The present study investigated the role of Arabic diacritics in word recognition and their impact on Arabic L2 learners? reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension at different stages of Arabic L2 acquisition. Fifty-four English L2 learners of Arabic from 3 proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) participated in the study. They belonged to 2 sets of groups: half with exposure to instructional materials containing diacritics, vowelized textbook (VT), and the other half with exposure to instructional materials not containing diacritics, un-vowelized textbook (UVT). Participants performed word-list reading, text reading, and target-word comprehension tasks under vowelized (V) and un-vowelized (UV) conditions. The results revealed participants in all VT groups did consistently better than their UVT counterparts. This positive role of diacritics in terms of Arabic word recognition and reading performance implies that inclusion of diacritics in words and texts within instructional materials does not only benefit Arabic L2 learners by removing ambiguity from words, but it also positively impacts their reading and pronunciation performance in general. The study findings and pedagogical implications are also relevant to other languages, such as Farsi and Hebrew, which exhibit similar orthographic features.

中文翻译：

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阿拉伯语变音符号及其在促进英语 L2 阿拉伯语学习者阅读速度、准确性和理解方面的作用

本研究调查了阿拉伯语变音符号在单词识别中的作用及其对阿拉伯语 L2 学习者的影响？阿拉伯语 L2 习得不同阶段的阅读速度、准确性和理解能力。来自 3 个熟练程度（初级、中级和高级）的 54 名英语 L2 阿拉伯语学习者参加了这项研究。他们属于两组：一半接触包含变音符号、元音化教科书 (VT) 的教学材料，另一半接触不包含变音符号、非元音化教科书 (UVT) 的教学材料。参与者在元音 (V) 和非元音 (UV) 条件下执行单词列表阅读、文本阅读和目标词理解任务。结果显示，所有 VT 组的参与者的表现始终优于 UVT 组的参与者。变音符号在阿拉伯语单词识别和阅读表现方面的这种积极作用意味着，在教学材料中的单词和文本中加入变音符号不仅通过消除单词的歧义而使阿拉伯语 L2 学习者受益，而且还对他们的阅读和发音表现产生积极影响。一般的。研究结果和教学意义也与其他语言有关，例如波斯语和希伯来语，它们表现出类似的正字法特征。