Word learning in Arabic-speaking primary school students

Abstract This study investigated how the presence of orthography facilitates novel word learning in Arabic-speaking third-grade children, addressing a gap in our understanding of literacy development in non-alphabetic writing systems. The aim of this study was to examine how Arabic-speaking children learn new words and to identify cognitive/linguistic abilities that may facilitate word learning. Novel word learning was examined in 116 third-grade monolingual children. The training comprised a paired-associate learning (PAL) task involving presentation of pictures with spoken novel words, with orthography present or absent. The potential influence of two characteristics of written Arabic that have been suggested to affect printed word learning, connectedness and density of consonant diacritics, was investigated. Three post-training assessments were administered: one assessed spoken production of the verbal labels that had been associated with the pictures in training, another, nonword-picture matching, assessed the phonology-concept associations that had been established during training, and the third, spelling to dictation, tapped recall of orthographic information. The child-related cognitive and linguistic abilities that were assessed were nonverbal ability, vocabulary, and reading of words and nonwords. Results from the PAL task revealed that the presence of orthography facilitated novel word learning as assessed by the three post-tests. In addition, consonant diacritics seemed to be a source of difficulty. A further source of difficulty, diglossic phonemes (phonemes that exist in spoken vernacular), was identified during data analysis. In relation to children’s abilities, orthographic facilitation in the production post-test was significantly associated with nonword reading fluency scores, indicating that more skilled readers are likely to benefit more from the presence of orthography. The findings are discussed in terms of the factors responsible for the documented difficulties in learning to read in Arabic. Findings highlight the importance of orthographic exposure and decoding skills in Arabic literacy development.