reading comprehension difficulties amongst Arab children Dr. Bahaa - - PowerPoint PPT Presentation

1Oranim College for Education 2Centre for Educational Technology (CET)

• Dr. Bahaa’ Makhoul

The Hebrew Univerity,Jerusalem

Arabic Academic College for Education Centre for Educational Technology (CET)

From kindergarten to fourth grade: Predicting reading comprehension difficulties amongst Arab children

The Eighth Biannual Gulf Comparative Education Society Symposium Public, Private, and Philanthropy: Exploring the Impact

• f New Actors on Education in the GCC

• Dr. Bahaa’ Makhoul

The Hebrew Univerity,Jerusalem

Arabic Academic College for Education Centre for Educational Technology (CET)

Head of program : MED Learning disabilities program Arabic Academic College for Education * The Hebrew University Of Jerusalem The NCJW Research Institute For The Innovation In Education senior researcher Literacy and intervention programs development specialist

*Director of the Arabic Section Literacy and Language Arts Department CET.THE CENTER FOr EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGY

Reading acquisition: The case of diglossic Arabic

• Utilized in everyday interactions
• Children are mainly exposed to the

spoken variation of the Arabic language.

• Acquired by oriented and directed

learning process.

• Acquisition of reading and writing

commences upon beginning formal schooling. Mutual influence Spoken Arabic Written Arabic

The diglossic Nature of Arabic

Due to the linguistic gap between spoken and written Arabic, as seen across several linguistic structures, reading instruction requires is more demanding and necessitating special pedagogical approaches (Ayari, 1996; Saiegh –Haddad, 2005; Ferguson, 1959; Khamis-Dakwar & Froud, 2007).

Arabic Orthographic Complexity

The visual complexity of Arabic script

• Letters’ Visual resemblance
• Letters’ shape variation according to their

Location in the word: separated, at the beginning, end or in the middle of a word. Arabic script is cursive

روفصع

(Bird)

خحج بتث

Phonological constrains

• Arabic language includes 35 phonemes, represented by 29 consonants

(letters) and 6 vowels.

• The phonological features of the Arabic language seem to affect reading

acquisition.

• Based on articulation manner, consonants are distributed into three

sound categories: Fricatives, Plosives, Emphatics in addition to diglossic sounds:

Phonological constrains

Phonological constrains

Morpho-Syntactic structure of Arabic

As other Semitic languages, words in Arabic are constructed from: Roots and patterns One word in Arabic can Represent a whole sentence. اهومتيأر (i.e. You Have seen it) Arabic language is characterized by a dense morphological constructions due to its is interwoven and linear structure (Feldman, Frost, & Pnini, 1995) The root provides the reader trigger into orthographic-lexical knowledge that enables decoding of the word as word roots are an independent semantic units (Abu-Rabia, 2012). Morphology is a prominent characteristic

• f

Semitic Languages. In Arabic, morphological knowledge seem to distinguish between Skilled and poor readers ( Abu- Rabia, Share, & Mansour, 2003; Al-Ghanem & Kearns, 2014).

Morpho-Syntactic structure of Arabic

هاخأ يداش َرَكَش ةيدهلا ىلع.

Shadi Thanked his brother for the gift.

انْدَهاشةانق رابخلؤلؤا.

We watched the news channel. انْدَهاشةانقلا ُلصفت يتلا ةيرحبلا نيتلودلا نيب. We saw the water canal that

Vowelized vs. Un-vowelized Script

Un-vowelized Script Vowelized Script Vowels and diacritical signs provide information about the syntactic function of the words in a given sentence. No vowels and diacritical signs. The reader is supposed to conclude the syntactic functio0ns

• f the words based on the context

and his syntactic knowledge Skilled readers Novice readers

Socio-Economic Status and Literacy Development “The rich get richer and the poor get poorer.” The Matthew’s Effect

Reading achievements of Arabic-speaking fourth grade students were significantly lower than their Hebrew-speaking peers.

Socio-Economic Status and Literacy Development

National Exams International Exams (PIRLS) In International Exams, Low Achievements were also observed amongst Arab students in different Arab Countries. This can be attributed to the diglossic nature of the language at its complex features.

The study aims

The study aims at examining early predictors (in kindergarten) for latter reading comprehension difficulties. For this purpose, the current study follows the development of literacy knowledge and skills among Arabic native speaking children from kindergarten to fourth grade.

kindergarten Second grade Fourth grade

Participants

• The current study is a longitudinal study that followed literacy skills’

development among 79 Arabic native speaking children from kindergarten to fourth grade in two different schools. Follow-up literacy assessments were carried at two time points (second and fourth grade)

• Based
• n

reading comprehension performance, participants were identified either as skilled (N=66) or poor readers ( N=130) with the latter deviating 1 SD from the group mean average (Adolf, Cats, & Lee, 2010).

• Additionally, A chi-square test for independence was conducted,

revealing no significant relationship between gender and group (χ2 (2) = .24, p = .63).

Procedure

• One-hour

literacy assessment battery was administrated for each participant individually at two time points: in kindergarten, in 2nd grade.

• In 4th grade, 50 minutes in-class reading comprehension test was

administrated. First assessment: kindergarten Second assessment: 2nd grade Third assessment: 4th grade

Instruments

Oral language skills

Oral language skills

Instruments

Instruments

Arabic Reading and Comprehension Measure (ARCM)

Pseudo-word reading Context-free

• ral word

naming Text reading and comprehension

Instruments

Fourth Grade

Reading comprehension

Results

• First, normality test was performed to examine whether the different

groups samples (i.e. good readers and at-risk for reading difficulties children) is normally distributed.

• Shapiro-Wilk test favored the assumption of normality across groups

(ps > .05). Accordingly, analysis of variance and regression were used to analyze the data.

Differences in literacy skills between the groups over time

Table 1. Means and standard deviations in the different literacy domains as a function of group and time.

Differences in literacy skills between the groups over time

Good Readers > Poor Readers One-way analysis of variance pointed to a significant effect between the two groups [F (1,78)=21.36, p<.001; F(1,78)=5.48, p<.05, respectively). Good Readers > Poor Readers One-way analysis of variances pointed to a significant difference between the groups in reading comprehension questions [F (1,78)= 13.94, p< .001 but not in story recall measure [F<1]

Kindergarten Second Grade Alphabetic Knowledge Reading Comprehension

The contribution of early literacy skills to reading comprehension performance in 4th grade

• Table2. Early predictors for reading comprehension performance in 4th grade as a

function of age group (kindergarten and second grade).

Discussion

 Morphological knowledge as a predictor for reading achievements

In line with previous studies, morphological awareness was found to predict reading achievement beyond phonological awareness (e.g. Carlislie, 1988, 1995; Frost ,Deutsch, & Froster, 2000; Casalis, coole, & Sopo, 2004). In the case of Arabic ,morphological awareness seems to play a key role in reading acquisition, differentiating between good and poor readers (Abu-Rabia, Share, & Mansour, 2003).

Discussion

 Print Concepts predicts later literacy performance

Additionally, and in line with Scarborough (2009), knowledge of print concepts has been found to predict later literacy performance.

Discussion

This is also supported by:

 Phonology always plays a role…

(Aram, Korat, & Hassunah-Arafat, 2013; Catts, Fey, Zhang, & Tomblin, 2001; Muter, Hulme, Snowling, & Stevenson, 2004; Scarborough, 2001; Schatschneider, Fletcher, Francis, Carlson, & Foorman, 2004; Adams, 1990; Liberman & Shankweiler, 1985; Saiegh-Haddad, 2004; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008; Spector, 1995 ).

Abu-Rabia, Share & Mansour (2003) have found significant lag in phonological awareness skills among Arabic native speakers with reading difficulties when compared to normally developing readers.

The current study stresses the importance of early preventive programs that stress in the three main domains of phonological awareness, morphological awareness and alphabetic knowledge.

Conclusion

One step closer - Feed the Monster : Arabic reading acquisition app

Feed the monster is the WINNER of the EduApp4syria competition funded by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The game is designed to build literacy skills in Arabic and improve psychosocial wellbeing for Syrian children aged 5-10. Feed the Monster uses an exciting and proven play-to-learn

• technique. Kids enjoy playing the different levels, collecting and

growing their pet monsters, while learning the reading and writing fundamentals of Arabic.

What does it cover?

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Letter name Letter sound Vowels Letter in a word Syllables Word Assembling

The instructional paradigm of the game is be based on the 'phonetic' approach, which is commonly used for reading acquisition. The game concentrate first on establishing phoneme grapheme correspondence, exposing the children to the letters’ names and sounds in addition to the different vowels. The game starts by presenting the basic forms of the letters to get the child acquainted with them and gradually presents the player with other forms of the letter as they appear within words, a method used in CET's textbooks and digital materials for teaching Arabic in the first grade in Israel.

What does it cover?

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• In parallel, the game aims to foster phonological awareness skills that are found as the

basis for reading acquisition and later reading comprehension across, also in Arabic (Adams, 1990; Goswami & Bryant, 1990; Goswami & Ziegler, 2005; National Reading Panel, 2000; Snow, Burns & Griffin, 1998; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987; Saiegh-Haddad, 2005; Makhoul, Olshtain & Ibrahim, 2015 ).

• The game offers gradual progression through its levels, as the children progress

throughout the different game levels they are first exposed to letter name and letter sound, and then they advance into learning vowels, letter in a word, syllables recognition and ultimately word assembling.

The game also integrates Diverse Rewards and Mini- Games combined within the different levels Such as:

• “memory game” through which they practice vocabulary.
• “writing letters” ” through which they can practice writing letters.

What does it cover?

33 33

Letter knowledge – Letter identification Phonological awareness

Preschool

Reading Readiness Units

Arabic is Our Language – 1st grade

The books are accompanied by digitized supplementary units on “Ofek” site

Elementary school Arabic is our language series

Arabic is Our Language – 2nd to 8th grade

2nd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade 3rd grade

Elementary school Arabic is our language series

7th grade 8th grade

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3rd grade 4th grade 5th grade 6th grade

“Ofek” site – Arabic literacy digital units

Digital Literacy Project

5th grade 2nd grade 6th grade

• Dr. Bahaa’ Makhoul

The Hebrew Univerity,Jerusalem

Arabic Academic College for Education Centre for Educational Technology (CET)

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E-mail: Baham@cet.ac.il https://bahaam.wixsite.com/bahaamakhoul