TITLE:
Reading in Arabic: New Evidence for the Role of Vowel Signs
AUTHORS:
Raphiq Ibrahim
KEYWORDS:
Arabic; Words; Pseudoword; Orthography; Transparency; Reading
JOURNAL NAME:
Creative Education,
Vol.4 No.4,
April
15,
2013
ABSTRACT: The aim of this study
was to examine the effect of vowelization on reading Arabic orthography. Native
children speakers of Arabic were asked to read aloud words (vowelized and
unvowelized) and pseudowords. The results showed that unvowelized words were
read aloud more quickly and more accurately than the shallow fully vowelized
Arabic words. The disadvantage of vowelized words in both speed and accuracy
was therefore unexpected, and, furthermore, inconsistent with findings from
several other relevant studies. The results suggested that Arab children used a
different perceptual and coding strategy when the stimuli differ in their
lexical feature (word vs pseudoword) and visual/orthographic feature (vowelized
vs unvowelized).