Educational Achievement.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Oller, D. K., & Eilers, R. E. (Eds.). (2002). Language and literacy in bilingual children (Vol. 2). Bristol: Multilingual Matters.
Oller, D. K., Pearson, B. Z., & Cobo-Lewis, A. B. (2007). Profile effects in early bilingual language and literacy. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28(02), 191–230.
Pearson, B. Z., Fernandez, S. C., Lewedeg, V., & Oller, D. K. (1997). The relation of input factors to lexical learning by bilingual infants. Applied Psycholinguistics, 18(01), 41–58.
Quagliata, T. (2008). Is there a positive correlation between socioeconomic status and academic achievement?. Paper: Education masters (p. 78).
RAMA. (2016). MEITZAV—Measurements of school efficiency and growth—General background.http://cms.education.gov.il/EducationCMS/Units/Rama/Meitzav/DochotMaarachtim.htm.
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2012). Literacy reflexes of Arabic diglossia. In M. Leikin, M. Schwartz, & Y. Tobin (Eds.), Current issues in bilingualism: Cognitive and sociolinguistic perspectives (pp. 43–55). London: Springer.
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The structure of Arabic language and orthography. In E. Saiegh-Haddad, & R. M. Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives, language and literacy series (pp. 3–28). Dordrecht: Springer.
Scarcella, R. (2003). Academic English: A conceptual framework. Santa Barbara: The University of California Linguistic Minority Research Institute Technical Report 2003-1
Schleppegrell, M. J. (2004). The language of schooling: A functional linguistics perspective. London: Routledge.
Short, D. J., & Fitzsimmons, S. (2007). Double work. Challenges and solutions to acquiring language and academic literacy for adolescent English language learners. A report to Carnegie corporationn of New York. New York: Carnegie Corporation.
Sirin, S. R. (2005). Socioeconomic status and academic achievement: A meta-analytic review of research. Review of Educational Research, 75(3), 417–453.
Snow, C. E., & Biancarosa, G. (2003). Adolescent literacy and the achievement gap: What do we know and where do we go from here?. New York, NY: Carnegie Corporation.
Snow, C. E., & Kim, Y. (2007). Large problem spaces: The challenge of vocabulary for English language learners. In R. K. Wagner, A. E. Muse, & K. R. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension (pp. 123–139). New York: Guilford.
Sprinzak, D., Bar, E., Levi-Mazloum, D., & Piterman, D. (2003). Facts and figures. Jerusalem: State of Israel, Ministry of Education Economic and Budgeting Administration (Hebrew).
Statistical Abstract of Israel. (2014). Central Bureau of statistics (Vol. 2.25, p. 161). http://www.cbs.gov.il.
Strenze, T. (2007). Intelligence and socioeconomic success: A meta-analytic review of longitudinal research. Intelligence, 35(5), 401–426.
Swanson, H. L., Rosston, K., Gerber, M., & Solari, E. (2008). Influence of oral language and phonological awareness on children’s bilingual reading. Journal of School Psychology, 46(4), 413–429.
Townsend, D., & Collins, P. (2009). Academic vocabulary and middle school English learners: An intervention study. Reading and Writing, 22(9), 993–1019.
Townsend, D., Filippini, A., Collins, P., & Biancarosa, G. (2012). Evidence for the importance of academic word knowledge for the academic achievement of diverse middle school students. The Elementary School Journal, 112(3), 497–518.
Yan, S., & Nicoladis, E. (2009). Finding le mot juste: Differences between bilingual and monolingual children’s lexical access in comprehension and production. Bilingualism: Language and Cognition, 12(03), 323–335.
Zhou, S. (2010). Comparing receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge of Chinese EFL learners. Asian Social Science, 6(10), 14.
Zuzovsky, R. (2008). Closing achievement gaps between Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking students in Israel: Findings from TIMSS-2003. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 34(2), 105–117.
Zuzovsky, R. (2010). The impact of socioeconomic versus linguistic factors on achievement gaps between Hebrew-speaking and Arabic-speaking students in Israel in reading literacy and in mathematics and science achievements. Studies in Educational Evaluation, 36(4), 153–161.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Makhoul, B. Investigating Arabic Academic Vocabulary Knowledge Among Middle School Pupils: Receptive Versus Productive Knowledge. J Psycholinguist Res 46, 1053–1065 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9479-x
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-017-9479-x