Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-31T23:12:10.749Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Morphological awareness: Construct and predictive validity in Arabic

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 March 2017

SANA TIBI  and
JOHN R. KIRBY
SANA TIBI*
Affiliation:
Florida State University
JOHN R. KIRBY
Affiliation:
Queen's University
*
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE Sana Tibi, School of Communication Science and Disorders, Florida State University, 201 West Bloxham Street, Tallahassee, FL 32306-1200. E-mail: [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

The purposes of this study were to examine the dimensions underlying morphological awareness (MA) in Arabic (construct validity) and to determine how well MA predicted reading (predictive validity). Ten MA tasks varying in key dimensions (oral vs. written, single word vs. sentence contexts, and standard vs. local dialect) and two reading tasks (real word and pseudoword reading) were administered to 102 Arabic-speaking Grade 3 children in Abu-Dhabi. Factor analysis of the MA tasks yielded one predominant factor, supporting the construct validity of MA in Arabic. Closer inspection revealed that this factor had two subcomponents, oral and written. Hierarchical regression analyses, controlling for age and gender, indicated that both the one- and the two-factor solutions accounted for 48% of the variance in word reading, and 40% of the variance in pseudoword reading, supporting the predictive validity of MA. Implications for future research, assessment, and instruction are discussed.

Type
Articles
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 38 , Issue 5 , September 2017 , pp. 1019 - 1043
Check for updates
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2017 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

REFERENCES

Abu-Rabia, S. (2001). The role of vowels in reading Semitic scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew. Reading and Writing, 14, 39–59. doi:10.1023/A:1008147606320 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S. (2007). The role of morphology and short vowelization in reading Arabic among normal and dyslexic readers in Grades 3, 6, 9, and 12. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 36, 89–106. doi:10.1007/s10936-006-9035-6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., & Shalhoub-Awwad, J. (2004). Morphological structures in visual word recognition: The case of Arabic. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 321–336. doi:10.1111/j.1467-9817.2004.00235.x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., Share, D., & Mansour, M. S. (2003). Word recognition and basic cognitive processes among reading disabled and normal readers in Arabic. Reading and Writing, 16, 423–442. doi:10.1023/A:1024237415143 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Abu-Rabia, S., & Taha, H. (2004). Reading and spelling error analysis of native Arabic dyslexic readers. Reading and Writing, 17, 651–690. doi:10.1007/s11145-004-2657-x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA) (2010). Roles and responsibilities of SLPs in schools [Professional Issues Statement]. Retrieved September 19, 2016, from http://www.asha.org/policy Google Scholar
Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58, 1–165. doi:10.2307/1166112 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Apel, K., Diehm, E., & Apel, L. (2013). Using multiple measures of morphological awareness to assess its relation to reading. Topics in Language Disorders, 33, 42–56. doi:10.1097/TLD.0b013e318280f57b CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Belkhouche, B., Harmain, H., Al Najjar, L., Taha, H., & Tibi, S. (2010). Analysis of primary school Arabic language textbooks. Paper presented at the 10th Arab Conference on Information Technology Retrieved from http://acit2k.org/ACIT/index.php/proceedings/acit-2010-proceedings Google Scholar
Berko, J. (1958). The child's learning of English morphology. Word, 14, 150–177.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Boudelaa, S. (2014). Is the Arabic mental lexicon morpheme-based or stem based? Implications for spoken and written word recognition. In Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Joshi, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. Amsterdam: Springer.Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S. (2015). The differential time course for consonant and vowel processing in Arabic: Implications for language learning and rehabilitation. Frontiers in Psychology, 5, 1557. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2014.01557 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Boudelaa, S., & Marslen-Wilson, W. D. (2010). Aralex: A lexical database for Modern Standard Arabic. Behavior Research Methods, 42, 481–487. doi:10.3758/BRM.42.2.481 Google Scholar
Boudelaa, S., Pulvermüller, F., Hauk, O., Shtyrov, Y., & Marslen-Wilson, W. (2010). Arabic morphology in the neural language system. Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 22, 998–1010. doi:10.1162/jocn.2009.21273 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Bowers, P. N., & Kirby, J. R. (2010). Effects of morphological instruction on vocabulary acquisition. Reading and Writing, 23, 515–537. doi:10.1007/s11145-009-9172-z CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Bowers, P. N., Kirby, J. R., & Deacon, S. H. (2010). The effects of morphological instruction on literacy skills: A systematic review of the literature. Review of Educational Research, 80, 144–179. doi:10.3102/0034654309359353 Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (1987). The use of morphological knowledge in spelling derived forms by learning-disabled and normal students. Annals of Dyslexia, 37, 90–108. doi:10.1007/BF02648061 Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (1988). Knowledge of derivational morphology and spelling ability in fourth, sixth and eighth grades. Applied Psycholinguistics, 9, 247–266. doi:10.1017/S0142716400007839 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In Feldman, L. B. (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing, 12, 169–190. doi:10.1023/A:1008131926604 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (2007). Fostering morphological processing, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension. In Wagner, R. K., Muse, A. E., & Tannenbaum, K. R. (Eds.), Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension (pp. 78–103). New York: Guilford Press.Google Scholar
Carlisle, J. F. (2010). Effects of instruction in morphological awareness on literacy achievement: An integrative review. Reading Research Quarterly, 45, 464–487. doi:10.1598/RRQ.45.4.5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Fleming, J. (2003). Lexical processing of morphologically complex words in the elementary years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 239–274. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0703_3 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Carlisle, J. F., & Nomanbhoy, D. (1993). Phonological and morphological awareness in first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 177–195. doi:10.1017/S0142716400009541 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Casalis, S., & Louis-Alexander, M. F. (2000). Morphological analysis, phonological analysis and learning to read French: A longitudinal study. Reading and Writing, 12, 303–335. doi:10.1023/A:1008177205648 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deacon, H. S., & Kirby, J. R. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just “more phonological?” The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223–238. doi:10.1017/S0142716404001110 Google Scholar
Deacon, H. S., Kirby, J. R., & Casselman-Bell, M. (2009). How robust is the contribution of morphological awareness to general spelling outcomes? Reading Psychology, 30, 301–318. doi:10.1080/02702710802412057 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Deacon, S. H., Parrila, R., & Kirby, J. R. (2008). A review of the evidence on morphological processing in dyslexics and poor readers: A strength or weakness? In Reid, G., Fawcett, A., Manis, F., & Siegel, L. (Eds.), The Sage handbook of dyslexia (pp. 212–237). London: Sage.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Derwing, B. L. (1976). Morpheme recognition and the learning of rules in children of differing language backgrounds. Canadian Journal of Linguistics, 21, 38–66.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Eviatar, Z., & Ibrahim, R. (2012). Multilingualism among Israeli Arabs and the neuropsychology of reading in different languages. In Leikin, M., Schwartz, M., & Tobin, Y. (Eds.), Current issues in bilingualism: Cognitive and socio-linguistic perspectives (pp. 57–74). New York: Springer Science + Business Media.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Ferguson, C. A. (1959). Diglossia. Word, 14, 47–56.Google Scholar
Frost, R. (2012). Towards a universal model of reading. Behavioral and Brain Sciences, 35, 263–279. doi:10.1017/S0140525X11001841 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Frost, R., Kugler, T., Deutsch, A., & Forster, K. I. (2005). Orthographic structure versus morphological structure: Principles of lexical organization in a given language. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 31, 1293–1326. doi:10.1037/0278-7393.31.6.1293 Google Scholar
Gabig, C., & Zaretsky, E. (2013). Promoting morphological awareness in children with language needs: Do the common core standards pave the way? Topics in Language Disorders, 33, 7–26. doi:10.1097/TLD.0b013e318280f592 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Goodwin, A. P., & Ahn, S. (2013). A meta-analysis of morphological interventions in English: Effects on literacy outcomes for school-age children. Scientific Studies of Reading, 17, 257–285. doi:10.1080/10888438.2012.689791 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Hansen, G. F. (2014). Word recognition in Arabic: Approaching a language-specific reading model. In Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Joshi, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. Amsterdam: Springer.Google Scholar
Hart, B., & Risley, T. (1995). Meaningful differences in the everyday experience of young American children. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Holes, C. (2004). Modern Arabic: Structures, functions and varieties (rev. ed.). London: Longman.Google Scholar
Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2012). Development of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in Spanish-speaking language minority learners: A parallel process latent growth curve model. Applied Psycholinguistics, 33, 23–54. doi:10.1017/S0142716411000099 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Kirby, J. R., Deacon, S. H., Bowers, P. N., Izenberg, L., Wade-Woolley, L., & Parrila, R. (2012). Children's morphological awareness and reading ability. Reading and Writing, 25, 389–410. doi:10.1007/s11145-010-9276-5 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lyster, S.-A. H., Lerväg, A. O., & Hulme, C. (2016). Preschool morphological training produces long-term improvements in reading comprehension. Reading and Writing, 29, 1269–1288. doi:10.1007/s11145-016-9636-x CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Mahony, D., Singson, M., & Mann, V. (2000). Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological relations. Reading and Writing, 12, 191–218.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Muse, A. E. (2005). The nature of morphological knowledge (Unpublished doctoral dissertation, Florida State University, Tallahassee).Google Scholar
Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. (1984). How many words in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304–330. doi:10.2307/747823 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W. E., Berninger, V. W., & Abbott, R. D. (2006). Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134–147. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.98.1.134 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nagy, W. E., Carlisle, J., & Goodwin, A. (2014). Morphological knowledge and literacy acquisition. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 47, 3–12. doi:10.1177/0022219413509967 Google Scholar
Nunes, T., & Bryant, P. (2006). Improving literacy by teaching morphemes. New York: Routledge.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997). Spelling and grammar: The necsed move. In Perfetti, C. A., Rieben, L., & Fayol, M. (Eds.), Learning to spell: Research, theory, and practice across languages (pp. 3–20). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.Google Scholar
Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Olsson, J. (2003). Learning morphological and phonological spelling rules: An intervention study. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 289–307. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR0703_6 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Owens, R. E. (2001). Language development: An introduction (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Paradis, J., Genesee, F., & Crago, M. B. (2011). Dual language development and disorders. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes.Google Scholar
Perfetti, C. A. (2003). The universal grammar of reading. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, 3–24. doi:10.1207/S1532799XSSR070102 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Roman, A. A., Kirby, J. R., Parrila, R. K., Wade-Woolley, L., & Deacon, S. H. (2009). Toward a comprehensive view of the skills involved in word reading in Grades 4, 6, and 8. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 96–113. doi:10.1016/j.jecp.2008.01.004 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, H. (1988). Morphological knowledge and early writing ability. Language & Speech, 31, 337–355. doi:10.1177/002383098803100403 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2003). Linguistic distance and initial reading acquisition: The case of Arabic diglossia. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 431–451. doi:0.1017.S0142716403000225 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2004). The impact of phonemic and lexical distance on the phonological analysis of words and pseudowords in a diglossic context. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 495–512. doi:10.1017.S0142716404001249 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2005). Correlates of reading fluency in Arabic: Diglossic and orthographic factors. Reading and Writing, 18, 559–582. doi:10.1007/s11145-005-3180-4 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2013). A tale of the letter T: Morphological processing in early Arabic spelling. Writing Systems Research, 5, 169–188. doi:10.1080/17586801.2013.857586 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Geva, E. (2008). Morphological awareness, phonological awareness, and reading in English-Arabic bilingual children. Reading and Writing, 21, 481–504. doi:10.1007/s11145-007-9074-x CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Henkin-Roitfarb, R. (2014). The structure of Arabic language and orthography. In Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Joshi, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. Amsterdam: Springer.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., Levin, I., Hende, N., & Ziv, M. (2011). The linguistic affiliation constraint and phoneme recognition in diglossic Arabic. Journal of Child Language, 38, 297–315.Google Scholar
Saiegh-Haddad, E., & Schiff, R. (2016). The impact of diglossia on voweled and unvoweled word reading in Arabic: A developmental study from childhood to adolescence. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 311–324. doi.org/10.1080/10888438.2016.1180526 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Samuelsson, S., Byrne, B., Quain, P., Wadsworth, S., Corley, R., DeFries, J. C., . . . Olson, R. (2005). Environmental and genetic influences on prereading skills in Australia, Scandinavia, and the United States. Journal of Educational Psychology, 97, 705–722. doi:10.1037/0022-0663.97.4.705 Google Scholar
Shalhoub-Awwad, Y., & Leikin, M. (2016). The lexical status of the root in processing morphologically complex words in Arabic. Scientific Studies of Reading, 20, 296–310.Google Scholar
Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V. (2000). The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivation suffixes. Reading and Writing, 12, 219–252. doi:10.1023/A:1008196330239 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Spencer, M., Muse, A., Wagner, R. K., Foorman, B., Petscher, Y., Schatschneider, C., . . . Bishop, M. D. (2015). Examining the underlying dimensions of morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge. Reading and Writing, 28, 959–988. doi:10.1007/s11145-015-9557-0 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tabachnick, B. G., & Fidell, L. S. (2007). Using multivariate statistics (5th ed.). Boston: Allyn & Bacon.Google Scholar
Taha, H., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2016). The role of phonological versus morphological skills in the development of Arabic spelling: An intervention study. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 45, 507–535.Google Scholar
Taha, H., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2017). Morphology and spelling in Arabic: Development and interface. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 46, 27–38. doi:10.1007/s10936-016-9425 CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Tibi, S., & McLeod, L. (2014). The development of young children's Arabic language and literacy in the United Arab Emirates. In Saiegh-Haddad, E. & Joshi, M. (Eds.), Handbook of Arabic literacy: Insights and perspectives. Amsterdam: Springer.Google Scholar
Tighe, E. L., & Schatschneider, C. (2015). Exploring the dimensionality of morphological awareness and its relations to vocabulary knowledge in adult basic education. Reading Research Quarterly, 50, 293–311. doi:10.1002/rrq.102 Google Scholar
Tyler, A., & Nagy, W. E. (1989). The acquisition of English derivational morphology. Journal of Memory and Language, 28, 649–667. doi:10.1016/0749-596X (89)90002-8 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Tyler, A., & Nagy, W. E. (1990). Use of derivational morphology during reading. Cognition, 36, 17–34. doi:10.1016/0010-0277(90)90052-L CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed
Ussishkin, A., Dawson, C. R., Wedel, A., & Schluter, K. (2015). Auditory masked priming in Maltese spoken word recognition. Language, Cognition and Neuroscience, 30, 1097–1115. doi:10.1080/23273798.2015.1005635 CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Wysocki, K., & Jenkins, J. R. (1987). Deriving word meanings through morphological generalization. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 66–81. doi:10.2307/747721 CrossRefGoogle Scholar