Morphological ability among monolingual and‭ ‬bilingual‭ ‬speakers‭ ‬in early childhood‭: ‬The case of two Semitic‭ ‬languages

Dr. Abeer Asli-Badarneh

This study examines the effects of bilingualism, Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) proficiency, native language, age and children morphological awareness on reading acquisition in Arabic among bilingual Arabic-Hebrew and Hebrew-Arabic first- and third grade students compared to their monolingual peers.

The experiment included four groups of children: 449 children from bilingual (Arabic-Hebrew) and monolingual (Hebrew or Arabic) schools and kindergartens: 199 monolingual and bilingual pre-schoolers (mean age: 5:4), 200 monolinguals and bilingual׳s 1^st grade students aged from 6 to 7, and 100 monolinguals and bilingual 3^rd grade students aged from 8 to 9. All children performed on a reading assessment task, and several tasks on derivational and inflectional morphology in one or both languages (corresponding to the number of languages).

The results demonstrated that Arabic is more challenging to reading and morphology acquisition compared with Hebrew in all ages. It was shown that Arabic-speaking bilinguals performed better reading and morphological achievements in their L2 (Hebrew) compared with Hebrew-speaking bilinguals in their L2 (Arabic). It was also shown that bilingualism influences the development of morphological abilities positively and affects positively on the development of reading achievements. Such factors as MSA, derivational morphology, age, native language and bilingualism

contribute significantly to mastering the reading of Arabic as L2.

In all grades, among Hebrew speakers, monolinguals showed better reading performance in Hebrew than bilinguals, in contrast, among Arabic speakers, bilinguals demonstrated higher reading performance compared to monolinguals. This finding demonstrates two different models of relation between bilingualism and L1 reading development. On the one hand, bilingualism restricts reading development, on the other hand, bilingualism support reading development in L2.