Transfert de la conscience morphologique de l’arabe langue première au français langue seconde au cours des trois premières années d’apprentissage

There is a great deal of evidence to support the role of morphological awareness in reading development. However, towards second language acquisition, transfer of morphological awareness from first to second language (L1 to L2) is still discussed. The underlying question concerns the extent to which morphological awareness is a specific or universal process, and its dependence of linguistic features. The aim of this study is to examine cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness from Arabic L1 to French L2 (morphological awareness and word reading) at different level of learning French L2 (F_L2). 106 Tunisian children, whose first language is Arabic, in 1st (n = 29; mean age; 8; 10 years), 2nd (n = 33; mean age; 9; 9 years) or 3rd year (n = 44; mean age; 10; 10 years) of learning F_L2 participated to this study. Their morphological awareness (inflectional or derivational oddity detection tasks) and their performance in word reading (one minute test) were assessed in standard Arabic and French, as well as their vocabulary knowledge in French. A series of fixed-order hierarchical regression analysis was performed on derivational awareness performances, inflectional awareness performances and word reading performances in F_L2, controlling for effects of other important variables (e.g. French vocabulary, French morphological awareness with word reading scores as outcome variable and French inflectional or derivational awareness with French inflectional or derivational awareness scores as outcome variable respectively, Arabic word reading, etc.). Results show significant contributions of L1 morpho-derivational awareness on F_L2 morpho-derivational awareness in 2nd year (12%), and of L1 morphological awareness on reading words F_L2 in 3^rd year (5%). These results confirm the cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness, particularly derivational, from L1 to L2 among alphabetic — but orthographically and morphologically distances — languages. They also suggest that such a transfer could be relatively limited. It could appear during learning process after achieving a threshold in F_L2 and before specific L2 skills take place. Thus, beyond the morphological opacity of Arabic (nonlinear morphology) and linguistic distance between Arabic and French, the morphological transfer could appear on rich and important morphological dimension in L1 and suggest dealing with the nature of cross-linguistic abilities in depth.     

This turnip's not for turning: Children's morphological awareness and their use of root morphemes in spelling

We report on a study designed to examine children's understanding of (1) the connection between root morphemes and the spelling of inflected words and (2) the role of morphological awareness in this understanding. Seven‐ to 9‐year‐old children were given clues (e.g. turn) to the spelling of inflected and control words (e.g. turning and turnip). While the use of the clue was not specific to inflected words, spelling was better of the first segments (e.g. turn) of the inflected than of the control words. This difference suggests that children appreciate the role of root morphemes in spelling of inflected words. Further, it seems that morphological awareness is employed in the spelling of a wide range of words. These results are placed in context of current theories of spelling development.     

Morphological effects in children's spelling of French words.

The present study examined whether primary school children represent morphological information when spelling French words that have silent-consonant endings (e.g., chat). Children in grades 2 (n = 57) and 4 (n = 55) spelled regular, morphological, and deep words. The morphological and deep words differed in the presence or absence of derivatives that revealed the nature of the silent-consonant ending. As expected, regular words were the easiest to spell whereas morphological words (for which the silent consonant could be derived) were easier to spell than were deep words (for which the silent consonant must be memorized). Children's linguistic knowledge of morphology made a contribution to their spelling of morphological words that was independent of reading experience, vocabulary, spelling ability (i.e., spelling regular words), and phoneme awareness.     

The metric matters: determining the extent of children's knowledge of morphological spelling regularities

All developmental research needs to carefully consider how children's knowledge is measured. The study of children's knowledge of spelling conventions, or the ways in which the English orthography encodes the roots and affixes and the sounds in words, is no exception. This experiment examined the extent of 7- to 9-year-old children's knowledge of the role of root morphemes in spelling words across different contexts and with different units of assessment. Different writing contexts did not appear to affect children's performance; children were better able to spell the first components of two- than of one-morpheme words (e.g. only free in freely and freeze), both when writing whole words and their first sections (e.g. completing__ or __ly for freely). A second analysis revealed that the unit of coding can influence conclusions. Children demonstrated similar abilities across ages 7 to 9 when only the first segments of words were coded; in contrast, there was evidence of age-related differences when whole word spelling accuracy was assessed. In combination, these results suggest that children's knowledge of the principle of root consistency is remarkably robust to changes in writing context, but that coding is key when drawing conclusions. These findings remind us that the metric matters in studies of spelling, as in other domains, and they offer a manner to reconcile previously conflicting data on spelling development.     

Orthographic and Morphological Masked Priming Effects in Arabic: Evidence from Lexical Decision Task in Children with and Without Dyslexia

In this study, we conducted a lexical decision test using masked priming paradigm to examine the morphological and orthographic priming effects in word recognition. Morphologically related word pairs can be derivational, sharing the same root or not (pseudo derivational). However, the orthographically related pairs share the same letters in different positions. Two groups of native Arabic-speaking children (N?=?57) from grade 4 and 5 participated in this study: typical readers (n?=?39) and dyslexic readers (n?=?18). To examine whether a potential morphological priming effect is driven by semantic or orthographic properties of shared morphemes, we compared prime-target pairs with derivation morphology and pseudo-derivation word related pairs. Between groups comparisons showed that a priming effect occurred only in typical readers. Comparisons between conditions revealed that a priming effect only occurred for accuracy in derivational morphology. No priming effect occurred in reaction times (RTs) between groups or conditions. These results provide evidence for root-based word recognition in Arabic children and give support to semantically rather than orthographically driven lexical access.     

Morpheme-based reading aloud: evidence from dyslexic and skilled Italian readers

The role of morphology in reading aloud was examined measuring naming latencies to pseudowords and words composed of morphemes (roots and derivational suffixes) and corresponding simple pseudowords and words. Three groups of Italian children of different ages and reading abilities, including dyslexic children, as well as one group of adult readers participated in the study. All four groups read faster and more accurately pseudowords composed of root and suffix than simple pseudowords (Experiment 1). Unlike skilled young and adult readers, both dyslexics and younger children benefited from morphological structure also in reading aloud words (Experiment 2). It is proposed that the morpheme is a unit of intermediate grain size that proves useful in processing all linguistic stimuli, including words, in individuals with limited reading ability (dyslexics and younger readers) who did not fully develop mastering of whole-word processing. For skilled readers, morphemic parsing is useful for reading those stimuli (i.e., pseudowords made up of morphemes), for which a whole-word lexical unit does not exist; where such whole-word lexical units do exist, skilled readers do not need to rely on morphological parsing because they can rely on a lexical (whole-word) reading unit that is larger than the morpheme.     

Predicting Reading in Vowelized and Unvowelized Arabic Script: An Investigation of Reading in First and Second Grades

This study examined the orthographic transparency of Arabic by investigating the contribution of phonological awareness (PA), vocabulary, and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) to reading vowelized and unvowelized words. The results from first and second grade children showed that PA contribution was similar in the vowelized and unvowelized orthographies. The RAN contribution was weak and similar in both versions. The vocabulary contribution increased with grade and was slightly higher in the unvowelized than vowelized orthography. Since orthography transparency in Arabic is determined solely by vowelization, these results are discussed in relation to its position on the transparency-depth continuum.     

Morphological knowledge as revealed in children's spelling accuracy and reports of spelling strategies

The goal of the current research was to assess whether children can make strategic use of morphological relations among words to spell. French-speaking children in Grade 4 spelled three word types: (a) phonological words that had regular phoneme-grapheme correspondences, (b) morphological words that had silent consonant endings for which a derivative revealed the silent ending, and (c) lexical words that had silent consonant endings for which no familiar derivative revealed the ending. Children were also asked to provide immediate retrospective reports of the strategies used to spell each word. Two experiments (Ns = 46 and 39) were conducted. As expected, children in Grade 4 spelled phonological words more accurately than they did words with silent consonant endings. In addition, children spelled morphological words more accurately than they did lexical words. Reports of using retrieval were associated with accurate performance across word types. Importantly, reports of using morphological strategies to spell morphological words were associated with a similar level of accuracy, as were reports of using retrieval. Even though children reported using a phonological strategy frequently across all word types, this strategy was associated with accurate performance only for spelling phonological words. Experiment 2 replicated the results of Experiment 1 with another set of stimuli and also showed that children's morphological awareness predicted their spelling accuracy for morphological words as well as the reported frequency of morphological strategy use. In sum, the findings revealed that most children showed evidence of adaptive strategy use.     

Morphological units in the Arabic mental lexicon: evidence from an individual with deep dyslexia

An ongoing debate in Arabic morphology concerns the nature of the smallest unit governing lexical organization and representation in this language. A standard model maintains that Arabic words are typically analyzable into a three-consonantal root morpheme carrying the core meaning of words and a prosodic template responsible mostly for grammatical information. This view has been largely supported by research in both theoretical linguistics and psycholinguistics. An alternative theory holds that the meaning of words in Arabic is, rather, encoded in the 'etymon' comprising two unordered consonants of the root only. Results from a recent priming experiment have shown that the etymon induces strong morphological priming effects, supporting its morphological/lexical status. In this paper we present data from a patient with deep dyslexia questioning the role of the etymon as a psychologically real representational unit in Arabic and arguing, instead, for the central role of the root in both morphological and lexical representation in this language.     

MORPHOLOGY MATTERS IN LEARNING TO READ: A COMMENTARY

This paper provides a review of current research on the relevance of morphological awareness to reading and reading instruction. On the assumption that many educators are relatively unfamiliar with morphology, children’s development of awareness of the morphemic structure of words is discussed, as is the need for children to learn strategies that will help them read, spell, and understand morphologically complex words. Educational practices and implications, based on theory and research findings, are presented. Results suggest that educators and educational researchers need to incorporate more word study into reading and spelling programs, focusing attention to both form and meaning. In addition, the value of instructional goals and programs in morphological awareness for children in the early elementary years needs to be explored.     

听写困难儿童在笔画加工中的整体干扰效应

听写困难是指儿童阅读正常而听写落后的现象,是一种常见的儿童学习障碍类型。听写困难儿童的字形表征缺陷可能来源于局部字形加工中的整体干扰。分别从整体字形干扰和整体语音干扰两个角度来考察听写困难儿童在笔画加工中的整体干扰机制。整体字形干扰研究表明,笔画加工过程受到整体字形的干扰,这种干扰发生在所有儿童身上,但对听写困难儿童的干扰效应更为明显;整体语音干扰研究表明,在笔画加工过程中,正常儿童受到整体语音的显著干扰,而听写困难儿童并未受到整体语音的干扰。综合整体字形干扰和整体语音干扰的结果,提出听写困难儿童的整体字形加工能力缺陷假说和笔画的视觉加工模式假说,究竟哪一种假说更为合理,还有待进一步研究     

英语语音意识在汉语儿童英语单词阅读及拼写中的作用

本研究考察了英语语音意识在小学汉语儿童英语单词读写学习中的作用。对189名小学儿童的研究表明:(1)一、二、五年级在首音和韵脚意识上差异显著;在音位意识上,一、二年级差异不显著,五年级显著高于其他两个年级;(2)各年级儿童的语音意识与其英语单词读写均存在显著相关;(3)控制英语口语词汇量后,一年级的首音意识显著解释其单词读写的变异,二年级的首音意识显著解释其单词拼写的变异,五年级的音位意识显著解释其单词读写的变异;(4)各年级的语音意识对单词拼写较之于阅读都具有更强的变异解释力。可见,小学汉语儿童的英语语音意识与其单词读写存在密切联系,语音意识与拼写的关系相对更为紧密;首音意识对早期读写发展具有重要意义,而音位意识在后期读写学习中的作用更为突出。     

The Development of Reading and Spelling in Arabic Orthography: Two Parallel Processes?

The parallels between reading and spelling skills in Arabic were tested. One-hundred forty-three native Arab students, with typical reading development, from second, fourth, and sixth grades were tested with reading, spelling and orthographic decision tasks. The results indicated a full parallel between the reading and spelling performances within the second and fourth graders where the performance in the orthographic decision task was significantly lag behind. For the sixth graders, full parallel was found between the spelling and the orthographic decision performances with significant superiority of both performances on the reading performance. The results were discussed in light of developmental course of the orthographic representations and the impact of the specific orthographic features of the Arabic orthography on reading and spelling.     

Hemispheric, attentional, and processing speed factors in the treatment of developmental dyslexia

Aim of the study is to analyze the contributions of hemispheric, attentional, and processing speed factors to the effects of neuropsychological treatment of developmental dyslexia. Four groups of dyslexic children (M-type dyslexia) were treated over a period of four months. A first group (n = 9) underwent Bakker's Hemisphere-Specific Stimulation, with presentation of words in the right and left visual field. A second group (n = 7) received the same stimuli randomly in either visual hemifield. A third group (n = 8) received the same words presented centrally at fixation point. A fourth group (n = 6) received central stimuli with fixed presentation time (1500 ms). The children were tested before and after treatment on reading and spelling measures. All groups improved significantly after treatment on all variables. However, the group that was treated with centrally presented stimuli improved more than the other groups in spelling measures. A possible explanation is that rapid, simultaneous presentation to both hemispheres enhances interhemispheric exchange, which could produce an advantage in tasks requiring a high degree of integration between left and right hemispheric functions, such as spelling. The absence of significant differences in reading improvement may point to the role of memory functions or strategic factors characterizing all the treatment programs, possibly overweighing the effect of the other factors.     

Modelling relations between sensory processing, speech perception, orthographic and phonological ability, and literacy achievement

The general magnocellular theory postulates that dyslexia is the consequence of a multimodal deficit in the processing of transient and dynamic stimuli. In the auditory modality, this deficit has been hypothesized to interfere with accurate speech perception, and subsequently disrupt the development of phonological and later reading and spelling skills. In the visual modality, an analogous problem might interfere with literacy development by affecting orthographic skills. In this prospective longitudinal study, we tested dynamic auditory and visual processing, speech-in-noise perception, phonological ability and orthographic ability in 62 five-year-old preschool children. Predictive relations towards first grade reading and spelling measures were explored and the validity of the global magnocellular model was evaluated using causal path analysis. In particular, we demonstrated that dynamic auditory processing was related to speech perception, which itself was related to phonological awareness. Similarly, dynamic visual processing was related to orthographic ability. Subsequently, phonological awareness, orthographic ability and verbal short-term memory were unique predictors of reading and spelling development.     

Listening for schwa in academic vocabulary

The schwa sound, as the most frequent in English, is a near constant in words of three syllables or longer in academic texts. As linguistic research has shown, it characteristically recurs in rhythmic alternation with stressed syllables, contributing to a word's distinctive sound shape. The location of strong stress and therefore schwa is often determined by the identity of derivational suffixes. Listening for schwa offers insight into reading and spelling long words, developing phonological and morphological sensitivity, weighing appropriate instruction, and recognizing the complexities of acquiring English multisyllabic words for literate engagement.     

Effet des connaissances linguistiques en langue maternelle (arabe vs portugais) sur les performances phonologiques et morphologiques en français langue seconde

On the one hand, this study aims to determine whether acquisitions in mother tongue influence learners' phonological and morphological knowledge of French as second language. Therefore, Arabic and Portuguese speakers' sensitivity and awareness of different sublexical French units are compared. On the second hand, this study aims to appreciate the link between this knowledge and recognition of French written words among these two populations. Results indicate that Arabic speakers are not sensitive to rime. However, they are more competent to analyse explicitly the morphoderivational structure of words than Portuguese speakers. Finally, different profiles of readers are determined considering their mother tongue. Results are discussed in light of mother tongue linguistics features and their closeness to French.     

Reading,syntactic, orthographic,and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic-English speaking Canadian children

This study assessed the reading, language, and memory skills of 56 bilingual Arab-Canadian children age's 9-14. English was their main instructional language, and Arabic was the language spoken at home. All children attended a Heritage Language Program in Toronto where they were taught to read and write Arabic. The children were administered word and pseudo-word reading, language, and working memory tests in English and Arabic. The majority of the children showed at least adequate proficiency in both languages. There was a significant relationship between the acquisition of word and pseudo-word reading working memory, and syntactic awareness skills in the two languages. The poor readers in Arabic had lower scores on all linguistic tasks, except the visual task. There were no significant differences between bilingual English Arabic children and monolingual English-speaking children on the reading, language, and memory tasks. However, bilingual English Arabic children who had reading problems in English had higher scores on English pseudo-word reading and spelling tasks than monolingual English-speaking children with reading disabilities, probably because of positive transfer from the regular nature of Arabic orthography. In this case, bilingualism does not appear to have negative consequences for the development of language reading skills in both languages—Arabic and English—despite the different nature of the two orthographies.     

Orthographic structure versus morphological structure: principles of lexical organization in a given language

Most models of visual word recognition in alphabetic orthographies assume that words are lexically organized according to orthographic similarity. Support for this is provided by form-priming experiments that demonstrate robust facilitation when primes and targets share similar sequences of letters. The authors examined form-orthographic priming effects in Hebrew, Arabic, and English. Hebrew and Arabic have an alphabetic writing system but a Semitic morphological structure. Hebrew morphemic units are composed of noncontiguous phonemic (and letter) sequences in a given word. Results demonstrate that form-priming effects in Hebrew or Arabic are unreliable, whereas morphological priming effects with minimal letter overlap are robust. Hebrew bilingual subjects, by contrast, showed robust form-priming effects with English material, suggesting that Semitic words are lexically organized by morphological rather than orthographic principles. The authors conclude that morphology can constrain lexical organization even in alphabetic orthographies and that visual processing of words is first determined by morphological characteristics.     

The improvement of reading skills of L1 and ESL children using a Response to Intervention (RtI) Model

This study examined the development of literacy skills in children in a district that used a Response to Intervention (RTI) model. The district included children whose first language was English and children who were learning English as a second language (ESL). Tasks measuring phonological awareness, lexical access, and syntactic awareness were administered when the children entered school in kindergarten at age 5. Reading, phonological processing, syntactic awareness, memory, and spelling were administered in grade 7. When the children entered school, significant numbers of them were at risk for literacy difficulties. After systematic instruction and annual monitoring of skills, their reading abilities improved to the extent that only a very small percentage had reading difficulties. The results demonstrated that early identification and intervention and frequent monitoring of basic skills can significantly reduce the incidence of reading problems in both the ESL and language majority children.