language among native hebrew speaking susie russak & alon ... · madda, shadda, sukun, and...

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Reading and WritingAn Interdisciplinary Journal ISSN 0922-4777 Read WritDOI 10.1007/s11145-013-9448-1

Spelling development in Arabic as a foreignlanguage among native Hebrew speakingpupils

Susie Russak & Alon Fragman

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Spelling development in Arabic as a foreign languageamong native Hebrew speaking pupils

Susie Russak · Alon Fragman

© Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht 2013

Abstract It has been suggested that linguistic proximity affects the ease of acqui-sition between typologically similar languages, due to the fact that the languages haveshared phonological and orthographic properties (Koda, 2008). Thus, a native Hebrewspeaker learning Arabic as a foreign language (AFL) would be expected to easilydevelop linguistic proficiency. This study examined the developmental trajectory forspelling in AFL among native Hebrew speaking adolescents, with specific attention tothe development of accurate representations for four novel phonemes and their graphicsymbols ( ). The sample included eighth (N= 119), ninth (N= 125), andtenth graders (N = 91). We were further interested in examining the contribution oforthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to spelling in AFL. Five exper-imental tasks were created for the study: real word recognition, orthographicsensitivity, auditory discrimination, and dictation of real and pseudowords. Findingsfor the eighth grade replicated earlier findings for real word spelling (Fragman &Russak, 2010) showing 20 % accuracy scores. While spelling accuracy improved bytenth grade, scores remained extremely low (25 %). Lexical representations for thefour novel phonemes tested were also generally low, with different levels of accuracyfor each phoneme. It is possible that the difficulties were the result of interference fromshared linguistic elements. Finally, it was found that both orthographic as well as

S. Russak (&)Beit Berl College of Education, P.O. Box 1007, 44864 Kochav Yair, Israele-mail: [email protected]

A. FragmanBeit Berl College of Education, P.O. Box 5644, 37510 Carcur, Israele-mail: [email protected]

A. FragmanBen Gurion University, Beersheba, Israel

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Read WritDOI 10.1007/s11145-013-9448-1

Author's personal copy

phonological knowledge contribute to real and pseudoword spelling. Implications ofthese findings are discussed in relation to language teaching policy and pedagogy.

Keywords Arabic as a foreign language · Novel phonemes ·Phonological knowledge · Orthographic knowledge · Language interference ·Spelling

Introduction

The state of Israel is one of the few countries in the world which officiallyrecognizes Arabic as a formal language, alongside Hebrew (Hallel & Spolsky,1993). Moreover, Israel has the largest number of non-native speakers learningArabic at school as an integral part of the Ministry of Education curriculum in theworld (Fragman, 1999). Yet, there has never been real interest in learning Arabicamong native Hebrew speakers (Kraemer, 1990). Official use reveals a de factosecondary role for Arabic, after English as a foreign language (Fishman, Cooper, &Conrad, 1977). Unfortunately, political, demographic, economic, and social issuesinfluence language policy, as well as language teaching policy (Hallel & Spolsky,1993). The language learning curriculum in Israel dictates that the learning of thewritten form of Arabic as a second foreign language (AFL) is obligatory from theseventh grade until the tenth grade. This comes as opposed to the learning of (EFL)English as a foreign language which begins from early elementary school gradesuntil the end of high school. Attention to the spoken vernacular is optional primarilyin elementary school, and the decision to include the teaching of the spokenvernacular is left to the discretion of the school principal. Most of the AFL teachersare native Hebrew speakers (Spolsky & Shohamy, 1999), even though in the lastfew years, the Ministry of Education has encouraged native Arabic teachers’training in the Hebrew speaking sector, mainly for spoken Arabic instruction in theelementary school grades (Fragman, 2008). AFL teaching for native Hebrewspeakers seems to be challenging, especially trying to separate the language learningfrom the feelings of hostility which exist to a certain degree among adolescents(Kraemer, 1990). However, while the majority of research in the last few decadeshas focused on attitudes of learners towards Arabic learning in general, or on thequestion of learning the spoken versus the written form of Arabic among nativeHebrew speakers in the Israeli Educational System (Donitsa-Schmidt, Inbar, &Shohamy, 2004), little if any attention has been placed on linguistic elements of thelanguage learning process. The present study focuses on linguistic aspects of AFLlearning, which, to date, have been little explored.

The development of spelling knowledge

Spelling is an integral component of literacy and it is supported by the sameunderlying linguistic skills as reading. The development of accurate spelling isbased on multiple sources of cognitive and linguistic information, including visualmemory, phonological, orthographic, and morphological knowledge (Joshi,

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Treiman, Carreker, & Moats, 2008). There are two theoretical frameworks withinwhich the development of accurate spelling is generally considered: stage basedmodels where spelling develops in identifiable stages (Young, 2007), andintegration models where accurate spelling develops in overlapping waves (Sharp,Sinatra, & Reynolds, 2008). According to stage models, spelling develops fromrandom use of graphemes to represent phonemes, to phonetic spelling, followed byattention to orthographic conventions, and finally, after a transition stage, accuratespellings. A large portion of the research on spelling development has been donewith a focus on English (Caravalos, 2005; Harris & Hatano, 1999). Findings inEnglish suggest that the acquisition of accurate spellings is a life-long process(Bruck, 1990; Kemp, 2009). However, research in other languages suggests that theease or difficulty that a learner has with acquiring literacy is connected to the depthof the target orthography (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003). These findings havebeen corroborated with languages with shallow orthographies, such as German(Wimmer & Landerl, 1997), as well as languages with deeper orthographies, such asDanish (Juul & Sigurdsson, 2005). Whereas the Arabic language has both a shallow,more transparent form and a deeper, more opaque written form, studies of thedevelopment of accurate spelling in Arabic suggest that even after years of exposureand practice, native Arabic speaking children still have difficulty with correctspelling, and their spelling errors seem to be primarily phonetic in nature (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004, 2006). Similar findings have been reported among tri-lingualeighth grade native Arabic speakers (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 1995). A recent study ofthe development of accurate spelling among eighth grade Hebrew speaking pupilslearning AFL (Fragman & Russak, 2010) found that after two years of exposure andpractice with the written form of the language, levels of spelling accuracy wereextremely low and characterized by errors that were both phonological as well asorthographic in nature. The present study explores the effect of increased exposureand practice on the development of accuracy in spelling in AFL through anexamination of the spellings of a sample of eighth, ninth and tenth grade nativeHebrew speakers learning AFL.

A linguistic comparison between Hebrew and Arabic

As Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic share several linguistic commonalities.Both are read and written in alphabetic systems. Both have a voweled form which isorthographically transparent as well as an unvoweled form which is moreorthographically opaque. Both have different forms in print and in handwriting.In both languages, the basis for the lexicon is the combination of three to four letterconsonantal roots with phonological patterns that are differently affixed andvowelled to form the words of the lexicon (Berman, 1978; Ravid & Schiff, 2006).

In addition to these commonalities, Hebrew and Arabic share other linguisticcharacteristics which occur to different degrees in each language. The Hebrewalphabetic system is comprised of 22 letters, where 18 letters represent consonantsand four letters have a double consonant–vowel function (Coulmas, 1989). Theseletters are referred to as matres lectionis ( ). The Arabic alphabetic system iscomprised of 28 letters, where 25 letters represent consonants and three letters

Spelling development in Arabic as a foreign language

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represent both consonants and long vowels. These three letters serve to lengthen thevowel sound of the preceding letter (Wright & Smith, 1890). The use of diacriticsoccurs both in Hebrew and in Arabic. In Hebrew, there are three instances wherediacritics are used: as auxiliary markings representing vowels in which case theyoccur above or below the letter, as a stress marking device (dagesh), and in threeinstances of allophones (/b/ - /v/; /p/ - /f/; /k/ - /x/). In practice, the use of diacriticmarkings in Hebrew is mostly limited to beginning literacy instruction (Shimron,2006). In Arabic, however, diacritics in the form of dots are an integral andobligatory part of 15 out of the 28 letters. These letters have a similar or evenidentical basic shape and can be distinguished only on the basis of the existence,location, and number of dots. In addition to the dots, there are diacritical marks thatcontribute phonology to the Arabic alphabet such as: short vowels, hamza, wa la,madda, shadda, sukun, and tanween. In Hebrew, there are five letters that changeshape, and this change occurs only when the letters are located in word finalposition. In Arabic, however, 22 of the 28 letters change their shape according totheir placement within the word (Azzam, 1989). While none of the letters in Hebreware connected to each other, 22 letters in Arabic must be connected to the followingletter. Some Arabic consonantal phonemes are similar to Hebrew consonantalphonemes (e.g., /d/, /z/, /l/, /m/) others, such as /ʔ/ and /ħ/ only exist to some degreein the Hebrew linguistic landscape in dialects from Eastern Jewish cultures(Schwartzwald, 1985). Further, there are phonemes which exist in the Arabicphoneme inventory which do not exist in the Hebrew phoneme inventory: /ʁ/, /q/,/s/, /d/, /t/, /ð/, /θ/, /ð/, and Hebrew phonemes which do not exist in the writtenform of Arabic: /p/, /v/, / /, and /g/.

Language learning processes: Arabic as a first language (L1)

Numerous studies have indicated that the acquisition of the written form of Arabic isa particularly slow process in relation to the same process in other languages. Thisslowness has been attributed to the visual complexity of the orthography(Abdelhadi, Ibrahim, & Eviatar, 2011; Azzam, 1993; Bentin & Ibrahim, 1996;Frost, Katz, & Bentin, 1987; Ibrahim & Eviatar, 2012; Ibrahim, Eviatar, & Aharon-Peretz, 2002, 2007). It has been suggested that dimensions associated with the letterarchitecture, namely the fact that the majority of the letters have multiple shapes,that they connect to adjacent letters, and that they are often distinguished one fromanother on the basis of the number and location of dots alone (Hansen, 2010),contribute to the complexity of the Arabic orthography. Evidence in support of thisvisual complexity comes from multiple studies. The visual and orthographicprocessing of normally reading native Arabic speakers in the third and the sixthgrades was examined through a real word, pseudoword, and word-like reading testin Arabic and Hebrew (Abdelhadi et al., 2011). Responses to Hebrew stimuli werefaster and more accurate than responses to Arabic stimuli. The researchersconcluded that the visual perceptual load of Arabic results in slowness anddifficulties with processes involved in reading in Arabic among native Arabicspeakers. Ibrahim et al. (2002) examined letter and numeral naming in Arabic and


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Hebrew among Arabic-Hebrew bilingual adolescents. They found that Hebrewletters were processed faster and more accurately than Arabic letters. Additionally,it was found that reaction times for visual recognition of Arabic words by skillednative Arabic high school pupils were longer than reaction times for Hebrew wordsby Hebrew speakers (Bentin & Ibrahim, 1996), English words by native Englishspeaking university students, and Serbo-Croatian words by native Serbo-Croatianspeaking university students (Frost et al., 1987). These findings of reaction times forword recognition in different languages suggest that there might be somethinginherent in the written form of Arabic words that leads to slower processing forArabic as compared to processing in other languages. However, a recent study byIbrahim, Khateb, & Taha, (2013), which examined the reaction time for readingconnected as opposed to non-connected words among skilled adult readers ofArabic as a native language, concluded that processing connected letter forms doesnot present a challenge for reading and word recognition processes among thepopulation tested.

Another characteristic of Arabic that has been found to hinder the process ofliteracy acquisition among native Arabic speakers is the linguistic distance betweenthe spoken dialects and the standard written form, otherwise known as diglossia(Ferguson, 1959). This distance has been found to effect literacy acquisitionprocesses from phoneme awareness to word reading and spelling (Abu-Rabia &Taha, 2004; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007). Saigh-Haddad (2003, 2004,2005, 2007) examined the effects of linguistic distance between spoken Arabicdialects and Standard Arabic in a series of studies with native Arabic speakingchildren in kindergarten and first grade. She found that children’s phonologicalprocessing and word decoding skills were directly affected by the linguisticaffiliation of the target phonological unit (standard versus spoken). Her findingshighlighted specific difficulties with processing of novel phonological structureswhich were only available in Standard Arabic as opposed to structures which werefamiliar from the spoken dialect. Based on these findings, she concluded that novelphonological units which are not available to children from their L1 are harder toprocess than those available to them from their L1. Similar difficulties with thephonological processing of novel phonemes have been found for other languages aswell. Russak, and Saiegh-Haddad (2011) found that both normally reading andreading disabled adult Hebrew speakers had difficulties with phonologicalmanipulations for words in EFL when the words included novel phonemes thatwere not familiar from the Hebrew (L1) phonological inventory. Their phonologicaldifficulties were attributed to the impoverished quality of the phonologicalrepresentations (Elbro, 1996; Elbro & Pallesen, 2002) for these novel phonemes,due to less exposure and practice with the foreign language. Similarly, anexamination of the development of invented spelling in English among Spanish (L1)as compared to English (L1) kindergartners showed significantly more errors in thespellings of unfamiliar phonemes as opposed to spellings for phonemes that existedin both the Spanish (L1) as well as the English phoneme inventory Spanish (L1) aswell as the English phoneme inventory (Raynolds & Uhry, 2010). The present studyexamines the development of accurate phonological and orthographic representa-tions for four novel AFL phonemes among native Hebrew speaking pupils.


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L1 interference in language learning processes

The terms language transfer and language interference are often used interchange-ably in cross-language literature to describe the influence of L1 on L2 languagelearning (Ellis, 1997; Figueredo, 2006). Both terms refer to the impact that L1 hason the L2 learning process. However, use of the term transfer allows for thepossibility that there will be either positive or negative transmission of linguisticinformation. An example of positive transfer would be when L1 knowledgefacilitates the learning of an L2 skill, as in the case where Spanish (L1) spellingcorrelated with English as a second language spelling (Durgunoglu, Mir, & Arino-Marti 2002). An example of negative transfer would be when the lack of a particularphoneme from the L1 phonetic inventory interferes with the creation of an accuratespelling of a new phoneme in the target language, as in the case of native Arabicstudents learning English who confused between /b/ and /p/ (Allaith & Joshi, 2011).Similar to negative transfer, interference connotes a primarily negative impact.Interference has been noted specifically in instances where the orthographic distancebetween two languages is considerable, either as a result of differences inorthographic depth or in orthographic scripts (Ellis et al., 2004; Hamada & Koda,2008; Seymour et al., 2003). According to the Transfer Facilitation Model (Koda,2008), the proximity between the native language and the target language shouldeffect the ease of acquisition of the target language, with acquisition typologicallysimilar languages occurring faster than acquisition of typologically distantlanguages, due to the fact that the languages have shared phonological andorthographic properties. As a result of this shared linguistic material, the exposureand practice time with the target language should be relatively brief for similarlanguages. Based on this model, one would expect native Hebrew speakers learningAFL to be able to develop linguistic proficiency with relative ease and speed, asopposed to native English speakers learning AFL who would be expected to need alonger time to acquire proficiency (Hansen, 2010; Ryan & Meara, 1991) due to thegreater typological distance between the languages. However, while linguisticsimilarity between languages may facilitate foreign language learning (Stevens,2006), it is also possible that the shared linguistic elements between Hebrew andArabic could be a source of interference for native Hebrew speakers learning AFL,as a result of differing degrees of similarity (Russak & Fragman, in press). Fragman,& Russak, (2010) examined spelling accuracy in AFL among native Hebrewadolescents in the eighth grade and found orthographic as well as phonologicalsources of difficulty. Pupils had spelling errors where they confused similarlylooking letters in Arabic (e.g., ), which are at times differentiated by dotsalone (e.g., ). In addition, they confused between letters with multipleshapes (e.g., ). In some cases, the letters with multiple shapes also lookedsimilar to other letters (e.g., ). This visual similarity complicated thespelling process. Moreover, the pupils also had difficulties representing novelphonemes which are similar to other phonemes in Arabic, and which sound likefamiliar Hebrew phonemes. For example, the Arabic phoneme / / is differentiatedfrom the phoneme /s/, which exists in both the Arabic and Hebrew phonemicinventories, by one phonetic feature only. The study highlighted an additional five


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pairs of phonemes, where one phoneme in each pair is novel for the native Hebrewspeaker while the other phoneme in the pair is a familiar Hebrew phoneme (seeFig. 1).

This insight led the researchers to suggest that despite linguistic proximitybetween the two Semitic languages, difficulties with AFL spelling among nativeHebrew speakers could stem from both phonological as well as orthographic sourcesof interference, which in turn affect the establishment of accurate grapho-phonemicrepresentations in the foreign language. For the native Hebrew speaker, an Arabicgrapheme may visually resemble another Arabic grapheme while simultaneouslycorresponding with a phoneme that is similar to a known phoneme from the Hebrewphonemic inventory. Therefore, the learner is simultaneously confronted with twoconflicting sources of linguistic information. This complexity can be cognitivelychallenging for a native Hebrew speaker at the first stages of AFL learning, wherethe establishment solid grapho-phonemic relationships between the letters and thesounds is essential. Figure 2 illustrates the complexity of this cross-linguisticinterference.

Distinct differencesFamiliar Hebrew

phoneme

Similar phoneme in

Arabic

Novel phoneme in

Arabic

Pharingealization (Amayreh & Dyson, 1998)



No uvular stops in modern Hebrew

While the Arabic phoneme is a plosive glottal and the Hebrew phoneme is a fricative pharyngeal, the Arabic

phoneme/ / does exists to some degree in modern Hebrew landscape (Schwartzwald, 1985)

Fricatives distinguished by one place of articulation.

Alveolar trill in Arabic, uvular trill in Hebrew

Uvular fricative in Arabic, uvular trill in Hebrew

Fig. 1 Differences between Arabic and Hebrew phoneme pairs


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The present study

In the present study we were interested in exploring the development of AFLspelling among native Hebrew speaking adolescents in the eighth, ninth, and tenthgrades, after the second, third and fourth years of study of the written form of thelanguage. We chose to focus on the developmental trajectory for four novelphonemes and their graphic symbols ( ) in Arabic. All of the phonemestargeted for this study have orthographic as well as phonological complexity. All ofthem have multiple orthographic representations depending on their place within theword, and simultaneously, each grapheme visually resembles another grapheme inArabic, yet is distinguished by dots alone. At the same time, they are alsodistinguished from another phoneme which exists in both Arabic and Hebrew byone phonetic feature only, except for the phoneme /ʔ/. We hypothesized that theproximity of the novel AFL phonemes to the non-novel Hebrew phonemes wouldinterfere with the establishment of clear and distinct phonological representationsfor the novel AFL phoneme. Further, due to visual complexity, we predicted thatthere would be difficulties with the establishment of accurate orthographicrepresentations. We expected that these four phoneme–grapheme pairs would beparticularly challenging for AFL learners, although we hypothesized that exposureand practice over time would lead to a change in the quality of representation.Further, based on earlier findings which showed that after 1 year of exposure to thewritten form of Arabic among native Hebrew speakers, not all novel phonemes havebeen internalized to the same degree (Fragman & Russak, 2010), we anticipateddifferent developmental trajectories for each phoneme and symbol, with certainones reaching higher levels of proficiency than others by the tenth grade. Inaddition, we were interested in examining the contribution of phonological as wellas orthographic knowledge to the development of accurate spelling in AFL amongnative Hebrew speaking adolescents. Whereas studies of the difficulties withliteracy acquisition among native Arabic speakers have emphasized phonological(Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004, 2006; Saiegh-Haddad, 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007) ororthographic sources (Abdelhadi et al., 2011; Azzam, 1993; Bentin & Ibrahim,1996; Frost et al., 1987; Ibrahim & Eviatar, 2012; Ibrahim et al., 2002, 2007), we

Fig. 2 An example of thedually complex nature ofgrapheme–phonemecorrespondences for Hebrewnative pupils learning AFL


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hypothesized that the sources of difficulty with accurate spelling for native Hebrewspeakers learning AFL would be both phonological and orthographic. We examinedthe following three questions:

1. What is the developmental trajectory for accurate spelling in AFL among nativeHebrew speaking pupils after the second, third and fourth years of study of thewritten form of the language (eighth, ninth, and tenth grades)?

2. What is the developmental trajectory for accurate spelling of four novelphonemes and their graphic symbols in Arabic ( ) among nativeHebrew speaking pupils after the second, third and fourth years of study of thewritten form of the language (eighth, ninth, and tenth grades)?

3. What is the contribution of phonological versus orthographic knowledge in thedevelopment of spelling in AFL among native Hebrew speaking pupils?

Method

Participants

Participants in this study included 335 native Hebrew speaking adolescents learningAFL in eighth (N = 119), ninth (N = 125), and tenth (N = 91) grades. The samplewas taken from six different schools in the center of Israel. The schools are allconsidered to be of middle socio-economic background based on an indexdetermined by the Israeli Central Bureau of Statistics (Central Bureau of Statistics,2013) which is drawn from several sources of information including: demographicinformation, parent education, standard of living, employment and unemploymentdata, as well as percentage of the population in that particular area receivinggovernment subsidies. The participant sample was comprised of all pupils who werestudying AFL in the regular classroom. Pupils with learning disabilities of any kindwere excluded from the sample.

Measures

Task construction

All words used in the experimental tasks were chosen from the corpus of words inthe AFL seventh grade curriculum in Israel. Each word chosen included one of thenovel phonemes targeted (/ʔ/, /ħ/, /q/, / /). Pseudowords were created by changingone phoneme–grapheme pattern in a real word thereby creating a minimal pair; seeappendix for word lists. Some of the tasks in the present study are based on similartasks that were used in a prior study of spelling errors among eighth grade Hebrewspeakers learning AFL (Fragman & Russak, 2010).

Real word recognition In this task, participants were required to recognizecorrectly spelled words from pairs of words, where each of the words included one


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of the four phoneme–grapheme pairs targeted. In each item, one word was spelledcorrectly and the other word was spelled incorrectly as a result of changing onegrapheme only, for example a dot, e.g., , or replacing the grapheme withanother similar grapheme, which resembles a phoneme that exists in both Arabicand Hebrew, and distinguished from the correct phoneme–grapheme pair by onephonetic feature only e.g., . This task, which was based on a similar taskused by Siegel, Share, and Geva (1995), was comprised of 20 word pairs and tappedinto phonological as well as orthographic knowledge (α = .73).

Auditory discrimination This task required the participants to listen to a pair ofpseudowords and determine if they sounded the same or different and circle theiranswer on an answer sheet. Construction of different word pairs was based on theuse of pairs of sounds where one was a familiar phoneme from Hebrew, such as /s/and the other was a novel phoneme from Arabic, such as / / (for example: /sawr/,/ aw /). The two target phonemes were usually distinguished by one phonetic featureonly. Seven of the word pairs were identical and 13 were different from each other.This task was comprised of 20 pseudoword pairs (α = .60).

Orthographic sensitivity This task required the participants to recognize permis-sible orthographic patterns for written words (based on a similar task used by Siegelet al., 1995). The task consisted of 20 pseudoword pairs where one more closelyresembled a possible word in the language, as it conforms to orthographicconstraints, while the other choice violated orthographic constraints; see appendixfor example. Accurate performance on this task was dependent on familiarity withorthographic rules regarding knowledge of diacritic marks (number and placementof dots within a word), placement of a letter within a word (in the beginning,middle, or the end of the word), connection between letters, and letter shape, whichrelates to the exact total shape of the letter, for example, the letter is comprisedof an ellipse with a small tail (α = .78).

Real word dictation The dictation task was comprised of 20 words, chosen fromthe corpus of words in the AFL seventh grade curriculum in Israel. Each wordincluded one of the four target novel phonemes (/ʔ/, /ħ/, /q/, / /); see appendix for alist of the real words used in the study. The words were recorded by a native Arabicspeaker. A score of 1 or 0 was given based on correct or incorrect representation ofthe novel phoneme (α = .83).

Pseudoword dictation The pseudoword dictation task was comprised of 20pseudowords. Each word included one of the four target novel phonemes (/ʔ/, /ħ/,/q/, / /); see appendix for a list of the pseudowords used in the study. Thepseudowords were created by changing one letter from a familiar real word, forexample: /dabasa/ instead of /darasa/ (learned). The pseudowords were recorded bya native Arabic speaker. A score of 1 or 0 was given based on correct or incorrectrepresentation of the novel phoneme. All possible phonetic spelling options for aword were accepted (α = .71).


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Procedure

This study was conducted with the permission of the Ministry of Education ChiefScientist’s Office. Data were collected towards the end of the school year by thesecond author through in class group testing in the eighth, ninth, and tenth gradeclassrooms. The order of test administration was altered in order to counterbalancethe effects of one task on another. Testing took one full 45 min lesson.

Results

The present study examined the development of AFL spelling accuracy with specificattention to four novel phoneme grapheme pairs among native Hebrew speakers aftertheir first, second and third years of exposure to the written form of the language. Inaddition, wewere interested in comparing the contribution of phonological as opposedto orthographic knowledge to spelling accuracy. The first question considered theoverall development of AFL spelling accuracy among native Hebrew speakingadolescents across eighth, ninth, and tenth grades. Table 1 shows descriptive statisticsof performance across grades for all tasks used in the study.

In order to explore the effect of grade level on spelling, a series of repeatedmeasure ANOVA analyses with grade as the between subject factor and task as thewithin subject factor were performed. Main effects were found for grade in the tasksof auditory discrimination F(2,349) = 11.73, p \ .01, orthographic sensitivity F(2,349) = 4.94, p \ .01, and real word dictation F(2,349) = 4.14, p \ .01. Theresults showed no main effect for grade in the tasks of real word choice, andpseudoword dictation. In the task of auditory discrimination, Bonferroni post hocanalyses showed that scores in eighth and ninth grades were significantly higherthan scores in tenth grade. In the task of orthographic sensitivity, Bonferroni posthoc analyses showed that tenth grade scores were significantly higher than eighthand ninth grade scores, however, there was no significant difference between eighthand ninth grade scores. In other words, auditory discrimination skills decreased overtime whereas orthographic sensitivity skills increased over time. In the task of realword dictation, Bonferroni post hoc analyses showed that tenth grade scores weresignificantly higher than eighth and ninth grade scores, however, there was nosignificant difference between eighth and ninth grade scores. Twenty percent of thewords were spelled correctly for the eighth graders and ninth graders, whereas 26 %

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of all tasks: mean percentage scores by grade and task

8th Grade M (SD) 9th Grade M (SD) 10th Grade M (SD)

Real word recognition 62.33 (20.10) 65.44 (18.78) 66.26 (18.48)

Auditory discrimination 81.13 (12.35) 79.66 (12.63) 74.09 (12.96)

Orthographic sensitivity 83.95 (14.86) 84.52 (15.29) 89.56 (13.10)

Real word dictation 19.11 (19.18) 18.97 (17.77) 25.77 (22.45)

Pseudoword dictation 11.85 (12.67) 10.71 (13.85) 14.59 (14.99)


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of the words were spelled correctly for the tenth graders. In other words, increasedpractice and exposure to the written form of the language led to little if anyimprovement in AFL accuracy even after 4 years of language learning.

The second question focused on the development of spelling accuracyspecifically for four novel phonemes (/ʔ/, /ħ/, /q/, / /). Table 2 shows descriptivestatistics of mean percentage scores for each of the novel phonemes across grades.

In order to examine the developmental trajectory for the 4 targeted novel phonemesacross grades, a 3 way ANOVA analysis with novel phoneme and task as withinsubject factors and grade as between subject factors was performed. A main effect fornovel phoneme showed significant differences between all four phonemes F(2,349) = 121.68, p \ .001. Bonferroni post hoc analyses showed that the scoresfor the phoneme /ʔ/ were the highest, followed by /ħ/, /q/, and / / respectively withsignificant differences between scores for each phoneme. There was a main effect fortask F(2,349)= 425.34, p\ .001. Post hoc Bonferroni analysis indicated that scoresfor dictation of pseudowords were the lowest scores, followed by scores for dictationof real words, recognition of real words, auditory discrimination, and orthographicsensitivity respectively with significant differences between scores for each task.There was no main effect for grade. In other words, accuracy scores for the novelphonemes did not change significantly with additional practice and exposure.

The third question examined the contribution of orthographic as opposed tophonological knowledge on AFL spelling. The orthographic sensitivity task wasused as a measure of orthographic knowledge, and the auditory discrimination taskwas used as a measure of phonological knowledge. A two-way ANOVA analysiswas done with task (auditory discrimination versus orthographic sensitivity) as thewithin subject factor, and grade as the between subject factor. A main effect wasfound for task F(2,349) = 65.14, p \ .001, with higher scores for orthographicsensitivity (M 86.02, SD .78) than for auditory discrimination (M 78.63, SD. 68).There was an interaction between task and grade F(2,349) = 19.03, p \ .001.Bonferroni post hoc analyses indicated that differences between phonological andorthographic knowledge were not significant in eighth grade, but were significant inninth and tenth grades, with higher scores for orthographic than for phonologicalknowledge. In the orthographic sensitivity task, scores significantly improved overtime, whereas in the auditory discrimination task, scores dropped significantly overtime (see Fig. 3).

As orthographic knowledge in Arabic is dependent upon simultaneous attentionto multiple features such as diacritic marks, letter shape, connection between letters,and the placement of the letter within the word, we were interested in examining the

Table 2 Descriptive statistics of mean percentage scores for each of the novel phonemes across grades

8th Grade M (SD) 9th Grade M (SD) 10th Grade M (SD)

ʔ 72.08 (1.67) 74.16 (1.67) 74.45 (1.84)

ħ 65.31 (1.75) 67.46 (1.75) 70.07 (1.93)

q 61.84 (1.56) 62.60 (1.56) 61.63 (1.72)

56.89 (1.57) 55.39 (1.57) 60.07 (1.73)


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role of each of these features in the development of orthographic knowledge. A two-way ANOVA was performed with orthographic features (diacritic marks, lettershape, connection between letters, and the placement of the letter within the word)as within subject factors and grade (eighth, ninth, and tenth) as the between subjectfactor for the task of orthographic sensitivity. Main effects were found for bothgrade F(2,349) = 5.01, p \ .001 and orthographic features F(2,349) = 101.69,p \ .001. Bonferroni post hoc analyses indicated that scores in the tenth grade weresignificantly higher than scores in eighth and ninth grades, while the differencesbetween eighth and ninth grades were not found to be significant. Further,Bonferroni post hoc analyses indicated that the highest scoring orthographic featurewas placement of the letter within the word, followed by connection between letters,diacritic marks, and the lowest scoring orthographic feature was letter shape. Aninteraction was found between grade and orthographic feature F(6, 1047) = 7.16,p \ .001. Post hoc Bonferroni analysis showed that there was no significant effectof grade for the features of diacritic marks, placement of the letter within the word,and connection between letters, with scores ranging between 85 and 90 % acrossgrades. The feature of letter shape scored significantly lower than all other featuresin eighth and ninth grades, and significantly lower than connection between letters,and the placement of the letter within the word in the tenth grade. However, thefeature of letter shape was the only one that showed significant improvement overtime, with scores in tenth grade significantly higher than scores in eighth and ninthgrades. In other words, by eighth grade pupils have internalized the form of theletter according to its placement in the word, the connection between letters, and theuse of diacritic marks with approximately 85–90 % accuracy. The orthographicfeature that remains problematic is attending to full and exact form of the specificletters, such as .

We were further interested in understanding the contribution of phonological asopposed to orthographic knowledge to AFL spelling. In order to do this, three sets ofhierarchical regression analyses were performed. As stated earlier, the auditorydiscrimination task was selected as a measure of phonological knowledge and theorthographic sensitivity task was selected as a measure of orthographic knowledge.

Fig. 3 Interaction between phonological as opposed to orthographic knowledge in AFL spelling acrossgrades


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Significant correlations were found between real word recognition and: ortho-graphic sensitivity r (348) = .43, p \ .01, auditory discrimination r (350) = .29,p \ .01, real word dictation r (350) = .51, p \ .01, and pseudoword dictationr (350) = .39, p \ .01. In other words, real word recognition involves bothphonological as well as orthographic knowledge. Thus, in the first set of hierarchicalregressions we were interested in learning more about the contributions oforthographic as opposed to phonological knowledge to real word recognition. Twohierarchical regressions in stages were performed. In the first regression, grade wasentered first followed by auditory discrimination, followed by orthographicsensitivity. In the second regression, grade was entered first followed byorthographic sensitivity followed by auditory discrimination. In both regressions,grade did not contribute to the explanation of variance in word recognition; howeverauditory discrimination as well as orthographic sensitivity did contribute signifi-cantly to real word recognition regardless of order of entry into the regressionanalysis (see Table 3). In other words, phonological and orthographic knowledgewere both found to contribute to word recognition.

In the second set of regression analyses, we were interested in examining thecontribution of phonological as opposed to orthographic knowledge to real wordspelling accuracy as represented by the real word dictation task. Two hierarchicalregressions in stages were performed. In the first stage in both regressions, grade

Table 3 Regression analyses for Arabic real word recognition, real word dictation and pseudoworddictation

β ΔR2 β ΔR2

Arabic real word recognition

Step 1: G 0.09 0.01 Step 1: G 0.09 0.01

Step 2: AD .33*** 0.11 Step 2: OS 0.42*** 0.18

Step 3: OS .37*** 0.13 Step 3: AD 0.25*** 0.06

β ΔR2 β ΔR2

Arabic real word spelling accuracy

Step 1: G .13* 0.02 Step 1: G .13* 0.02

Step 2: OS .46*** 0.2 Step 2: OS .36*** 0.12

Step 3: AD .27*** 0.07 Step 3: AD .40*** 0.15

Step 4: RWR .33*** 0.08 Step 4: RWR .33*** 0.08

β ΔR2 β ΔR2

Arabic pseudoword spelling accuracy

Step 1: G 0.08 0.01 Step 1: G 0.08 0.01

Step 2: OS .35*** 0.12 Step 2: OS .39*** 0.14

Step 3: AD .32*** 0.09 Step 3: AD .28*** 0.07

Step 4: RWR .22*** 0.04 Step 4: RWR .22*** 0.04

G grade, AD auditory discrimination, OS orthographic sensitivity, RWR real word recognition

*p \ .05, **p \ .01, ***p \ .001


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contributed significantly to the explanation of variance in spelling accuracy. In thesecond stage of the first regression orthographic sensitivity was entered next,followed by auditory discrimination and finally real word recognition. In the secondstage of the second regression, auditory discrimination was entered next, followedby orthographic sensitivity, followed by real word recognition. Regression resultsshowed that phonological and orthographic knowledge as well as word recognitionboth contribute to accurate word spelling (see Table 3).

In the third set of regression analyses, we were interested in examining thecontribution of phonological as opposed to orthographic knowledge to pseudowordspelling accuracy, using pseudoword dictation scores, in order to see if pseudowordspelling accuracy could be explained by the same components as real word spellingaccuracy. Two separate regressions were done. In both regressions, grade did notcontribute to the explanation of variance in pseudoword spelling accuracy. In thesecond stage of the first regression orthographic sensitivity was entered next,followed by auditory discrimination, and finally real word recognition. In the secondstage of the second regression, auditory discrimination was entered next, followedby orthographic sensitivity, followed by real word recognition. Regression resultsshowed that, similarly to the results reported above, phonological and orthographicknowledge as well as word recognition both contribute to accurate pseudowordspelling (see Table 3).

Discussion

The present study aimed to explore the development of spelling in AFL amongnative Hebrew speaking pupils after the second, third and fourth years of study ofthe written form of Arabic, as well as to examine the developmental trajectory forfour novel Arabic phonemes. In addition, we were interested in better understandingthe contribution of phonological as opposed to orthographic knowledge to accuratespelling in Arabic among native Hebrew speakers.

The first question examined the development of spelling in AFL among nativeHebrew speaking adolescents in eighth, ninth, and tenth grades after the second,third and fourth year of exposure and practice with the written form of the language.Despite the fact that the pupils were tested from the word corpus used in theirtextbook from the seventh grade, the results indicated that even after the second yearof exposure and practice, the eighth graders spelled with only 19 % accuracy. Thesefindings replicated findings from an earlier study (Fragman & Russak, 2010) thatfound 80 % spelling errors on a dictation task in AFL among a group of eighth gradenative Hebrew speakers. While this spelling accuracy level appeared to be low, itwas still found to be within an acceptable range of accuracy based on guidelinesfrom the Foreign Service Institute of the US Department of State (Jackson &Kaplan, 1999), which take into account both orthographic proximity and amount ofexposure as factors when calculating language proficiency in FL. However, scoresfor the ninth graders in the present study were no different from the scores for theeighth graders, indicating no development in spelling accuracy with an additionalyear of exposure and practice. Further, whereas the tenth grade scores were


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significantly higher than the eighth and ninth grade scores, they were still very lowin relation to the expected accuracy levels for language proficiency afterapproximately 400 h of exposure during the 4 years of obligatory language study,based on the above mentioned document.

Similar findings regarding a lack of significant improvement in spelling accuracydespite extended exposure and practice were found by Allaith, and Joshi (2011),who examined the development of spelling across grades four, six, eight, and tenamong native Arabic speakers learning English as an additional language. Theyreported little or no improvement in the spelling of novel phoneme pairs acrossgrades. They attributed the lack of improvement in spelling accuracy to learningsettings and/or language instruction received. These findings regarding the effects ofextended exposure and practice were replicated by Russak & Kahn-Horwtiz (inpress) who found significant development in spelling abilities for novel phonolog-ical and orthographic patterns in English between fifth and eighth grade nativeHebrew speaking pupils, but no further development in spelling noted in the tenthgrade. They too attributed this pattern to a shift in the focus of language instructionover time. Vanderhoof (2011) also reported a lack of increase in overall spellingperformance among 44 adult ESL students. However, she attributed their persistentdifficulties to lingering phonological difficulties.

In contrast, in a study of the development of spellings for novel phonemes amongnative Cantonese first grade pupils in a total immersion English as a secondlanguage (ESL) program in Canada, Wang, and Geva (2003) found that spellings ofnovel English phonemes among native Cantonese pupils improved over time,reaching the same levels of accuracy as their native English speaking peers by theend of the second grade. In this case, it appears that the language setting facilitatedthe development of high quality lexical representations for the novel phonemes. Itseems that a setting in which the learner is immersed in the target language both inschool and in everyday life, as in the case of the Cantonese ESL pupils, fosters thedevelopment of accurate spelling in the target language. This, as opposed to aforeign language learning environment where exposure is limited to the languagelearning class, or in the case of Arabic as the second foreign language among nativeHebrew speakers, where the exposure is even more limited. This limitation is due tothe fact that the Arabic language learning experience in Israel begins only in seventhgrade, between 3 and 5 years after the onset of EFL instruction, in addition to thefact that there are less weekly hours devoted to AFL instruction.

Another possible explanation for the difficulties that the pupils in our study hadwith acquiring accurate spellings in AFL could be attributed to the interfacebetween Hebrew (L1) and Arabic (FL). When writing or speaking the targetlanguage, second language (L2) learners tend to rely on their native language (L1)structures to produce a response. Based on the Transfer Facilitation Model (Koda,2008), one could assume that if the structures of the two languages are similar, theproximity should facilitate the learning process. Similarly, if the two languages aredistinctly different, one could expect a relatively high frequency of errors to occur inL2, thus indicating an interference of L1 on L2 (Dechert, 1983; Ellis, 1997). In thecase of Hebrew and Arabic, one would expect prior knowledge in Hebrew tofacilitate the acquisition of Arabic due to the fact that both are Semitic languages,


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with many shared linguistic features. However, findings from the present study didnot support this claim. Here, the linguistic proximity between Arabic and Hebrewdid not facilitate the language learning process, it possibly interfered. Research onthe acquisition of Arabic as a native language suggests that the diglossic nature ofthe language leads to phonological difficulties at initial stages of literacy acquisitionwhen beginning readers are confronted with phonemes from the MSA which are notfamiliar to them from their spoken dialects. This dissonance leads to difficultieswith phonological awareness tasks as well as accurate word reading and spelling(Saiegh-Haddad 2003, 2004, 2005, 2007). In the case of our AFL native Hebrewspeakers, the learners were exposed to novel phonemes that do not exist in their L1Hebrew inventory, however, their phonological difficulties could not be explainedby the diglossic nature of Arabic, as they are only learning the written form ofArabic, and they had not been formally exposed to the spoken form of the language.It could be, however, that their phonological difficulties were due to the linguisticproximity between Hebrew and Arabic which in this case caused interference in theestablishment of unique and distinct phonological representations for the novelphonemes. Whereas the Arabic phonemes tested were novel to the native Hebrewspeakers, in that they do not exist in the L1 inventory, in many cases they were verysimilar in their phonetic make-up to known phonemes, being distinguished by onlyone phonetic feature, as in the case of /k/ which exists in both the Hebrew and theArabic phoneme inventory and /q/ which exists only in the Arabic phonemeinventory. At times only the secondary articulation feature of pharyngealization(Amayreh & Dyson, 1998) distinguished between a phoneme from the L1 inventoryand a phoneme from the AFL inventory, as in the case of /s/ and / /. In the presentstudy, as in an earlier study where the spelling errors of native Hebrew speakingeighth grade pupils learning AFL were analyzed qualitatively (Fragman & Russak,2010), this proximity led to an overreliance on L1 known phonemes that apparentlyinterfered with the accurate representation of the novel phonemes. The example ofwriting /sawm/ instead of / awm/ (fast) is a case in point.

In order to take a closer look at the development of accurate spelling for novelphonemes in AFL, the second question examined the developmental trajectory forfour novel phonemes (/ʔ/, /ħ/, /q/, / /). The results indicated that even after 4 yearsof exposure and practice, not all of the novel phonemes were represented with thesame level of accuracy. Across grades, the novel phonemes /ʔ/ and /ħ/ wererepresented with higher accuracy than /q/ and / /. Higher accuracy scores for thephonemes /ʔ/ and /ħ/ could be attributed to the fact that these phonemes werepresent in ancient Hebrew dialects and exist to some degree at present in thelinguistic landscape in dialects from Eastern Jewish cultures (Schwartzwald, 1985).Therefore, they are not as novel to some ears as the other two phonemes /q/ and / /.It appears that in the case of the phonemes /ʔ/ and /ħ/, the proximity between thefamiliar L1 phonemes and the novel phonemes facilitated the learning process. Thephoneme /q/ is a uvular stop consonant. While the phonetic inventory for Hebrewincludes both stop consonants, as well as the uvular place of articulation, there areno phonemes in Modern Hebrew which are specifically uvular stops. Thus, therepresentation of this particular novel phoneme could be challenging for nativeHebrew speakers. Whereas the phoneme / / was present in Ancient Hebrew as an


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emphatic sound, it has been assimilated to a non-emphatic sound in Modern Hebrew(Ben-David & Berman, 2007). In fact, there are no Hebrew phonemes in ModernHebrew that are emphatic; therefore, representation of the phoneme / / isparticularly difficult for Modern native Hebrew speakers. As a case in point, / /was the lowest scoring phoneme of the four novel phonemes examined. Thesefindings were replicated in an additional study of native Hebrew speaking adultslearning AFL in a university setting (Fragman, submitted) where emphaticphonemes were found to be the most difficult to spell, and the novel phoneme / /was found to be the lowest scoring phoneme out of ten novel phonemes examined.Another explanation for the pronounced difficulties that native Hebrew speakers hadwith the accurate representation of the novel phoneme / /, could be the fact that thisparticular novel phoneme is distinguished from a similar familiar phoneme inHebrew only by the secondary articulation feature of pharyngealization. Aspharyngealization is not as salient a phonetic feature as place of articulation,distinguishing between novel and familiar sounds based on differences with thisparticular secondary phonetic feature alone will be more challenging. In this case,linguistic proximity interfered with accurate phoneme representation. In sum,whereas the linguistic proximity between Hebrew and Arabic seems to facilitateacquisition processes at times, at other times the proximity seems to interfere withthe establishment of accurate phonological representations for the target language.

Another source of linguistic complexity for learners of Arabic is orthographic innature. Multiple studies have found that native Arabic speakers are relatively slowin acquiring orthographic skills, in relation to speakers of other languages (Eviatar& Ibrahim, 2004, 2009; Ibrahim et al., 2002). This difficulty has been attributed toseveral factors: visual similarities between letters that are distinguished bydifferences in the number and placement of diacritic marks only, or differencesin letter shape that are determined by placement of the letter within a word. In theformer situation, similar looking graphemes represent different phonemes, while inthe latter situation, different graphemes represent the same phoneme. These smalldetails can hinder the creation of clear lexical representations in orthographicmemory. In order to be able to take a closer look at orthographic knowledge in AFL,component skills were examined within the third research question. Thesecomponent sub-skills of orthographic knowledge included: placement of the letterwithin the word, attention to diacritic markings, letter shape and connection betweenletters. Results indicated that after the first year of exposure and practice with thewritten form of Arabic, the ability to distinguish between acceptable as opposed tounacceptable orthographic conventions, is fairly accurate. This orthographicknowledge further develops between the third and fourth years of study. It appearsthat at an early stage of written AFL learning, pupils are more sensitive to certainorthographic features, such as the correct form of the letter according to placementwithin the word, and connection between letters, than to others. We believe that thisawareness develops because in almost every word that the pupils are exposed to,from the very first AFL lesson, these features are highly prominent and relevant.This finding was supported by findings of a recent study where a positivecontribution of connectedness was found to word processing among adult skilledArabic speakers (Ibrahim, Khateb, & Taha, 2013). That is not to say that attention to


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diacritic markings is not prominent from the beginning of written languageexposure, however, it appears that the ability to attend to diacritic markings withinwords is more problematic. Evidence supporting this claim comes from research inboth Arabic and Hebrew. Ibrahim et al. (2002) found that native Arabic speakingadolescents process letters more slowly in their native language than they do in theirsecond language, Hebrew. They attributed this slowness to visual complexity whichincluded intensive use of diacritic markings, as well as correct form of the letteraccording to placement within the word. In their examination of literacy acquisitionin Hebrew, Share, and Levin (1999) concluded that the diacritic system for markingvowels is complex and could present a source of difficulty for beginning nativeHebrew speaking readers as well. Pupils in the present study showed the leastsensitivity to the full shape of the letter as a significant orthographic feature. Thisdifficulty may be due to the fact that this feature is relevant to a very limited numberof letters with complex shapes, such as

Whereas difficulties with the acquisition of the written form of Arabic amongstnative Arabic speakers have been attributed to either phonological or toorthographic difficulties, findings from the present study indicate that in the caseof AFL among native Hebrew speakers, the sources of difficulties are bothphonological, as well as orthographic in nature. Regression analyses indicated thatphonological as well as orthographic knowledge explained accurate word recog-nition, as well as real, and pseudoword spelling, yet there was no significantadvantage for one source of knowledge over the other. From these findings, it can beconcluded that, for AFL learners, letters which are orthographically similar to otherletters in Arabic, while simultaneously being phonetically similar to phonemes thatexist both in Arabic and in Hebrew will present both a phonological as well as anorthographic linguistic burden. Further, this linguistic burden will interfere with theestablishment of accurate grapho-phonemic representations. In addition, whilephonological knowledge, as represented by the auditory discrimination task,appeared to be rather strong in eighth grade, a significant drop was observedbetween the ninth and tenth grades. This drop could possibly be explained by thelimited exposure to hearing and pronouncing the sounds of the written form of thelanguage, due to the greater emphasis placed on reading and writing skills asprescribed by the guidelines of the Ministry of Education (Lustigman, 2008). Theimplications of this policy are that pupils are in essence, learning only one form ofthe language, and are being deprived of the chance to use all modalities in thelanguage learning experience. In other words, native Hebrew speaking AFL learnersare being deprived of the opportunity to use their auditory modality and hence, theyare forced to rely on their visual channel as the main modality for learning thisvisually complex language. Based on classroom observations by the authors duringthe present study, it was noted that most of the discussion in the AFL class takesplace in Hebrew. Further, many of the native Hebrew speaking teachers admitted tohaving difficulties themselves with the accurate pronunciation of the novelphonemes in Arabic. These factors further limit the already impoverished exposureto auditory input. Future studies of the acquisition of spelling in AFL could includea qualitative analysis of spelling errors. Findings from this analysis could then beused to develop a model for spelling development in AFL.


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Taken as a whole, the extremely low accuracy scores for spelling, with hardlyany improvement across grades, as well as the drop in the scores on the auditorydiscrimination task after 4 years of learning, suggest a situation of stagnation inAFL acquisition, and call for some serious pedagogical introspection andreconsideration. As the second formal language of the state, Arabic should betaught much more intensively. Not only should the number of weekly hours devotedto instruction be reconsidered, but also the age of beginning Arabic languageinstruction in order to increase the amount and quality of exposure, as well as basingthe instruction of the written form of the language on a foundation of instruction inthe spoken form. In addition, emphasis should be placed on training teachers in thecorrect pronunciation of all sounds in Arabic. Furthermore, teacher training shouldfocus on training teachers to teach AFL through direct and systematic attention tothe phonemes and their correct pronunciation, correct formation of letters and thecorrect orthographic representations for all of the sounds, particularly those whichresemble familiar sounds but do not, in fact, exist in the L1 Hebrew phonemicinventory of the AFL learners.

Appendix

Real word dictation task:

Pseudoword dictation task:

Orthographic sensitivity task (example):

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