The Development of Academic Vocabulary among Arabic Native Speaking Middle School Pupils: How Much Do They Really Know?

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to obtain a more fine-grained understanding of academic vocabulary knowledge in Arabic as L1 among middle school pupils. Accordingly, 1197 middle school Arabic native speaking pupils, representing the different Arab subgroups in Israel, have participated in this study. In the first phase of the study, a corpus based Arabic academic vocabulary list (AAVL) was developed, setting ground for developing three assessment tests that measured receptive vocabulary knowledge on different levels, commencing from mere recognition to application and production of academic vocabulary in context. In the second phase, differences in academic vocabulary knowledge were assessed in relation to age (7 th and 9 th grades) and Arab sub-group (General Arab, Druze and Bedouin). Significant main effects were found for age and Arab subgroup. Significantly higher performance was noted among 9 th graders when compared to 7 th graders with the Druze sub group outperforming the general Arab and the Bedouin subgroup. The latter sub-group, characterized by the lowest socio-economic background showed the poorest performance. Additionally, three-way interaction was found between academic vocabulary knowledge level, age and Arab subgroup. In both 7 th and 9 th grade, significant differences were found between the Arab subgroups on the academic cloze test and production of academic vocabulary only. Post-hoc comparisons showed that in both age groups, the Druze subgroup achieved the highest performance in both tests. Significant differences between the general Arab and Bedouin subgroups were noted on the academic cloze test but not on the production of academic vocabulary test. The results of the study and its implications are discussed.

Promoting academic literacy skills among seven graders in Arabic as L1 in Israel (El fomento del lenguaje académico de los estudiantes de lengua árabe en el primer curso de secundaria en Israel)

“…Throughout the introduced content, the pupils were exposed to high-frequency required academic vocabulary across varied texts from different knowledge domains. The selected words were chosen from the Makhoul et al (2018) Arabic academic vocabulary list (AAVL), including the 55 most frequent academic word roots. Each unit presented five academic word roots.…”

“…Reading comprehension questions then followed. The included academic words were only selected from the 55 most frequent academic word root list (i.e., AAWL; Makhoul et al, 2018).…”

“…Diversos estudios neurocognitivos sugieren que ambas variantes lingüísticas, AH y AEM se representan por separado en el sistema cognitivo de modo que el AEM se representa como L2 entre los hablantes nativos de árabe (Ibrahim, 2009;Ibrahim & Aharon-Peretz, 2005). Se ha observado que esta situación diglósica del árabe tiene un impacto enorme en el desarrollo lingüístico y en la alfabetización y afecta, entre otros aspectos, al desarrollo terminológico (para una revisión del tema, véase Makhoul, Olshtain, Sabah, & Copti-Mshael, 2018;Saiegh-Haddad & Joshi, 2014).…”

“…Pruebas de evaluación (medidas previas y posteriores) Para evaluar los conocimientos de vocabulario académico y las aptitudes de comprensión lectora, se desarrollaron cuatro pruebas de evaluación que los participantes completaron antes y después del programa de intervención. Los términos académicos meta incluidos en las pruebas fueron seleccionados entre las 55 raíces léxicas más frecuentes en la lista de vocabulario académico árabe de Makhoul (AAVL; Makhoul et al, 2018).…”

“…Neurocognitive studies suggest that MSA and SA are represented separately in the cognitive system, with the former being represented as L2 amongst Arabic native speakers (Ibrahim, 2009;Ibrahim & Aharon-Peretz, 2005). The diglossic context of the Arabic language has been found to immensely impact language development and literacy, affecting among other aspects vocabulary development (for review see Makhoul, Olshtain, Sabah, & Copti-Mshael, 2018;Saiegh-Haddad & Joshi, 2014).…”