Do Arabic-speaking students use sub-lexical phonological or lexical processes in reading words in English as a foreign language?

Elinor Saeigh Haddad, Hala Hanna-Irsheid

Decoding relies on accurate and fluent sub-lexical phonological processes that map letters and combinations of letters to sounds (Perfetti, 2007; Proctor, Carlo, August & Snow, 2005; Moats, 2005).  However, these skills develop less efficiently in a deep orthography like English (Seymour, Aro, & Erskine, 2003), both as L1 (Ziegler & Goswami, 2005) and L2 (August & Shanahan, 2006).  This has been demonstrated among EFL students and teachers in Israel (Russak, 2019; Khan Horowits and Sparks 2006) who may not be properly instructed with the appropriate sub-lexical decoding of certain regular orthographic patterns and syllable types in English (Moats & Sedita, 2006).  Instead, they might rely on lexical strategies based on whole word spellings, especially beyond the elementary grades (Khan-Horowitz, 2020).

The current study investigates whether Arabic-speaking EFL learners in the 8th and 10th grades use lexical or sub-lexical phonological processes for word decoding in EFL, and whether this changes with grade. The study targets six frequent English spelling patterns: closed syllable, open syllable, VC-e type, vowel team, controlled -r syllable, and Cl-e pattern, and tests whether students show familiarity and use of these spelling patterns in their decoding performance.

Arabic speaking learners in the 8rd grade (n=50) and in the 10th grade (n=50) were recruited.  English word and pseudoword decoding tasks were used each consisting of 50 items that were read out loud by the participants. Reading accuracy (words correct) and fluency (words correct per minute) were measured. Repeated measure ANOVA was used with group as a between subject variable and lexicality and type of spelling patterns as within subject variables.

The results showed significant main effects of group and lexicality:  real words were read more accurately and fluently than pseudowords in both grades, and 10th graders read both word lists more accurately and fluently than 8th graders suggesting that readers might have used different reading mechanisms: lexical phonological strategies for reading real words, and sub-lexical phonological skills for reading pseudowords. In general, exposure to EFL and a large vocabulary size enhance the development of fluent decoding processes among EFL learners. (Zoccolotti, et. al, 2005). However, it was found that the syllable types were read less accurately within pseudo words than within real words, and especially so by 8th graders than by 10th graders implying that  lack of familiarity of Arabic learners of EFL with the syllabic patterns leads  them  to use lexical processing rather than sub lexical processing when reading pseudo  words. Thus, explicit training of the sub lexical phonological processes and exposure to the different syllabic patterns in English are essential for both teachers and learners of EFL.