Home⇛Universal Journal of Educational Research⇛vol. 3 no. 1 (2024)

Predicting Reading Comprehension by Reading Level and Diglossia: A Comparison Between Diglossic First Grade Students with and Without Learning Disabilities

Saied Bishara

Discipline: Education

 

Abstract:

This study aimed to study the association between diglossic reading skills and reading comprehension in first grade students with and without learning disabilities. In this study population, students presented diglossia in literary and colloquial Arabic: 30 first grade students with learning disabilities and 30 first grade students without learning disabilities were assessed using a reading test (accuracy and fluency in both languages: literary and colloquial) and a reading comprehension test. This study’s findings show significantly better measures of reading skills and reading comprehension in the students without learning disabilities, and significant interaction between reading and reading comprehension in the entire study population. In view of the marked gaps between the two populations of students, it is important to pay special attention to the population with learning disabilities and strive to help these students improve on the measures tested in this study (reading skills and reading comprehension). This could have a positive impact on a variety of other pedagogical-related phenomena, such as academic achievements in school subjects.



References:

  1. Abu-Rabia, S. (2008). The role of morphology and short vowelization in reading Arabic among normal and dyslexic readers in grades 3, 6, 9, and 12. Journal of   Psycholinguistic Research, 28(1), 93-101.
  2. Abu-Rabia, S. (2009). Reading in Arabic orthography: The effect of vowels and context on reading accuracy of poor and skilled native Arabic readers in reading paragraphs sentences and isolated words. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 26(4) 465-482.  
  3. APA. (2013). DSM-V-- A diagnostic and statistical manual of mental disorder (5th ed.). American Psychiatric Association.
  4. Asadi, I. & Ibrahim, R. (2014). The Influence of Diglossia on Different Types of Phonological Abilities in Arabic. Journal of Education and Learning. 3(3), 45-55.
  5. Ben-Dror, I., Bentin, S., & Frost, R. (1995). Semantic, phonologic and morphologic skills in reading disabled and normal children: Evidence from perception and production of spoken Hebrew. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 876-893.
  6. Carmel (2015). A didactic and functional evaluation kit in the Arabic language. Matia (In Arabic).
  7. Elbro, C., & Arnbak, E. (1996). The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 46(1), 209-240.
  8. Engen, L. & Hoien, T. (2002). Phonological skills and reading comprehension. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 15, 613-631.
  9. Eviatar, Z., & Ibrahim, R. (2000). Bilingual is as bilingual does: Metalinguistic abilities of Arabic-speaking children. Applied Psycholinguistics, 21(4), 451-471.
  10. Geva, E. & Wade-Woolley, W. (2004). Issues in the Assessment of Reading Disability in Second Language Children. In I. Smythe, J. Everatt, and R. Salter (Eds.), International Book of Dyslexia: A cross language comparison and practice guide (pp. 195-206). John Wiley.
  11. Geva, E., & Farnia, F. (2012). Developmental changes in the nature of language proficiency and reading fluency paint a more complex view of reading comprehension in ELL and EL1. Reading and Writing, 25, 1819-1845.
  12. Henkin, R. (2010). Negev Arabic: dialectal, sociolinguistis and stylistic variation. Harrassowitz.
  13. Holes, C. (2004). Moderen Arabic: structures, functions, and varieties. Georgetown University Press.
  14. Hostutler, C. Nusbaum a, M. J., Laracy, S. D., & Winterhalter, M. (2018). Learning Disabilities. In S. G. Forman & J. D. (Eds.), Shahidulla, Handbook of Pediatric Behavioral Healthcare (pp. 199-211). Springer.
  15. Ibrahim, R. (2009). The cognitive basis of diglossia in Arabic: evidence from a repetition priming study within and between languages. Psychology Research and Behavior Management, 12, 95-105.
  16. Katzir, T., Kim, Y., Wolf, M., O’Brien, B., Kennedy, B., Lovett, M., & Morris, R. (2006).  Reading fluency: The whole is more than the parts. Annals of dyslexia, 56(1), 51-82.
  17. Koda, K. (1997). Orthographic knowledge in L2 lexical processing: A cross linguistic perspective. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition: A rationale pedagogy (pp. 35-52). Cambridge University Press.
  18. Leikin, M., Eghbaria, H, & Ibrahim, R. (2014). The influence of diglossia in Arabic on narrative ability: Evidence from analysis of the linguistic and narrative structure of discourse among pre-school children. Reading and Writing, 27(4), 733-747.
  19. Lesaux, N. K., Koda, K., Siegel, L. S., & Shanahan, T. (2006). Development of literacy in language-minority students. In D. August, 6, 2020 Shanahan (Eds.), Developing literacy in second-language learners: Report of the National Literacy Panel on Language Minority Children and Youth. Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
  20. Levi-Shimon, S. (2005). The effect of thinking abilities, phonological awareness and morphological awareness on the reading abilities of first grade children. M.A. thesis. Bar-Ilan University (In Hebrew).
  21. Maamouri, M. (1998). Language education and human development: Arabic diglossia and its impact on the quality of education in the Arab region. Discussion paper prepared for the world bank. The Mediterranean development forum.
  22. Myhill, J. C. (2009). Towards understanding the relationship between diglossia and literacy. Israel National Academy of Sciences (In Hebrew).
  23. Mutlak-Abu Dahud, R., Ibrahim, R., & Shany, M. (2015). How does Diglossia in Arabic affect the development of morphological knowledge throughout elementary schools?  Journal of Advances in Linguistic, 5(3), 736-750.        
  24. NJCLD - National Joint Committee on Learning Disabilities (2013). WETA.
  25. Perfetti, C.A., Landi, N., & Oakhill, J. (2005). The acquisition of reading comprehension skill. In M. J. Snowling & C. Hulme (Eds.), The science of reading: A handbook (pp. 227–247). Wiley-Blackwell.
  26. Rama (2020). Reading comprehension tests. Published by the Ministry of Education (In Arabic).
  27. Reiner, R. (2000). The relationship between phonological awareness and reading comprehension in the 6th grade. Speech, Language and Hearing, 22, 82-69 (In Hebrew).
  28. Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Bilingual oral reading fluency and reading comprehension: The case of Arabic/Hebrew (L1)-; L2 Reading and Writing, 16(8), 717-736.
  29. 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). Dordrecht.
  30. Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Geva, E. (2008). Morphological awareness, phonological     awareness, and reading in English-Arabic bilingual children. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 21(5) 481-504.
  31. Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Spolsky, B. (2014). Acquiring literacy in a diglossic context: problems and prospects. In: E. (Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008). M Joshi (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic Literacy (pp. 225-240). Springer.
  32. Saiegh-Haddad, E., Levin, I., Hende, N., & Ziv, M. (2011). The linguistic affiliation constraint and phoneme recognition in diglossic Arabic. Journal of Child Language, 38(2), 297-315.
  33. Schiff, R., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2017). When diglossia meets dyslexia: The effect of diglossia on voweled and unvoweled word reading among native Arabic-speaking dyslexic children. Reading and Writing, 30(5), 1089-1113.
  34. Stanovich, K. E. (1990). Introduction Children's reading and the development of     phonological awareness. Merrill-Palmer Quarterly, 33, 251-254.
  35. World Health Organization. (2016). International statistical classification of diseases and related health problems, 10th revision (ICD-10). (World Health Organization, 2016).
  36. Ziegler, C. J. & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across language: A psycholinguistic grain size theory.

Tools


Copyright © 2024  KITE Digital Educational Solutions |  Exclusively distributed by CE-Logic