Phonological and orthographic vocabulary knowledge and processing speed of L2 written text: the case of native Arabic EF
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Phonological and orthographic vocabulary knowledge and processing speed of L2 written text: the case of native Arabic EFL learners Ahmed Masrai1 Received: 22 February 2020 / Accepted: 18 August 2020 © Marta Olivetti Belardinelli and Springer-Verlag GmbH Germany, part of Springer Nature 2020
Abstract Reading in a foreign language is one of the key defining aspects of successful L2 acquisition. However, research has repeatedly suggested that Arabic-speaking learners of EFL expend a great deal of their reading time in phonologically decoding words letter-by-letter before they are able to access their meanings. To further our understanding of this unique reading difficulty, this study investigated the relationship between the phonological and orthographic lexicons and L2 reading speed among 82 native Arabic learners of EFL. Two measures tapping aural and written modalities of vocabulary knowledge, and a measure of reading speed were administered to the participants. The results showed that phonological vocabulary knowledge correlated more strongly with L2 reading speed (r = .61) than did orthographic vocabulary knowledge (r = .32). Regression modeling also showed that only phonological vocabulary knowledge was able to explain unique variance in learners’ L2 reading speed (R2 = .37). The findings indicate that Arabic-speaking EFL learners do in fact depend greatly on their L2 phonological lexicon when processing English written text. The discussion addresses the importance of developing an orthographic lexicon of suitable size in L2 learners in order to read efficiently in English. Keywords Phonological vocabulary · Orthographic vocabulary · Reading speed · Arabic EFL learners · Second language
Introduction Reading in a foreign language is considered an essential indicator of successful second language (L2) learning. However, the literature has repeatedly suggested that native Arabic-speaking learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) experience unique difficulty when reading English orthography (Alhazmi 2018; Alsulaimani 1990; Masrai and Milton 2018; Ryan 1997; Ryan and Meara 1991). This L2 reading difficulty has been attributed principally to the features of the Arabic language itself and to the negative transfer of first language (L1) reading strategies used by Arabic speakers when reading an English text. One notion that is recurrently addressed in the literature to explain reading Handling editor: Gladys Nyarko Ansah (University of Ghana). Reviewers: Fusheini Angulu Hudu (University of Ghana), Mabel Oti-Boadi (University of Ghana). * Ahmed Masrai [email protected] 1
Department of Languages, King Abdulaziz Military Academy, Riyadh 11583, Saudi Arabia
difficulty in Arabic learners of EFL is ‘vowel blindness’ (Hayes-Harb 2006; Randall and Meara 1988; Ryan and Meara 1991). Vowel blindness is generally defined as a difficulty that native Arabic speakers encounter when decoding and encoding L2 English vowels that appear in written form as a consequence of an inadequate decoding strategy
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