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The Role of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in the Development of Arabic Spelling: An Intervention Study

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Abstract

The current study investigated the contribution of two linguistic intervention programs, phonological and morphological to the development of word spelling among skilled and poor native Arabic readers, in three grades: second, fourth and sixth. The participants were assigned to three experimental groups: morphological intervention, phonological intervention and a non-intervention control group. Phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and spelling abilities were tested before and after the intervention. Participants from both linguistic intervention programs and in all grades made significant progress in linguistic awareness and spelling after the intervention. The results showed that both intervention programs were successful in promoting children’s spelling skills in both groups. Also, older poor readers showed a stronger response to the morphological intervention than the older skilled readers. A transfer effect was found with the phonological training contributing to the morphological skills and vice versa. The results of the current study were discussed in the light of developmental and psycholinguistic views of spelling acquisition as well as the characteristics of Arabic language and orthography.

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Notes

  1. It is noteworthy that the diacritic system also includes diacritics representing word-final vowels and nunation which are used to mark case as well as the grammatical function of words. This phonological information, and unlike word- internal diacritics, is only rarely needed for word identification (Holes 2004).

  2. The values of the Alpha of Chronbach are as reported in Abu-Rabia and Taha (2006).

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. The Cognitive Lab for Reading and Learning and the Special Education Department, Sakhnin College for Teachers’ Education, Sakhnin, Israel

    Haitham Taha

  2. Linguistics Division, English Department, Bar Ilan University, Ramat Gan, Israel

    Elinor Saiegh-Haddad

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  1. Haitham Taha
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  2. Elinor Saiegh-Haddad
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Correspondence to Haitham Taha.

Appendix

Appendix

See (Table 4).

Table 4 Total number of participants and mean age within each intervention group separately by grade and reading group
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Taha, H., Saiegh-Haddad, E. The Role of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in the Development of Arabic Spelling: An Intervention Study. J Psycholinguist Res 45, 507–535 (2016). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-015-9362-6

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