Linguistic and cognitive correlates of Arabic literacy: concurrent and longitudinal evidence

Dr. Sana Tibi’s colloquium presentation explores the unique linguistic and cognitive dimensions of Arabic literacy development in the early grades. Over the past few decades, scientific research on reading has grown substantially. However, this body of work has been criticized for its “anglocentric” focus (Share, 2021), limiting its applicability to non-English languages and orthographies. Also, while several universal predictors of word reading such as letter knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and rapid automatized naming have been identified, their relative contributions vary across languages due to differences in orthographic depth, grain size of phonological-orthographic units, and morphological complexity. Furthermore, despite the widespread use of Arabic orthography among Arabic speaking populations and across populations who speak other languages such as Persian, Pashto, and Urdu, Arabic remains underrepresented in cross-linguistic literacy research. Notably, large-scale comparative studies have yet to include Arabic.

Arabic offers a compelling case for investigation due to its unique orthographic features (e.g., allographs, ligaturing, syllabic structure, consonantal script, and diacritics), rich morphological structure (linear and nonlinear), and diglossic nature (spoken dialects vs. formal standard). Drawing on multiple empirical studies, Dr. Tibi examines how cognitive and linguistic predictors contribute to Arabic reading outcomes (accuracy, fluency, and comprehension) in early elementary grades. She also addresses challenges in assessing Arabic literacy due to the lack of standardized tools and highlights some key findings from studies that focused on validation of some assessment tools (root awareness and letter knowledge). The presentation also explores differences between poor and proficient decoders in Arabic.

Furthermore, the existing research on Arabic is largely cross-sectional, with few longitudinal studies. To address this gap, the presentation will report findings from a two-year longitudinal study following 142 Palestinian children from kindergarten through grade 2. The study examined the predictive roles of letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, morphological awareness, and working memory in second-grade Arabic word reading, controlling for biological sex and parental education. Structural equation modeling revealed the critical role of Arabic letter knowledge in reading development as well as the indirect role of working memory in Arabic word reading.
These findings offer important implications for reading acquisition, instruction, and assessment in Arabic, and underscore the need for more inclusive and linguistically diverse literacy research. Studying underrepresented languages expands our understanding of the universal aspects of reading allowing nuanced insights into the world’s linguistic landscapes.

Teams link: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/3825967966058?p=oaa4boDA3tu5ZnqMja