The Impact of Diglossia in Arabic on Word Reading Development

• In Event: AERA Roundtable Session Thursday 3:35 pm Four Seasons Ballroom 2-3
  In Roundtable Session: Centering Multilingual Literacies and Practices (Table 6)

Abstract

This study addressed the impact of diglossia on the development of reading accuracy and fluency in Arabic (voweled, unvoweled) among 200 children who vary in socioeconomic background (mid-high versus low SES), in 2nd through 10th grades (N=40 per grade). Twelve reading tasks were constructed that measured accuracy and fluency of reading identical spoken Arabic (SpA) and unique standard Arabic (StA) voweled and unvoweled real and pseudowords.
Results showed a consistent impact of diglossia on both accuracy and fluency of reading StA words among both children (mid-high and low SES). Moreover, the impact of linguistic distance was more prominent in younger than in older children, and in low than in mid-high SES.

Keywords: Diglossia, reading, voweled, unvoweled, accuracy, fluency, SES

Author

• Abeer Ameen Shahbari-Kassem, Arab Academic College for Education in Israel - Haifa