The Impact Of Morphological Awareness Versus Phonological Awareness On Arabic Spelling

Abstract

In general, studies investigating the role of morphological knowledge in spelling suggested that
morphological knowledge, the implicit knowledge of morphology, contributes significantly to
spelling development and spelling accuracy (e.g., Treiman and Cassar, 1996; Carlisle, 1988;
Deacon and Bryant, 2006). The explicit morphological knowledge reflected in morphological
awareness (MA) tasks has been found to correlate significantly with spelling competency and
other literacy skills (e.g., Schiff and Raveh, 2007; Apel and Lawrence, 2011; Nagy et al., 2003).
Although there is theoretical support for the contribution of phonology to reading and spelling
abilities in the very early years (e.g., Berninger et al., 2010), morphological knowledge was
found to have more influence on the literacy acquisition beyond the early years and mainly in the
upper elementary years of schooling (eg., Tyler and Nagy, 1989; Nagy, et al., 2006). This study
investigated the contribution of morphological awareness (MA), in contrast to phonological
awareness (PA), to spelling competency among young Arabic-speaking learners. The results
revealed that both MA and PA make a significant contribution to spelling performance in Arabic,
even though PA had, comparatively, a greater impact on spelling than MA which is consistent
with the majority of spelling studies (e.g., Ehri et al., 2001; Caravolas, 2004; Bird et al., 1995).
Such a finding is not surprising since morphological operations in Arabic, and mainly the word
pattern, are based on phonological patterns built onto consonantal roots.