The purpose of this study was to investigate the role of short vowels in reading Arabic for skilled Arab adult readers. Previous studies claimed that the presence of short vowels (and diacritics) has a facilitative role in the reading of Arabic. That is, adding short vowels to the consonants facilitates the reading comprehension and reading accuracy of both children and skilled adult Arab readers. Further, those studies claimed that the absence of short vowels (and diacritics) and context makes reading Arabic impossible. But these studies did not manipulate the short vowels and diacritics to the degree that would isolate the short vowels effect. Nor did they take into account the level of reading involved: text, sentence, and word. That is, on a text level, assessing the role of short vowels should take into account the text level in terms of word frequency; on a sentence level, the structure of the sentence- garden-path versus non-garden-path-; and finally, on a word level the type of word, homographic versus nonhomographic. Thus, the study described in the following pages was designed with three tasks to assess the role of short vowels in relation to each level: the text frequency, the garden-path structure, and the homography aspect of the word. In general, the results showed that the presence or absence of short vowels and diacritics in combination do not affect the reading process, comprehension, and accuracy of skilled adult Arab readers. However, only in a word-naming task, the absence of short vowels and context prevented the skilled adult Arab reader from choosing the right form of the heterophonic homographic word. Further, according to the findings, at the absence of short vowels and diacritics in combination, the role of context in Arabic is still limited to the heterophonic homographic words. In sum, the results demonstrated that the only variable that affects the reading process of Adult Arab skilled readers is the word frequency. Justification for such effects and recommendations for pedagogical purposes and future research are suggested.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-11282004-225248 |
| Date | 17 December 2004 |
| Creators | Seraye, Abdullah M |
| Contributors | Douglas K. Hartman, Rita Bean, Isabel Beck, Luise Pingel, Charles Perfetti |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-11282004-225248/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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