Literacy acquisition in Arabic diglossia: Psycholinguistic findings and educational implications

Arabic is a typical case of diglossia. All native Arabic-speakers grow up in a sociolinguistic context in which different varieties of the same language are used within the same speech community for complementary sets of functions: a spoken variety, known as ‘Spoken Arabic, SpA’ or ‘Colloquial Arabic’, for everyday speech; and a standard, rather uniform variety, known as Modern Standard Arabic, MSA, StA, for formal language functions and for reading/writing.

In this research talk, Professor Saiegh-Haddad will present data on how this linguistic distance impacts children's linguistic representations, phonological processing, phonological and morphological awareness, and StA word reading.

She will also share findings on the interdependence of SpA and StA skills, discuss educational implications, and introduce a diglossia-centered intervention for kindergarteners.

Finally, she will describe BALLS, a web-based battery to identify Arabic-speaking children at risk for language and literacy difficulties.

This talk will be followed by a reception with refreshments.

This event will interest researchers, teachers, and practitioners in education in the Arab region.

Related links

• Centre for Language, Literacy and Numeracy: Research and Practice
• Department of Psychology and Human Development

Image

Mohammad Sarreshteh (2010). Photo by البصراوي via Flickr (CC BY-SA 2.0).