Papers by Elinor Saiegh-Haddad
Does phonological distance impact quality of phonological representations? Evidence from Arabic diglossia, 2018
The study tested the impact of the phonological distance between Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standa... more The study tested the impact of the phonological distance between Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA) on quality of phonological representations among kindergarten, first-, second-, and sixth-grade Arabic-speaking children (N = 120). A pronunciation accuracy judgment task targeted three types of StA words that varied in extent of phonological distance from their form in SpA: (a) identical words, with an identical lexical–phonological form in StA and SpA; (b) cognate words, with partially overlapping phonological forms; items in this category varied in degree of phonological distance too; and (c) unique words with entirely different lexical–phonological forms. Multilevel Regression analysis showed that phonological distance had a significant impact on quality of phonological representations across all grades. Growth in quality of phonological representations was mainly noted between the three younger groups and the sixth-graders. Implications for the impact of phonological distance on phonological representations and on language and literacy development are discussed.
Current Issues in Linguistic Theory, 2011
Writing Systems Research, 2013
Journal of psycholinguistic research, Jan 21, 2016
In the current study, two experiments were carried out: the first tested the development of deriv... more In the current study, two experiments were carried out: the first tested the development of derivational root and word-pattern morphological awareness in Arabic; the second tested morphological processing in Arabic spelling. 143 Arabic native speaking children with normal reading skills in 2nd, 4th and 6th grade participated in the study. The results of the first experiment demonstrated the early emergence of derivational morphological awareness in children, with root awareness emerging earlier than word-pattern awareness. The second experiment supported the implication of morphological processing in spelling words and pseudo words across all grades tested. The results are discussed within a developmental psycholinguistic framework with particular emphasis on the characteristics of the Arabic language and orthography.
Journal of psycholinguistic research, Jan 28, 2015
The current study investigated the contribution of two linguistic intervention programs, phonolog... more The current study investigated the contribution of two linguistic intervention programs, phonological and morphological to the development of word spelling among skilled and poor native Arabic readers, in three grades: second, fourth and sixth. The participants were assigned to three experimental groups: morphological intervention, phonological intervention and a non-intervention control group. Phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and spelling abilities were tested before and after the intervention. Participants from both linguistic intervention programs and in all grades made significant progress in linguistic awareness and spelling after the intervention. The results showed that both intervention programs were successful in promoting children's spelling skills in both groups. Also, older poor readers showed a stronger response to the morphological intervention than the older skilled readers. A transfer effect was found with the phonological training contributing to...
Language Learning, 2012
The study examined the acquisition of two morphological procedures of noun pluralization in Pales... more The study examined the acquisition of two morphological procedures of noun pluralization in Palestinian Arabic: Sound Feminine Plural (SFP) and Broken Plural (BP). We tested if noun pluralization was affected by (1) the type of morphological procedure, (2) the degree of familiarity with the singular noun stem, and (3) the frequency of plural patterns. Thirty-six native Arabic-speaking children in three age groups were tested on three experimental tasks: a repetition task, a structured production task, and a seminatural production task. In line with earlier research, the results showed that SFP pluralization was acquired earlier and had a shorter developmental trajectory than BP plurals. Also, the errors of children showed that SFP was a dominant default procedure. However, despite its early consolidation, SFP formation was affected by familiarity with the singular noun stem. BP nouns also appeared rather early in the production of children and were affected by both familiarity with the noun stem and frequency of the plural pattern. Yet, they took longer to acquire and did not reach comparable levels to SFP in the age groups tested. The implications of the results for models of language acquisition and the acquisition of Arabic morphology are discussed.
Reading and Writing
The paper reported an exploratory study that tested (a) the relationship between phonological and... more The paper reported an exploratory study that tested (a) the relationship between phonological and morphological awareness in English (L1)–Arabic (L2) bilingual children in Canada (N=43), and (b) the relevance of these skills to word and pseudoword reading accuracy, and to complex word reading fluency. The results showed a significant correlation between phonological awareness in English and in Arabic. However, morphological awareness in the two languages was not correlated. Phonological awareness predicted reading cross-linguistically, but only Arabic morphological awareness predicted word reading in English. Moreover, while both phonological and morphological awareness in English predicted independent unique variance in English word reading, only phonological awareness in Arabic predicted Arabic word reading. Complex-word reading fluency was predicted by morphological awareness within both languages. Similarly, in both languages, phonological awareness was the single factor predict...
Reading and Writing
Arabic native speaking children are born into a unique linguistic context called diglossia (Fergu... more Arabic native speaking children are born into a unique linguistic context called diglossia (Ferguson, word, 14, 47–56, [1959]). In this context, children grow up speaking a Spoken Arabic Vernacular (SAV), which is an exclusively spoken language, but later learn to read another linguistically related form, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA). Forty-two first-grade Arabic native speaking children were given five measures of basic reading processes: two cognitive (rapid automatized naming and short-term working memory), two phonological (phoneme discrimination and phoneme isolation), and one orthographic (letter recoding speed). In addition, the study produced independent measures of phonological processing for MSA phonemes (phonemes that are not within the spoken vernacular of children) and SAV phonemes (phonemes that are familiar to children from their oral vernacular). The relevance of these skills to MSA pseudoword reading fluency (words correct per minute) in vowelized Arabic was tested....
Journal of Child Language
This study tested the effect of the phoneme's linguistic affiliation (Standard Arabic versus ... more This study tested the effect of the phoneme's linguistic affiliation (Standard Arabic versus Spoken Arabic) on phoneme recognition among five-year-old Arabic native speaking kindergarteners (N=60). Using a picture selection task of words beginning with the same phoneme, and through careful manipulation of the phonological properties of target phonemes and distractors, the study showed that children's recognition of Standard phonemes was poorer than that of Spoken phonemes. This finding was interpreted as indicating a deficiency in the phonological representations of Standard words. Next, the study tested two hypotheses regarding the specific consequences of under-specified phonological representations: phonological encoding versus phonological processing. These hypotheses were addressed through an analysis of the relative power of distractors. The findings revealed that children's difficulty in accessing Standard Arabic phonemes was due to a difficulty in the phonologica...
First Language
The study tested epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness in junior kindergarten, ... more The study tested epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness in junior kindergarten, senior kindergarten and first-grade Hebrew native speaking children (N= 115). The primary aim was to investigate whether children's epilinguistic and metalinguistic phonological awareness was affected by the position of the target phoneme (initial vs. final). Two epilinguistic phonological awareness tasks (initial and final phoneme recognition) and two metalinguistic tasks (initial and final phoneme isolation) were used. The findings showed that, while epilinguistic awareness for initial phonemes was higher than that for final phonemes, the opposite was true for metalinguistic awareness. The results imply that Hebrew native speaking children's metalinguistic awareness is predicated on a language-specific body-coda phonological representation. The phonological organization summoned during epilinguistic awareness tasks appears to be essentially different, however. The disjoint patt...
Literacy Studies, 2014
This chapter was designed to promote our understanding of the triangulation, in Arabic, of langua... more This chapter was designed to promote our understanding of the triangulation, in Arabic, of language, orthography and reading. We focus on topics in the structure of the Arabic language and orthography that pertain to literacy research and practice. It is agreed that the development of basic reading skills is influenced by linguistic (phonological and morpho-syntactic) and orthographic variation among languages. Therefore, the chapter devotes particular attention to these aspects of the linguistic structure of Arabic and to the way this structure is represented in the Arabic orthography. Further, in light of the importance of oral language processing skills in the acquisition of reading, the chapter also discusses Arabic diglossia: it describes the linguistic distance between Colloquial or Spoken Arabic and Standard or Literary Arabic, the primacy of Standard Arabic linguistic structures in the written form of the language, and the effect of this on several linguistic processes in literacy acquisition.
We explored the sociocultural context of early literacy development among Arabic-speaking kinderg... more We explored the sociocultural context of early literacy development among Arabic-speaking kindergartners in Israel, focusing on the nature of mother-child joint writing. Eighty-nine kindergartners and their mothers participated. Mothers were videotaped in their homes while helping their children write words. Early literacy was evaluated by alphabetic knowledge, concepts about print, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Kindergartners' early literacy was related to socioeconomic status (SES), home literacy environment (HLE) and maternal mediation level. Hierarchical regressions indicate that HLE predicted alphabetic knowledge, phonological awareness, and vocabulary beyond SES. Maternal mediation of writing predicted all children's early literacy measures except vocabulary, after controlling for SES and HLE. We discuss maternally mediated joint writing interactions as a possible context for early literacy enhancement among young Arabic-speaking children in Israel.
The relevance of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) to reading comprehension in the native language (L1) ... more The relevance of Oral Reading Fluency (ORF) to reading comprehension in the native language (L1) and in English -a foreign language (L2) -was studied. Fifty university students, twenty-two Arabic and twenty-eight Hebrew native speakers, read both L1 and English texts aloud and reported their comprehension on-line. Results showed that ORF was not correlated with reading comprehension in L1. However, in English, the two reading measures were significantly correlated. Next, the ORF and reading comprehension scores were each analyzed using a 2 × 2 ANOVA with repeated measures on language (L1 versus L2) and with native language (Arabic versus Hebrew) as a between subject factor. This analysis revealed a main effect of language, with both sets of scores higher in L1 than in L2. However, a native language effect was only traced in the ORF scores, favoring the Hebrew native group. The findings demonstrate the importance of ORF in adult L2 reading comprehension. Linguistic proficiency and the unique properties of unvoweled script are used to explain the absence of a significant correlation between ORF and comprehension in L1 reading. Diglossia is proposed as a tenable explanation of the lower ORF scores among the Arabic native sample.
Applied Psycholinguistics, 2008
Arabic Literacy acquisition was studied among Israeli Palestinian low SES kindergartners within t... more Arabic Literacy acquisition was studied among Israeli Palestinian low SES kindergartners within the framework of an intervention study, implemented by teachers. On pretest, letter naming, alphabetic awareness and phonological awareness were very low. Whereas the comparison group hardly progressed throughout the year, the intervention group progressed substantially on all three skills. The diglossic nature of the Arabic letter name system was manifested in children's transition from a mixture of two systems to preference for Standard over Colloquial names following the intervention. As in other alphabets, visual similarity and adjacency increased letter confusability. The unique features of Arabic literacy are discussed.
Literacy Studies, 2014
ABSTRACT Mother-Child Literacy Activities and Early Literacy in the Israeli Arab Family Abstract ... more ABSTRACT Mother-Child Literacy Activities and Early Literacy in the Israeli Arab Family Abstract Our chapter focuses on the language and literacy development of Israeli Arabic-speaking kindergarten children within the context of their family. We researched two different literacy activities: storybook reading and joint word writing. The chapter presents results of the contribution of these activities, including socioeconomic status (SES) and home literacy environment (HLE), to children's literacy level in kindergarten among Israeli Arabic-speaking families. A total of 109 kindergarten children and their mothers participated. Children’s literacy level was assessed in kindergarten. Mothers and children were videotaped at home in a book reading activity and in a word writing activity, and demographic and HLE data were gathered from the mothers. Mothers showed low to medium levels of mediation in the book-reading activity by focusing mainly on paraphrasing and in the writing activity by mainly naming the letters and providing a model for copying. However, while the writing activity followed Bronfenbrenner’s three-layered ecological model (SES, HLE and parental mediation) as expected, the reading activity showed a contribution only of the two first layers, SES and HLE. We conclude that the linguistic gap between the spoken and the literary language poses difficulties and may be confusing for the mothers in mediating the written language across literacy activities, reading and writing. Our study points to the importance of the family's HLE and SES for children's early literacy. Future studies should emphasize how to best design family intervention programs so as to maximize children's literacy growth within the Arabic-speaking family.
Current Issues in Bilingualism, 2011
This paper examines the verb inflectional system of 15 English-Hebrew preschool bilinguals: 6 typ... more This paper examines the verb inflectional system of 15 English-Hebrew preschool bilinguals: 6 typically developing (TD) bilinguals who attend regular preschools and 9 who attend "language preschools" following a prior assessment for language impairment. Using a case studies approach and multiple tasks (sentence completion, sentence imitation and enactment), we found that all bilinguals had the same root infinitive error types in their L1 English. Those diagnosed with impairment in both languages as well as those diagnosed with impairment only in L2 Hebrew had significantly more errors than TD bilinguals. In Hebrew, all bilinguals had difficulty using person morphology in past tense, with a significant difference between TD bilinguals and the other bilinguals. A qualitative difference in the type of errors was found between bilinguals impaired in both languages and those impaired only in L2. Those impaired in both languages, like typically developing bilinguals and monolingual SLI children, had more substitutions while those impaired only in L2 tended toward omission errors. This error is unusual for monolingual Hebrew typical and impaired acquisition, but reflects difficulties with uninterpretable person features which are not available in their L1 English. We argue that the quantitative and qualitative differences when found in both languages can be indicative of SLI, while a qualitative difference only in the second language is not.
Current Issues in Bilingualism, 2011
Reading and Writing, 2010
The concurrent acquisition of reading in more than one language has become a prevalent reality in... more The concurrent acquisition of reading in more than one language has become a prevalent reality in many parts of the world and for an increasing number of children across the globe. This is due to the rapid expansion of societal bilingualism-the byproduct of economically motivated immigration and the pluralistic composition of certain regions. The dissemination of English as the world's second language and the mostly learnt foreign language across the world has also contributed to the more or less simultaneous acquisition of reading in the indigenous language as well as in English. Added are inherently multilingual countries, like Luxembourg and many other European countries, where the concurrent acquisition of reading in multiple languages is an ordinary school enterprise. Such a widespread phenomenon warrants an in-depth analysis and understanding of the multi-faceted nature of the process of biliteracy acquisition.
Reading and Writing, 2011
The present study examined cross-linguistic relationships between phonological awareness in L1 (H... more The present study examined cross-linguistic relationships between phonological awareness in L1 (Hebrew) and L2 (English) among normal (N = 30) and reading disabled (N = 30) Hebrew native speaking college students. Further, it tested the effect of two factors: the lexical status of the stimulus word (real word vs. pseudoword) and the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme (whether it is within L1 or L2) on phonological awareness. Three parallel experimental phonological awareness tasks were developed in both languages: phoneme isolation, full segmentation, and phoneme deletion. As expected, the results revealed lower levels of phonological awareness in the L2 than in the L1, and in the reading disabled than in the normal reader group. The lexical status of the target word was a reliable factor predicting individual differences in phonological awareness in L2. It was also found that the linguistic affiliation of the target phoneme was a reliable factor in predicting L2 phonological awareness performance in both reader groups. The results are discussed within the framework of phonological representation and languagespecific linguistic constraints on phonological awareness.
Uploads
Papers by Elinor Saiegh-Haddad