Purpose: This study examined the differences in spoken Arabic (SpA) and standard Arabic (StA) in inflectional (gender, number, possessive pronouns, and tense) construction use in Arabic among preschoolers. Moreover, we tested the contribution of the inflectional constructions possessed in kindergarten to reading skills in the first grade and…

The contribution of linguistic skills to reading has been reported in different languages; however, this contribution varies according to the specific features of each language. Arabic is characterized by diglossia, i.e. the existence of two distinct varieties: Spoken Arabic (SpA) and Standard Arabic (StA). This study examined the extent to which…

Due to the diglossic nature of the Arabic language, Arabic-speaking children enter their first year of school with immaturity in literary language and word representations in their mental lexicon. This study examined the effects of interactive story reading in kindergarten on future reading skills and whether this effect can be generalized to…

Phonological awareness may be influenced by differences in the characteristics of the items studied. This hypothesis is considered particularly applicable to Arabic, which is a diglossic language. This study examined the impact of phonemic position and the affiliation of the items between spoken and standard languages on phonemic isolation tasks.…

This study aimed to study the association between diglossic reading skills and reading comprehension in first grade students with and without learning disabilities. In this study population, students presented diglossia in literary and colloquial Arabic: 30 first grade students with learning disabilities and 30 first grade students without…

The purpose of the current study was to examine whether morphological awareness measured before children are taught to read (Kindergarten in Israel) predicts reading accuracy and fluency in the middle of first grade, at the very beginning of the process of learning to read pointed Hebrew -- a highly transparent orthography, and whether this…

The study addressed the question of continuity in literacy achievements from kindergarten to first grade among Arabic-speaking children in Israel. We examined (1) how age and family socio-economic status (SES) predict children's literacy skills in kindergarten and (2) how age, SES, and early literacy skills in kindergarten predict literacy…

This article presents a critical review of the literature surrounding the potential impact of undiagnosed and untreated vision impairment on reading development in the early years of primary school. Despite pre-school screening programmes, it is still possible for children to enter school with undiagnosed, uncorrected vision impairments. This can…

The researchers addressed two questions: (1) Does maternal reading mediation and family home literacy environment (HLE) relate to children's emergent literacy (EL) level? and (2) Do the relationships among these variables differ as a function of socioeconomic strata (SES) level. A total of 94 5-6-year-old children, 47 from low SES (LSES) and 47…