Document Detail


Reading, syntactic, orthographic, and working memory skills of bilingual Arabic-English speaking Canadian children.
MedLine Citation:
PMID:  12599919     Owner:  NLM     Status:  MEDLINE    
Abstract/OtherAbstract:
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.
Authors:
Salim Abu-Rabia; Linda S Siegel
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Publication Detail:
Type:  Comparative Study; Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't    
Journal Detail:
Title:  Journal of psycholinguistic research     Volume:  31     ISSN:  0090-6905     ISO Abbreviation:  J Psycholinguist Res     Publication Date:  2002 Nov 
Date Detail:
Created Date:  2003-02-25     Completed Date:  2003-05-01     Revised Date:  2006-11-15    
Medline Journal Info:
Nlm Unique ID:  0333506     Medline TA:  J Psycholinguist Res     Country:  United States    
Other Details:
Languages:  eng     Pagination:  661-78     Citation Subset:  IM    
Affiliation:
Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Mount Carmel, Haifa 31905, Israel. salimar@construct.Haifa.ac.il
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MeSH Terms
Descriptor/Qualifier:
Adolescent
Child
Cross-Cultural Comparison
Dyslexia / epidemiology*
Female
Humans
Language
Linguistics*
Male
Memory*
Multilingualism*
Phonetics
Random Allocation
Verbal Behavior*

From MEDLINE®/PubMed®, a database of the U.S. National Library of Medicine


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