Spatial language and ability play important roles in children's cognitive development. Spatial ability in kindergarten predicts achievement in reading, math, science, and technology in primary school and therefore constitutes an important skill set in preparation for school entrance. Good spatial thinking skills are required for learning in…

Listening comprehension (LC) is considered an important but complex skill that predicts later reading comprehension in various languages. In this study, we aimed at understanding the relationship of LC with different linguistic and cognitive components. For this purpose, 262 Arabic-speaking kindergartners participated in this study. Our regression…

A large linguistic distance exists between spoken Arabic and the Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) the literary language (a diglosia). Novice readers, therefore, struggle with the complex orthography of Arabic as well as the mastering of MSA. Here, we tested whether structured activities in MSA would advance kindergarteners' MSA aptitude by the end of…

The contribution of repeated e-book reading with and without word explanation support and its effect on receptive and expressive word learning among preschoolers was examined. Seventy-eight kindergartners were randomly divided into an experimental and a control group. The experimental group received two individual reading sessions of an e-book…

We examined reading proficiency, focusing on fluency, in 56 Russian-speaking language minority (LM) students and 56 native Hebrew-speaking (NH) peers. Fifth-grade students completed measures of Hebrew reading accuracy and fluency from word to text level as well as phonological awareness (PA), RAN and vocabulary. LM students read single words less…