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Cited by 253Reading and Literacy DevelopmentLanguage Development and DisordersNeurobiology of Language and Bilingualism

Reading, Syntactic, Orthographic, and Working Memory Skills of Bilingual Arabic-English Speaking Canadian Children

Abu-Rabia, Salim, Siegel, Linda S.·2002·Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
DOI 10.1023/a:1021221206119
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Abstract

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.

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  • Children who perform poorly in their mother tongue will also exhibit weakness in L2 and L3, while children whose performance is high in their mother tongue will attain similar results in other languages.

    “According to Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002), children who perform poorly in their mother tongue will also exhibit weakness in L2 and L3, while children whose performance is high in their mother tongue will attain similar results in other languages as well.”

    From Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) of Language Skills among Trilingual Arabic-Hebrew and English Learners (2014) · cites this paper as Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002)

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Authors
Abu-Rabia, S., & Siegel, L. S.
Affiliations
University of British Columbia (CA)
ORCID
Siegel, Linda S.
Venue
Journal of Psycholinguistic Research
Publisher
Springer Science and Business Media LLC
Published
2002-11
Volume
31
Issue
6
Pages
661-678
ISSN
  • 0090-6905 (ISSN-L)
  • 1573-6555
DOI
10.1023/a:1021221206119
OpenAlex
W1527227474
Cited by
250
References
36
Citations by year
2026: 8 · 2025: 5 · 2024: 5 · 2023: 8 · 2022: 11 · 2021: 44 · 2020: 16 · 2019: 13 · 2018: 8 · 2017: 15 · 2016: 9 · 2015: 11 · 2014: 8 · 2013: 17 · 2012: 18
FWCI
6.64
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
closed
Licence
Locations
  • Journal of Psycholinguistic Research (publishedVersion)
  • PubMed (publishedVersion)
Topics
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
  • Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Language Development and Disorders
  • Life Sciences › Neuroscience › Cognitive Neuroscience › Neurobiology of Language and Bilingualism
Keywords
bilingualism, heritage language education, Arabic reading, pseudoword reading, working memory, syntactic awareness, orthographic awareness, reading disorders, positive transfer, Arabic orthography, monolingual comparison
MeSH terms
Adolescent, Child, Cross-Cultural Comparison, Dyslexia, Female, Humans, Language, Linguistics, Male, Memory, Phonetics, Random Allocation, Verbal Behavior, Multilingualism

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