ABSTRACT

Situated within the Simple View of Reading, this study examined the code-related (word reading) and oral language (receptive vocabulary, narrative comprehension, narrative production) skills that contribute to English and Arabic reading comprehension in two groups of Arabic-English bilingual children (7–9 and 10–12 years) living in an English majority environment. Further, the study examined the contribution of oral narrative production to reading comprehension over and above that of word reading, receptive vocabulary and listening comprehension. Overall, our results support the applicability of the Simple View of Reading to English and Arabic reading comprehension in this minority language sample. In English, narrative production emerged as a unique predictor of English reading comprehension in both younger and older groups, suggesting that a comprehensive model of second language reading comprehension need account for the contribution of discourse-level productive skill. In Arabic, vowelized word reading explained unique variance in Arabic reading comprehension across age groups, whereas receptive vocabulary emerged as a significant contributor of reading comprehension in the older group only. We interpret our findings as a result of Arabic diglossia in conjunction with limited exposure to standard Arabic.

摘要

本研究位于阅读的简单视图中，检查了两组阿英双语儿童的代码相关（单词阅读）和口语（接受词汇、叙述理解、叙述制作）技能，这些技能有助于英语和阿拉伯语阅读理解（7-9 岁和 10-12 岁）生活在以英语为主的环境中。此外，该研究还检验了口头叙事产生对阅读理解的贡献，超过了单词阅读、接受性词汇和听力理解的贡献。总体而言，我们的结果支持简单阅读视图在这个少数民族语言样本中对英语和阿拉伯语阅读理解的适用性。在英语中，叙事产生成为年轻和年长群体英语阅读理解的独特预测指标，表明第二语言阅读理解的综合模型需要考虑话语水平生产技能的贡献。在阿拉伯语中，元音单词阅读解释了不同年龄段阿拉伯语阅读理解的独特差异，而接受性词汇仅在老年人群中成为阅读理解的重要贡献者。我们将我们的发现解释为阿拉伯语双语以及对标准阿拉伯语的有限接触的结果。