Investigating the role of Arabic diglossia-centered multi-domain intervention (ADMIN) in enhancing Palestinian-Arabic speaking kindergarten children’s emergent literacy

Arabic-speaking children grow up in diglossia where different language varieties serve complementary functions; They use Spoken Arabic (SpA) for everyday communication but acquire literacy in Standard Arabic (StA), the only variety with a conventional orthography. Research shows that while the linguistic distance between SpA and StA challenges StA language and literacy acquisition with an advantage for linguistic structures that are identical in the two varieties, skills in SpA and StA are interdependent. Furthermore, Executive Functions (EF) predict StA comprehension reflecting the need to manage the competition between SpA and StA. The study investigated the effectiveness of Arabic Diglossia-centered Multi-domain Intervention (ADMIN) in promoting Palestinian-Arabic-speaking kindergarten children’s language and literacy skills in SpA and in StA, as well as their EF skills. ADMIN is diglossia-centered; It trains SpA-identical structures before gradually transitioning to StA structures while fostering diglossic awareness. ADMIN is also multi-domain; It trains language, literacy and EFs. 403 children (Mean age = 64.4, SD = 3.1 months) were randomly assigned to an experimental group (n = 250) or a control (n = 153) group. The experimental group received three 20-min ADMIN sessions a week for 15 weeks, whereas the control group received business-as-usual instruction. Multi-level modeling for nested data showed greater gains in the experimental group in SpA and StA language (receptive and expressive vocabulary, lexico-phonological representations) and metalinguistic skills (phonological and morphological awareness), and in EF and letter knowledge, compared to the control group. The findings have implications for early literacy education in Arabic diglossia and beyond.