Reading in Hebrew

Reading in Hebrew

Geva & Siegel, 2000

Hebrew as Arabic can be read either voweled or unvoweled. However the literacy Hebrew is voweled, which turns it in a shallow / transparent orthography. The pronunciation of syllables in Hebrew rarely varies as a function of specific letter strings, position in the word and the nature of the vowels used. The acquisition of GFC rules and decoding of voweled Hebrew requires the learner to master few rules, and fewer "exception words".

Usually, beginner readers learn the voweled Hebrew and by the time they have reached the 5-6 grade they are given unvoweled texts (Geva & Siegel, 2000). This means that they are ready to read without the complement of vowels (they are supposed to have automatized the decoding) and that they are able to read within an opaque orthography.

          Geva & Siegel (2000) conducted a study comparing the reading acquisition process in childrend exposed to both
          languages (English and Hebrew) from grade 1 to 4. They concluded that acquiring sufficient knowledge of GPC
          rules was more demanding in English because there are many more rules, analogies and exceptions to the rules to
          learn. Therefore, results showed that performance for grade 1 in the English non-word task (purely phonological
          skills) was lower than that obtained on the hebrew task.
          From grade 1 to grade 4, phonological abilities improved. Once acquired, performance on both languages was
          similar. Age, was a significant predictor of accurate word recognition and decoding skills in English, but was only
          marginally useful in hebrew. The improvement of English from grade to grade was much more pronounced than that of
          hebrew. For hebrew, the increment / change was significant from 1 to 2 grade, but after, the improvement was less
          pronounced. Children acquired more proficiency in Hebrew before than English.

Glossary

GFC: grapheme - phoneme correspondence

PA: phonological abilities

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