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Contributions of phonological processing skills to reading skills in Arabic speaking children

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Abstract

This cross-sectional study investigated contributions of phonological awareness (Elision and blending), rapid naming (object, color, letter, and digit), and phonological memory (nonword repetition and Digit Span) to basic decoding and fluency skills in Arabic. Participants were 237 Arabic speaking children from Grades K-3. Dependent measures included word decoding, oral passage reading fluency, nonword reading fluency, and retell fluency. Within-grade analyses indicated that phonological awareness accounted for more variance than rapid naming regardless of the nature of the outcome measure and grade. Rapid naming’s capacity to predict variance, while less than that of phonological awareness, tended to rise steadily and was highest in Grade 3. Phonological memory, as measured by this study’s tasks, showed almost no relationship to reading performance. The findings are discussed with respect to changing the requirements of Arabic reading in Grades K-3 and suggestions are made for future research.

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Notes

  1. Phonological processing will be used to refer to the uses of internal forms of speech information for representing, storing and/or retrieving spoken and written language.

  2. Phonological awareness will refer to a set of linguistic and metalinguistic skills involving the capacity to reflect on the sound structure of spoken words (Muter et al., 1997; Stahl & Murray, 1994). Rapid naming (RAN) will reference the capacity to retrieve phonological codes stored in long-term memory (measured by the amount of time required to name a group of stimuli such as numbers, letters, colors, or common objects; e.g., Allor, 2002; Wolf, 1986, 1991). Phonological memory (PM) refers to a processing resource of limited capacity involved in the preservation of information, which in the case of phonological working memory also involves manipulation of the same or other information (Baddeley & Logie, 1999; Swanson & Sáez, 2003).

  3. In Arabic, three long vowels are also denoted as letters and short vowels are noted with diacritics.

  4. A noteworthy exception is that Arabic Qu’ranic texts retain diacritics in order to standardize pronunciation.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to acknowledge King Abdulaziz University (KAU) for funding this research project via its Short Term Research Funding Program; participant children, teachers and parents in the Jeddah area schools for their willing involvement; and the graduate students in KAU’s Childhood Studies Program of 2008 who helped with data gathering and data entry.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Childhood Studies, Special Education, King Abdulaziz University, P.O. Box 10030, Jeddah, 21433, Saudi Arabia

    Nadia J. Taibah

  2. MGH Institute of Health Professions, Boston, MA, USA

    Charles W. Haynes

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  1. Nadia J. Taibah
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  2. Charles W. Haynes
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Correspondence to Nadia J. Taibah.

Appendix

Appendix

Sample of the Elision subtest

Sample of the blending words subtest

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Taibah, N.J., Haynes, C.W. Contributions of phonological processing skills to reading skills in Arabic speaking children. Read Writ 24, 1019–1042 (2011). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9273-8

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