Reading in Arabic

      Literary Arabic, written in an alphabetic system with twenty-eight basic letters, differs in a number of important ways from the latin alphabet. The Arabic alphabet is a system of consonants and long vowels, while short vowels are represented only by additional diacritics or not at all (they are not part of the alphabet). These short vowel patterns are rule governed, according to a word's meaning, tense, voice, function in the sentence, and other features, which must often be derived from context. In theory there is strict sound-symbol correspondence between the letters on a page and their spoken equivalent, but rule-governed elisions and regional pronunciation differences diminish somewhat the strength of this correspondences.
        Because only consonants and long vowels are normally provided in written text, the mature reader must bring to the text considerable additional knowledge of vocabulary, syntax, and in some cases contextual interpretation, in order to obtain correct vocalization.
        In addition, certain letters may be distinguished from each other only by a single stroke or dot, or may be phonologically indistinct in the colloquial variety of Arabic. Thus these letter-pairs may present special instances of confusion for the beginning reader. The form of a particular letter, may differ depending on its position in a word. Because spacing between words is optional, the use of letter in their final form, signal word boundaries which may be critical to decoding text.
        In Arabic orthography, reading is hard for both poor and skilled readers, specially if the text is presented unvoweled, because they have to deduce both pronunciation and meaning from the context were that word is place.

Unvoweled Arabic

In most modern written and printed Arabic texts, no vowel signs are given, and the reader has to deduce them from context or /and prior knowledge.

Reading Arabic script without vowels can be a difficult task for poor or beginning readers owing to word similarities (homographs –different meanings-) and letter similarities (graphemes). The form of a particular letter may differ depending on its position in a word.

Overall, reading in Arabic demand considerably more than usual cognitive attention by readers in the process of print perception. The reader has to simultaneously perceive and process rules in order to be able to decode and derive meaning.

Vowelized Arabic

There are six vowels in Arabic writing, and are indicated by a small stroke above or under the consonant.

The vowels provide the beginning and poor reader, with phonological information by showing the right pronunciation of words according to their function in the sentence and also according to their inflection in agreement with a preceding preposition. Thus, vowels (because gives the phonology) change Arabic from am opaque orthography to a transparent orthography.

Reading vowelized Arabic is not just a letter-sound correspondence. The Arabic reader has to process short vowels posted above and under the letters and other diacritics. Also, has to bring to the text prior knowledge of literary Arabic in order to be able to process automatically all diacritics, especially those on ends of words (gives the grammatical function).

          (Abu-Rabia, 1998; Wagner & Spratt, 1988).

Theoretical Conclusions

Difference with English: in English, skilled readers rely on their autonomous decoding of each word and do not need the context to facilitate word recognition. Only poor readers, lacking these automatic decoding skills compensate for this deficit with other resources (like context).

This very difficult operation is gradually eased when poor or beginning readers reach the automaticity level in decoding and acquire more knowledge about Arabic scripts (syntax, vocabulary), which enables the reader to use context and vowels as "holistic automaticity" instead of "autonomous automatic word recognition" (as in English).

Therefore, the use of word naming as the method of the study is not adequate with semitic languages, because the homograph phenomenon is not taken into account. Therefore, reading comprehension or sentence reading is adequate for a language such as Arabic. In this sense, Arabic differs completely from Hebrew, when presented unvoweled.

The mastery of fluent reading in Arabic demands holistic simultaneous automatic processing of many variables (vowels in a vowel or unvoweled text, sentence context).

Reading in Arabic orthography by poor and skilled readers should apparently be viewed more as  simultaneous process, that is, following the whole direct visual-orthographic route for word root identification and processing vowels for phonological recoding. These parallel sources of information contribute to word recognition in Arabic text reading.

What research concluded

        Although not many researchers have looked at the differences between reading acquisition process in English and in Arabic, the results are consistent. Learning to read in the Arabic orthography appears to have much in common with learning to read in other alphabets. The letter-sound correspondence in Arabic makes it more similar to Spanish, than to English, with its many irregularities. However, when vowels are not presented, Arabic reading is opaque as reading  in English.
        Wagner & Spratt, 1988,  found that when children have effectively mastered the Arabic alphabet and basic decoding, are well on their way to becoming proficient readers: those who do not achieve such mastery are likely to be at risk for grade failure and school dropout.
        Abu-arabia (1998), in a study conducted with adolescents and adults, found the same overall conclusions referring to the similarities with english. However he also argue that sentence reading is a very important skill when reading arabic, in that the reader should be able to understand the sentence meaning for reading the words.
        In sum, children learning to read in Arabic seem to have problems similar to those confronting children who learn to read in other alphabets, particularly in the area of letter knowledge and word decoding.
 

                                                                                                                                          
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