How Can Orthographic Representations in Arabic Contribute to Phoneme Awareness Development?

• Published in: Journal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 52; no. 2; pp. 555 - 567
• Main Author: Taha, Haitham
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: New York Springer US 01.04.2023; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Arabic language; Arabs; Awareness; Behavioral Science and Psychology; Cognitive Psychology; Diglossia; Elementary school students; Grain size; Humans; Knowledge; Language; Learning; Learning disabilities; Linguistics; Native language acquisition; Nonwords; Orthography; Phonemes; Phonetics; Phonological awareness; Phonology; Psycholinguistics; Psychology; Reading; Reading ability; Reading comprehension; Segmentation; Spelling; Phonological awareness; Reading; Arabic Language; Diglossia; Orthographic knowledge
• ISSN: 0090-6905; 1573-6555
• DOI: 10.1007/s10936-022-09908-1

The contribution of the orthographic representations to the development of phonemic awareness in Arabic was tested among 289 native Arab readers from the second, the fourth, and the sixth grade. Phonemic awareness was tested by using two phonemic segmentation tasks: words and pseudowords. The participants’ words and pseudowords reading and spelling skills beside to orthographic knowledge were tested also. The results revealed that the accuracy levels of phoneme segmentation of words were higher than pseudowords for all ages. In addition, the results revealed that the pseudowords reading skills and the orthographic knowledge contributed significantly to the phoneme segmentations of words and pseudowords. The results were discussed in light of the assumption that in transparent orthographies, such like Arabic, the grain size of phoneme awareness development is contributed by capturing the correspondences between the phonology and the orthography and the orthographic representations development.