Report on The Role of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in the Development of Arabic Spelling

        Arabic orthography might be described as a consonantal orthography or abjad. 28 letters are included in the abjad which map the Arabic consonants. Low vowels are represented by three of these twenty-eight letters. In addition to these vowels, consonantal germination and vowelization are represented through superscripted diacritics. Therefore, the orthography of Arabic includes two scripts: unvowelized with the use of letters and vowelized with the prevalence of diacritic information. Arabic words which are vowelized are compatible to orthographic patterns which are highly transparent because the spelling of words offers a regular and complete account of its phonological characteristics. In contrast to it, unvowelized Arabic has significant homography and an opaque orthography.

            There is a difference between other alphabetic orthographies and Arabic, especially English, in morphological and orthographic architecture. In contrast with English, two kinds of morphological processes are utilized by Arabic: non-linear and linear. Inflectional properties are exhibited by linear morphology while derivational properties are exhibited by non-linear morphology. Therefore, Arabic content words are not only complex but also minimally bi-morphemic which comprises at least two units of morphology which include a word-pattern and a consonantal root. It has also been determined that Arabic speakers utilize word-pattern and root in the processing and representation of Arabic words. Both the word-pattern and root play a significant part in processing and lexical representation in Arabic.

            Arabic has a unique feature in terms of its diglossic context and the utilization of two systems: one is used for writing and the other is utilized for daily conversation. In addition to it, all linguistic domains are traversed by Spoken Arabic and Standard Arabic vernaculars.

Intervention I of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in Arabic

            289 children were tested by the study in three age groups which included the sixth grade, fourth grade, and second grade. In order to test the phonological skills, two tasks concerned with reading were utilized. First was concerned with reading several words chosen from the textbooks of students for ensuring suitability and familiarity to the language and reading level of children. Each and every level of words seemed to target different aspects of morphology and phonology of Arabic. Since the first intervention is concerned with determining the phonological awareness, four measures were utilized. These measures included: Word phoneme segmentation, Pseudo word phoneme segmentation, Deletion of initial phoneme from the words, and the Deletion of Initial Phone from the Pseudo Words.

            This intervention focused mainly on the awareness of phonology, representations of phonology, and correspondence rules of phoneme-grapheme.

Major Component

            The most important component of the intervention which made it effective was the correspondence of phoneme and grapheme. Before this step, the focus was on word formation and phonological blending. It was a simple and easier step. However, the correspondences enabled students to focus on strengthening the mapping of phoneme into different graphemes. In prior meetings, this training started with focusing on the syllable spelling. Those syllables consisted short vowels and consonant letters. With progress in syllable spelling, the focus of intervention shifted to train students in the correspondences of phoneme and grapheme through the utilization of training associated with pseudoword spelling. What made this component more effective was training students in the spelling of different real words.

Intervention II

            The second intervention was concerned with morphological intervention and it focused on three features including the derivational root-pattern, morphological decomposition, and morpho-orthographic representations of different words. Different tasks of writing were practiced by participants for strengthening the morpho-orthographic representations and illustrations of different words.

Major Component

            What made this intervention effective was derivational morphology. It focused on strengthening the derivational skills of creating words through the use of specific patterns and roots. Through this method, participants got to learn how new words could be derived from the same root with the manipulation of word patterns. In this task, participants practiced the writing of root letters in different colors in comparison with the pattern letters for words. This step was the most important because it enabled the participants to understand how new words could be produced by combining words.

Comparison and Reflection of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in Arabic

 I responded better to the morphological intervention because it not only involves phonological properties but also morphological ones. It enabled me to learn not only the sounds of words but also explained how those words were written. I also got to know how new words could be derived from the same root word which was very interesting and informative.

            It is possible to develop an intervention which is capable of bringing the strengths of morphological and phonological components. However, it has a limitation. Such a system will not be effective for non-native Arabic speakers. For example, two components will be taken from the phonological intervention including:

·         Correspondences in phoneme and grapheme

·         Real word spellings.

Meanwhile, from the morphological intervention, following will be taken:

·         Morpho-syntactic analysis

·         Inflectional analysis and morphological analogy

These methods are advanced and will be effective for speakers who have preexisting knowledge of Arabic. First of all, correspondences in phoneme and grapheme, and real word spellings will be considered before morpho-syntactic analysis and morphological analogy will be implemented to ensure that properties of morphological and phonological strengths are combined with each other (Taha & Saiegh-Haddad, 2016).

References of Phonological versus Morphological Skills in Arabic

Taha, H., & Saiegh-Haddad, E. (2016). The role of phonological versus morphological skills in the development of Arabic spelling: An intervention study. Journal of psycholinguistic research, 45(3), 507-535.