Word reading in English and Arabic in children who are Syrian refugees

2020 ◽  
Vol 41 (6) ◽  
pp. 1305-1328
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gottardo ◽  
Norah Amin ◽  
Asma Amin ◽  
Redab Al-Janaideh ◽  
Xi Chen ◽  
...  

AbstractWord reading is a fundamental skill in reading and one of the building blocks of reading comprehension. Theories have posited that for second language (L2) learners, word reading skills are related if the children have sufficient experience in the L2 and are literate in the first language (L1). The L1 and L2 reading, phonological awareness skills, and morphological awareness skills of Syrian refugee children who speak Arabic and English were measured. These children were recent immigrants with limited L2 skills and varying levels of L1 education that was often not commensurate with their ages. Within- and across-language skills were examined in 96 children, ages 6 to 13 years. Results showed that phonological awareness and morphological awareness were strong within-language variables related to reading. Additionally, Arabic phonological awareness and morphological processing were strongly related to English word reading. Commonality analyses for variables within constructs (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness) but across languages (Arabic and English) in relation to English word reading showed that in addition to unique variance contributed by the variables, there was a high degree of overlapping variance.

2019 ◽  
Vol 53 (1) ◽  
pp. 48-59 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kevin Kien Hoa Chung ◽  
Chun Bun Lam

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with dyslexia (28 males, mean age = 152.11 months) and 55 typically developing adolescents (27 males, mean age = 151.85 months) participated. They were assessed on the cognitive-linguistic measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, word reading, and word spelling in L1 and L2. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that compared with the typical students, adolescents with dyslexia had poorer performance in all L1 and L2 measures except the phonological awareness in Chinese. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that for both groups of students, morphological awareness contributed uniquely to word reading and spelling in L1 and L2; rapid letter naming contributed uniquely to English word spelling. Findings highlight the importance of co-occurring difficulties in L1 and L2 reading and spelling and that morphological awareness may play a critical role in predicting word reading and spelling across languages for Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and those without difficulty.


2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 235-251 ◽  
Author(s):  
TOMOHIRO INOUE ◽  
GEORGE K. GEORGIOU ◽  
HIROFUMI IMANAKA ◽  
TAKAKO OSHIRO ◽  
HIROYUKI KITAMURA ◽  
...  

ABSTRACTWe examined the cross-lagged relations between word reading fluency in the two orthographic systems of Japanese: phonetic (syllabic) Hiragana and morphographic Kanji. One hundred forty-two Japanese-speaking children were assessed on word reading fluency twice in Grade 1 (Times 1 and 2) and twice in Grade 2 (Times 3 and 4). Nonverbal IQ, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming were also assessed in Time 1. Results of path analysis revealed that Time 1 Hiragana fluency predicted Time 2 Kanji fluency after controlling for the cognitive skills. Time 2 Hiragana fluency did not predict Time 3 Kanji fluency or vice versa after the autoregressor was controlled, but Hiragana and Kanji fluency were reciprocally related between Times 3 and 4. These findings provide evidence for a cross-script transfer of word reading fluency across the two contrastive orthographic systems, and the first evidence of fluency in a morphographic script predicting fluency development in a phonetic script within the same language.


Author(s):  
Vassiliki Tsela ◽  
Georgia Andreou ◽  
Maria Liakou ◽  
Julie Baseki

The present study investigated the effect of morphological awareness on three measures of reading, namely decoding, fluency and comprehension, in Greek as a first language (L1) and in French as a foreign language (L2). Morphological awareness was assessed via two tasks, a verb inflection task and a word production task. The results of this study indicated that the student’s performance in the two morphological tasks was significantly associated with their performance in the reading tasks. Our results support our hypothesis that morphological awareness can be a significant predictor of the high or low performances in decoding, reading fluency and reading comprehension in both L1 and L2 and it plays a critical role in reading efficiency.


2016 ◽  
Vol 38 (3) ◽  
pp. 161-171 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jennifer L. Zoski ◽  
Karen A. Erickson

This study investigated the feasibility of multicomponent linguistic awareness intervention on early literacy skills in at-risk kindergarteners. Seventeen students, including native Spanish-speaking English language learners ( n = 10) and native English speakers ( n = 7), participated in a 6-week small-group therapy program, for a total of 12 intervention hours. Students received therapy in one of the following: phonological awareness and letter knowledge; morphological awareness; or a three-pronged intervention that addressed all three areas. Students demonstrated moderate to large gains in word reading ( d = 1.79–2.19), phonological awareness ( d = 0.73–1.59), morphological awareness ( d = 0.57–3.96), and morphological spelling ( d = 0.77–3.0). Analyses revealed no significant differences based on the type of intervention received. These results provide preliminary evidence for the feasibility of three-pronged linguistic awareness instruction for kindergarten students at risk for later reading difficulties, including English language learners, in intensive intervention programs.


1993 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 177-195 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joanne F. Carlisle ◽  
Diana M. Nomanbhoy

ABSTRACTPhonological awareness is thought to be related to children's success in learning to read because it indicates an awareness of the internal structure of words. Morphological awareness, which has been found to be related to reading achievement for older students, may offer a more comprehensive measure of linguistic sensitivity because it entails not only phonological awareness, but also other aspects of linguistic knowledge. The research study reported herein was designed to investigate the extent to which phonological awareness contributes to the morphological awareness of first graders and to determine the extent to which phonological and morphological awareness account for variance in word reading. Two tasks of morphological awareness were used, one assessing judgments of morphological relations and the other assessing the production of inflected and derived forms.


Author(s):  
Pr Smail Layes ◽  
Dr Amel Kaddouri ◽  
Pr Robert Lalonde ◽  
Pr Mohamed Rebai

Abstract We examined the effects of a morphological awareness (MA) training program on the enhancement of word and pseudo-word reading and phonological awareness in Arabic-speaking children with dyslexia. We compared two groups of children with dyslexia from Grade 3, an experimental group (n = 12; mean age = 112.4 months) with a control group (n = 13; mean age = 111.61 months). The training program focused on morphological analysis, derivational morphology and inflexional morphology. Results revealed that the experimental group outperformed controls on all post-training measures for MA, reading words and pseudo-words as well as phonological awareness. Also, the post-training measures were better achieved in the experimental group than pre-training ones, which confirm the efficacy of the morphological training program. We discuss these findings in light of the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading and phonological awareness, and the Arabic orthographic features as a morphological based language.


2014 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 62-88 ◽  
Author(s):  
Alexandra Gottardo ◽  
Christine Javier ◽  
Fataneh Farnia ◽  
Lorinda Mak ◽  
Esther Geva

This study examines the bidirectional, cross-linguistic associations between language and word-level reading skills and reading comprehension for 51 students in grades 4 to 6 who speak Spanish as first language (L1) and English as second language (L2). Within-language predictors of reading comprehension were consistent with the simple view of reading. We found unidirectional cross-linguistic associations between Spanish word reading and English reading comprehension. However, the results do not support a cross-linguistic association between English word reading and Spanish reading comprehension. Specifically, results indicate that although L1 and L2 language and reading constructs correlate, L2 skills do not strongly contribute to L1 reading comprehension. Findings are discussed in terms of possible factors that might influence potential cross-language relations among Spanish and English measures. Keywords: reading comprehension; bilingualism; cross-linguistic relations


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