Abstract

The Arabic writing system allows for two representations: vowelized or non-vowelized. The vowelized writing, which characterizes the writing in the Koran, classical literature and children’s books, includes the long and short vowels and all the vowels, including the vowels that express syntax functions (the final vowels). In non-vowelized writing, only the consonants and long vowels appear. The goal of the present study was to examine syntax functions and the extent to which they influenced the reading comprehension of Arab students. Ninety students participated in the study: One group received a text and questions with full vowels, while the other group received a text and questions without short vowels. One week later, the participants were given a second task. A week later, the participants were given a text and tested for reading comprehension. Certain words in the text were highlighted, and the students were asked to explain these words and to define their syntactic function. The results showed that the students given the vowelized texts achieved significantly higher grades than those who worked on the non-vowelized texts. Moreover, it was found that the greater the student’s knowledge of grammar and syntax, the better her/his understanding of the meaning of the words.

摘要

阿拉伯语书写系统允许两种表示形式：元音或非元音。元音书写是古兰经、古典文学和儿童读物写作的特征，包括长短元音和所有元音，包括表达句法功能的元音（韵母）。在非元音书写中，只出现辅音和长元音。本研究的目的是检查句法功能及其对阿拉伯学生阅读理解的影响程度。90 名学生参与了研究：一组收到了带有完整元音的文本和问题，而另一组收到了没有短元音的文本和问题。一周后，参与者被赋予了第二项任务。一周后，参与者收到了一篇文章，并测试了他们的阅读理解能力。课文中的某些词被突出显示，学生被要求解释这些词并定义它们的句法功能。结果表明，学习元音文本的学生的成绩明显高于学习非元音文本的学生。此外，还发现学生对语法和句法的了解越多，她/他对单词含义的理解就越好。