Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) of Language Skills Among Bilingual Arabic-English Readers

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Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) ofLanguage Skills Among Bilingual Arabic-English ReadersSalim Abu-Rabia a , Wael Shakkour b & Linda Siegel ca University of Haifab Nazareth Institution (NI) for Bilingualism and Dyslexiac University of British ColumbiaPublished online: 24 May 2013.

To cite this article: Salim Abu-Rabia , Wael Shakkour & Linda Siegel (2013): Cognitive RetroactiveTransfer (CRT) of Language Skills Among Bilingual Arabic-English Readers, Bilingual Research Journal:The Journal of the National Association for Bilingual Education, 36:1, 61-81

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Bilingual Research Journal, 36: 61–81, 2013Copyright © the National Association for Bilingual EducationISSN: 1523-5882 print / 1523-5890 onlineDOI: 10.1080/15235882.2013.775975

Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) of Language SkillsAmong Bilingual Arabic-English Readers

Salim Abu-RabiaUniversity of Haifa

Wael ShakkourNazareth Institution (NI) for Bilingualism and Dyslexia

Linda SiegelUniversity of British Columbia

This study examined the effects of an intervention helping struggling readers improve their readingand writing skills in English as a foreign language (L2), and those same skills in Arabic, which wastheir first language (L1). Transferring linguistic skills from L2 to L1 is termed cognitive retroactivetransfer. Tests were administered to the experimental and control groups that assessed orthographicknowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, syntax awareness, reading accuracy,and reading comprehension in Arabic and English. The experimental group received an interven-tion program in English, but not in Arabic, and the assessments were administered before andafter the intervention. The findings indicated a significant improvement in the experimental group’sachievements in all linguistic and metalinguistic skills in both Arabic and English after the Englishintervention program, with the exception of orthographic knowledge in Arabic. Therefore, foreignlanguage learning can result in improvements in native language skills.

Salim Abu-Rabia is Professor of reading and language learning at the University of Haifa–Israel. He obtained hisPhD from The Ontario Institute for Studies in Education affiliated with the University of Toronto. His research interestsare: reading and reading disabilities in different orthographies, bilingualism and bilingual education in different socialcontexts, early reading acquisition, and early intervention programs among at-risk children, and cognitive emotional andsocial aspects of reading.

Wael Shakkour is Director of the Nazareth Institute for Special Education and Principal of a special education schoolfor the Ministry of Education in Israel, the Nazareth Institution (NI) for Bilingualism and Dyslexia in Nazareth, Israel.

Linda Siegel is Dorothy C. Lam Chair in Special Education and Professor in the Department of Educational andCounselling Psychology and Special Education at the University of British Columbia, Vancouver, Canada. She has con-ducted research on dyslexia, reading and language development, mathematical concept learning, mathematical learningdisabilities, and children learning English as a second language.

Address correspondence to Salim Abu-Rabia, Department of Special Education, Education and Sciences Bldg.,University of Haifa, Haifa 31905, Israel. E-mail: [email protected]

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62 ABU-RABIA, SHAKKOUR, AND SIEGEL

INTRODUCTION

It is widely assumed that it is easy for good readers to acquire a second language (L2), while it isquite the opposite among poor readers. According to Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002), children withpoor reading skills in their mother tongue will also exhibit weakness in L2, and children whoseperformance is high in their mother tongue (L1) will attain good results in L2 (Durgunoglu,2002). The explanation offered for the connection between L1 skills and L2 acquisition is that themetalinguistic skills used in reading and writing, such as phonological awareness, orthographicawareness, and morphological awareness, among others, are common to all languages. Thus, iflinguistic and metalinguistic skills are found to be strong in one language, the same level willbe reflected in an L2 (Cummins, 1979, 1981). Similarly, should linguistic skills in one languagebe deficient, then they will also be so in an L2 (Geva, 1995). This explanation corresponds toCummins’s (1979, 1981) linguistic interdependence hypothesis.

The question that the current study explores is: Can such a transfer occur in the oppositedirection? In other words, can linguistic and metalinguistic skills be transferred from L2 to L1?The transfer of skills in this direction (L2→L1) is referred to as cognitive retroactive transfer(CRT), as it entails the application of cognitive skills acquired later in time to those acquiredat an earlier time. Demonstrating that such a transfer (L2 to L1 skills) can indeed occur willconstitute the innovation presented by this study.

THEORIES OF SECOND LANGUAGE LEARNING

The linguistic interdependence hypothesis was suggested by Cummins (1979, 1981), who arguedthat the transfer of linguistic skills from L1 happens automatically, regardless of the type oforthography involved. The linguistic interdependence hypothesis suggests that high reading abil-ity in one language leads not only to skills related to the knowledge of reading and writing in thatlanguage, but also to the transfer of deep linguistic knowledge (i.e., the skills for reading, writing,and other general academic tasks) to L2. The script-dependent hypothesis suggests that readingefficiency in L2 is a direct function of L1 orthography, and orthographic differences play animportant role in the L2 reading-acquisition process (Liberman, Shankweiler, Fischer, & Carter,1974; Lindgren, DeRenzi, & Richman, 1985). According to this approach, the reading develop-ment in any language is constrained by the orthographic features of that language. Hence, if theorthographic systems of L1 and L2 are different, this will affect the acquisition of reading skills inL2. For example, reading problems in one language may reflect the degree of grapheme/phonemecorrespondence in the language; however, this difficulty may not pertain to the reading develop-ment in a second language with a different orthographic system (Liberman et al., 1974; Lindgrenet al., 1985). The orthographic depth hypothesis suggests that readers adjust their reading strat-egy according to the orthographic character of the language (Katz & Frost, 1992). In shalloworthography, the degree of orthographic consistency is high, and readers rely more on “sublex-ical” phonological units for decoding words, whereas in languages with deep orthography, thelevel of consistency is low, and readers rely more on whole lexical items for word recognition(Katz & Frost, 1992).

According to the psycholinguistic grain size theory suggested by Ziegler and Goswami(2005), dramatic differences in reading accuracy and speed were discovered to be related to the

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COGNITIVE RETROACTIVE TRANSFER OF LANGUAGE SKILLS 63

orthographic system of the language, which in turn reflects substantial differences in character-istics of phonological processing and reading strategies. In languages characterized by opaqueorthographies, such as English, the beginning reader must cope with a problem of inconsistency,because the orthographic units in the language have more than one form of pronunciation, andsome of the phonological units have several spelling possibilities.

PREDICTORS OF READING ACQUISITION

Learning to read is essentially learning to navigate between the spoken form and the printedform of the language (Adams, 1990; Perfetti, 1985, 2003). Reading is the process of interpret-ing and understanding written language, a process that begins with visual stimulation and endswith an understanding of the idea the writer is trying to convey (Rayner & Pollatsek, 1989).According to Perfetti (1985, 2003), learning to read symbolizes the deciphering of the spo-ken language being expressed in a written framework. The reading process is reflected onlyin the ability to understand the meaning of the text, while the process itself is a comprehen-sive one and includes evaluation, identification, interpretation, and understanding the deep strataof the text.

Phonological Awareness

This is a linguistic skill that relates to the ability to identify and manage spoken words and toanalyze those words’ phonological features, such as phonemes, accents, and rhyme (Goswami &Bryant, 1990; Stanovich, 1986; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1994). Phonological awarenessis the ability to decode the connection between the phonemes and the letters’ sounds, an abilitythat provides the initial basis upon which reading, writing, and spelling develop (Chiappe, Siegel,& Gottardo, 2002; Lipka, Siegel, & Vukovic, 2005). Phonological awareness is a linguistic cog-nitive skill that can transfer between languages and is considered an important reading predictorin alphabetic languages, not only for the mother tongue, but for an L2 as well (Adams, 1990;Ball, 1993; Chiang & Rvachew, 2007; Durgunoglu & Oney, 1999; Sun-Alperin & Wang, 2009;Al-Tamimi & Rabab’ah, 2007). Many studies have examined the transfer of phonological skillsbetween Arabic (with transparent orthography when vowelized) and English (opaque orthog-raphy) (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002, 2003; Al-Tamimi & Rabab’ah, 2007). In these studies theresearchers reported that phonological skills did indeed transfer between Arabic and English.Wade-Woolley and Geva (2000) have examined linguistic transfer of phonological awarenessbetween English and Hebrew (with transparent orthography when vowelized). The findingindicated an important relationship between the phonological systems of languages. Similarfindings were found between Spanish (shallow orthography) and English (Bialystok, Luk, &Kwan, 2005; Cisero & Royer, 1995; Durgunoglu, Nagy, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993; Sun-Alperin &Wang, 2009). Durgunoglu et al. (1993) investigated the cross-language transfer of phonologicalawareness in bilingual Spanish-English beginning readers. Their results demonstrated that chil-dren who could perform well on Spanish phonological awareness tasks were more likely to

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be able to read English words and pseudowords compared to children who performed poorlyon these tasks.

Orthographic Knowledge

Orthographic knowledge relates to knowledge of the written framework of a given languageand consists of orthographic symbols found in written words that help to identify those words(Nassaji & Geva, 1999) or in understanding a certain text (Wagner & Barker, 1994). One ofthe basic indicators of reading acquisition among beginning readers is familiarity with namesof letters (Badian, 1995; Snow, Burns, & Griffin, 1998). Knowing names of letters quite oftenprovides an approach to their sounds and allows beginning readers to acquire their first decodingstrategies (Carroll, 2000). To create efficient L2 text processing, control of orthographic knowl-edge should reach the level of automaticity. Numerous studies have examined cross-languagetransfer of orthographic skills (Abu-Rabia, 2001a; Abu-Rabia & Sanitsky, 2010; Abu-Rabia& Siegel, 2002, 2003; Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby, 2009). No consensus can be indi-cated from the findings of these studies, whether orthographic knowledge transfers betweenlanguages or is language specific (script dependent). Kahn-Horwitz, Shimron, and Sparks (2005)examined variables that can affect reading acquisition in two languages, Hebrew and English.The findings indicated that orthographic knowledge in L1 contributed to identifying letters andtheir sounds in L2. Further, decoding orthography in Hebrew contributed to reading and read-ing comprehension in English. Deacon et al. (2009) examined the transfer of orthographicskills between English and French. The findings revealed important correlations between theorthographic systems of both languages and found also a strong positive correlation betweenprocessing orthography in English and reading and spelling in French. Similar results werefound between Arabic and English (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002), Russian-English (Abu-Rabia& Sanitsky, 2010), Persian-English (Nassaji & Geva, 1999), and Chinese-English (Wang, Koda,& Perfetti, 2003). The findings of previous studies indicated that orthographic knowledge is notlanguage specific and transfers between languages; these studies support Cummings’s linguisticinterdependence hypothesis (1979, 1981). In contrast, many studies that investigated languagesthat differ in orthographic characters (shallow and deep orthographies, alphabetical and logo-graphical orthographies), showed that orthographic knowledge is language specific and cannottransfer between languages (Abu-Rabia, 1997a; 2001a; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003). These stud-ies’ findings are consistent with the script-dependent hypothesis (Liberman et al., 1974; Lindgrenet al., 1985). Abu-Rabia (2001a) examined Russian bilingual students learning English as aforeign language (FL). The findings indicate that linguistic skills of L1 tend to transfer to theFL, except orthographic skills that are language specific. These findings lead to the commonconclusion that children need increased exposure to the specific orthography to understand theway a specific written language is represented. Shimron and Sivan (1994) found that linguis-tic skills of Hebrew L1 tend to transfer to the English L2, except orthographic skills that arelanguage specific. Similarly, researchers examined Persian bilinguals studying English as theirFL. The researchers reported significant transfer of phonological skills between the two lan-guages. However, processing orthography predicted reading and spelling within languages butnot between languages. Identical findings were reported regarding Arabic-English (Abu-Rabia& Siegel, 2003), Circassian-English (Abu-Rabia, 1997b), Dutch-English (Morfidi et al., 2007),

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Spanish-English (Sun-Alperin & Wang, 2009), Korean-English (Wang, Koda, & Perfetti, 2003),and Chinese-English (Keung & Ho, 2009).

Morphological Awareness

Morphological awareness means being aware of a word’s morphological structure and being ableto manage this structure (Carlisle, 1995). This includes the child’s ability to apply morphemicknowledge toward identifying and creating forms of words that are more complex morphologi-cally and to adapt the new structure to the given language (Byrne, 1996; Perfetti, 1985). Manystudies examined the early stages of reading acquisition and suggested that young children show afundamental understanding of morphological word components. Byrne (1996) noted that English-speaking children in the early reading stage tended to notice morphological features more thanphonological features of new words, and that morphological awareness of spoken language con-tributed to the child’s reading development (Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Mahony, Singson, & Mann,2000). Other studies have demonstrated that morphological awareness has an influence on read-ing comprehension (Deacon & Kirby, 2004) and on the acquisition of spelling skills (Abu-Rabia,2001a; Ravid, 2001).

Few studies that examined morphological cross-language transfer indicated that morpholog-ical features influence the transfer direction of morphological skills. Transparent orthographiesusually have deep and complex morphological systems, while deep orthographies have transpar-ent and simple morphological systems. Ramírez, Chen, Geva, and Kiefer (2010) examined thelinguistic transfer of morphological skills among bilingual Spanish-speaking children learningEnglish as their L2. Children were tested by two measures of derivational morphology. The find-ings indicated that morphological awareness contributed to reading within languages in Spanishand English. In addition, morphological awareness in Spanish was a good predictor of wordreading in English. However, morphological skills in English did not predict word reading inSpanish. In summary, studies that revealed cross-language transfer of morphological skills sup-port Cummins’s linguistic interdependence hypothesis (1979, 1981). However, nontransferablefindings of morphological awareness from English to other languages with shallow orthographiessupport the script-dependent hypothesis (Liberman et al., 1974; Lindgren et al., 1985).

Syntax Awareness

Syntax awareness helps readers to know the syntactic role of each word in a sentence and alsohelps them understand meanings of sentences and the context of concepts within sentences (Just& Carpenter, 1987). Durgunoglu (2002) argued that a command of syntax awareness demandsseeing things in metalingual terms, which relates to the ability to discern internal grammaticalstructures of sentences in a language. As such, syntax awareness is a very important contributorto understanding reading and coping with connected texts, since it provides an understanding ofcombining words into larger syntactical units, like sentences and paragraphs (Alderson, 1993;Just & Carpenter, 1987). Alderson (1993) discovered an overlap between students’ achieve-ments in syntax and grammatical assignments and those of reading. It was concluded that syntaxand grammatical awareness play an important role in reading acquisition. Abu-Rabia and Siegel(2002, 2003) found a positive correlation in syntax skills between Arabic L1 and English L2/L3.

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Likewise, syntax awareness in Arabic predicted the reading of English words and pseudowords.Similar findings were obtained between Hebrew and English (Abu-Rabia, 1997a; Geva & Siegel,2000). Geva and Siegel (2000) examined cognitive and orthographic factors in two languages,Hebrew and English. They indicated strong correlations in syntax awareness between HebrewL1 and English L2. It was concluded that the transfer of syntax skills from L1to L2 occursregardless of the orthography type. Similar findings were found in studies that examined syn-tax awareness transfer between Russian-English (Abu-Rabia & Sanitsky, 2010), Spanish-English(Durgunoglu, Mir, & Ariño-Martí, 2002), Swedish-English (Cromdal, 1999), and Italian-English(D’Angiulli, Siegel, and Serra, 2001). It was concluded from these findings that cross-languagetransfer of syntax skills supports Cummins’s linguistic interdependence hypothesis (1979, 1981).In contrast, numerous studies that examined the cross-language transfer of syntactic awarenessskills among bilinguals from diverse language backgrounds (Portuguese, Cantonese, Mandarin,Gujarati, Urdu) into L2 English have shown poor performance on syntactic awareness skills ofbilinguals compared to native English speakers. In other words, the performance of bilinguals inL1 syntactic-awareness tasks did not predict similar results in L2 English (Chiappe & Siegel,1999; Chiappe, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2002; Da Fontoura & Siegel, 1995). However, thePortuguese children’s achievements on syntactic awareness tasks were low compared to monolin-gual English-speaking participants. Previous findings have demonstrated that syntactic awarenessskills are language specific and therefore support the script-dependent hypothesis (Libermanet al., 1974; Lindgren et al., 1985).

Reading Comprehension

Reading comprehension relates to understanding the meaning of the written or heard messageand occurs when the reader condenses information and combines various details from the textwith prior knowledge (Koda, 2005). According to Snow and Sweet (2003), reading compre-hension is a multidimensional and complex process that requires high cognitive ability and aprocess of extracting and constructing, in that the reader extracts meanings from texts and atthe same time combines meanings with prior knowledge in order to construct new meanings.This suggests that the interaction between the text and a child’s basic knowledge contributes toreading-comprehension development (Alderson & Urquhart, 1988). The findings of numerousstudies have indicated that the linguistic components of L1, such as phonological awareness,morphological awareness, orthographic knowledge, syntax awareness, vocabulary, and metacog-nitive knowledge, contributed to L2 reading-comprehension development (Kahn-Horwitz et al.,2005; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Nassaji & Geva, 1999; Wang et al., 2003; Zhang & Koda, 2008).Nassaji and Geva (1999) found that orthographic possessing skills in Persian L1 significantlycontributed to English reading comprehension. Kieffer and Lesaux (2008) found significantcorrelations between Spanish morphological awareness and reading comprehension skills inEnglish as the L2 of the learners. Zhang and Koda (2008) examined the contribution of mor-phological awareness in English reading comprehension among Chinese bilingual children witha logographic orthography background learning English as their L2. The findings indicated thatmorphological awareness in both languages, Chinese L1 and English L2, was a strong predictorof reading comprehension in English, the L2 of the learners. The conclusions of previous stud-ies support Cummins’s linguistic interdependence hypothesis (1979, 1981). In contrast, other

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studies’ findings have shown that there is no cross-language transfer of skills that can contributeto the development of L2 reading comprehension skills (Akamatsu, 2003; Guo & Roehrig, 2011;Shimron and Sivan, 1994; Verhoeven, 2000).

Arabic Orthography

Literary Arabic, which is read and written from right to left, uses an alphabetical system com-prised of 28 letters, all of which are consonants, but three of which are also considered longvowels (Abu-Rabia, 2001b; Abu-Rabia & Saliba, 2008). Most Arabic letters are connected toother letters in the word, which gives them more than one written form, depending on their posi-tion in the word: beginning, middle, or end; however, the essential shape of the letter is maintainedin all cases (Abd El-Minem, 1987). In addition, there are many similarities between the letters,and the difference between them is the number of dots on, in, or under the letter (Abu-Rabia, 1998,2001b). These diacritical marks are short vowel signs posted above, and/or in, and/or below theletters, for letter-sound pronunciation (Abd El-Minem, 1987). Arabic words are a combinationof consonants and short and long vowels. There is a predictable sound-symbol correspondencebetween the letters and their sounds if the Arabic text is presented with the diacritics, i.e., thevowelization system. Texts for beginning readers are typically written in vowelized form, a so-called shallow/transparent orthography and in unvowelized deep orthography for more advancedreaders (Abu-Rabia, 2001b, 2002; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003). Arabic morphology is based onroots and word patterns. Arabic roots are constructed of three or four letters, and some of theseroots are constructed of five or two consonants (Abu-Rabia, 2001b). The root morpheme rep-resents the basic semantic entity of the general word, which is not an autonomic phonologicalunit, and its pronunciation cannot be clearly defined (Abu-Rabia, 2007; Abu-Rabia & Taha,2006). Arabic morphology is built from two types of structures: derivational and inflectional(Abu-Rabia, 2001b, 2002). The derivational morphology produces words based on consonantalroots and word-pattern affixes. Word patterns are built of prefixes, suffixes, and infixes, whichcause changes in phonemic structures. This causes difficulties in decomposing words back intothe roots from which they were derived (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2006; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva,2008). The complexity of Arabic morphology makes it an opaque morphology, which means thatfor the Arabic-speaking child, the process of developing linguistic awareness is a difficult one(Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008). In contrast, the inflectional morphological system in Arabic isconstructed by attaching prefixes and suffixes to real words. The system of inflectional morphol-ogy of verbs is systematic and considers person, number, gender, and time, which helps readersto pronounce words accurately and understand syntactic and grammatical roles of words in sen-tences (Abu-Rabia, 2001b; Abu-Rabia & Saliba, 2008; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003). Based onthe analysis of the orthographic and morphological Arabic systems, we conclude that the Arabiclanguage has a transparent orthography, on the one hand, while on the other hand, it is charac-terized as an opaque morphological system. Thus, it is likely that Arabic speakers learning toread may rely more on phonological processing than on morphological processing. Some schol-ars have considered Arabic as a case of diglossia, a term according to which the spoken and thewritten language are significantly different in terms of vocabulary, phonology, grammar, and syn-tax. Children in diglossic situations normally cope simultaneously with reading and writing in anunfamiliar language (Saiegh-Haddad, 2005).

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METHOD

Participants

Sixty students whose mother tongue is Arabic and who were studying English as their L2 par-ticipated in this study. All participants were from middle-class neighborhoods, enrolled in thesixth grade at regular Arab elementary schools in northern Israel. These students were definedby their teachers as struggling both in Arabic and English, with their average grade in both lan-guages being 60. They were exposed to English-language study in the school framework fromthird grade. The children were chosen at random from three elementary schools in the Galileeregion of northern Israel, which is characterized by a high concentration of Arab residents. Thesample included 34 girls and 26 boys divided into two groups: the experiment group, which con-tained 16 girls and 14 boys, and the control group with 18 girls and 12 boys. The average age ofthe participants was 11.7 years.

Procedure

Participants were divided into two groups: the experimental and control groups. The two tests inArabic and English were administered in three stages. The first two stages included four taskseach, while the third stage included two texts for reading comprehension. The three stages werecompleted over a two-week period. The test results served as a baseline by which to compare theresults of tests administered at the end of the experimental process. After the first tests were com-pleted and their results analyzed, the intervention program began to be formulated by a committeeof language experts and in consultation with the teachers, who conducted the test in English. Theintervention program was built based on the participants’ points of strength and weakness. Sincealmost all of the participants showed weak abilities in almost every indicator for English, it wasdecided that the intervention program would focus on linguistic skills for which the students wereexamined in this study, which included orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactical,reading, and reading comprehension skills. It is important to note that the intervention programwas distributed among participants in the experimental group by an English teacher, while thecontrol group received no intervention. At the conclusion of the intervention program, the samebattery of tests in English and Arabic was given to all participants, experimental and control groupalike. The goal of the English tests at the end of the intervention program was to examine whetherany change occurred in the skills that were practiced in the English intervention program. Thetests in Arabic had a dual goal: to examine whether any change had occurred in students’ achieve-ments in Arabic when compared with achievements before the English intervention program andto establish whether metalinguistic skills were transferred from English to Arabic, i.e., from thesecond to the first language in accordance with the research question.

Tasks

To examine the participants’ ability in metalinguistic skills, both groups underwent a battery oftests in both English and Arabic. Tests were administered preintervention for both groups andpostintervention for both groups. All tests were identical in content, scope, and level of difficulty,

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with nine questions regarding each language and 30 tasks in each question. The tests includedthe following areas: orthography, phonology, morphology, syntax, reading accuracy, and readingcomprehension.

Orthographic Knowledge in Arabic (Alpha = 0.85) and English (0.82)

This task examined the students’ ability to identify letters and the order in which they appearin a word. The student received a number of letters arranged in the wrong order; connecting theletters did not produce a word with any meaning. Students were asked to rearrange the letters inthe right order to produce a meaningful word. For example:

The letters in Arabic The word___________________.The letters in English t b a l e. The word__________________.

Phonological Knowledge in Arabic (Alpha = 0.85) and English (0.79)

This assignment examined the phonological-analytical ability of the student to pronounce thesyllables in given words. For example:

The word in Arabic broken down into syllables:_______________.The word in English important broken down into syllables:____________.

Morphological Awareness in Arabic (Alpha = 0.88) and English (Alpha = 0.77)

This linguistic skill consisted of three tasks.

First task—Identification. Participants were asked to identify the root of the word in Arabicand identify the stem that makes up the word in English. For example:

The word in Arabic —its root:________________ .The word in English helpful—its stem:______________.

Second task—Derivatives. The participant was asked to derive four words from a singleterm. For example:

The word in Arabic Derivatives: ____________________ .The word in English appear. Derivatives:__________________.

Third task—Inflection. Participants were asked to change words from single to plural,demonstrating awareness of orthographical and morphological changes that occur in a word as aresult. For example:

The word in Arabic Plural form:_____________________.The word in English class. Plural form:_____________________.

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Syntax Awareness in Arabic (Alpha = 0.89) and English (Alpha = 0.91)

This linguistic skill consisted of two tasks.

First task: Correcting sentences. To examine the participants’ awareness of legal sentencestructure, they received sentences with incorrect word order and were asked to rearrange them tomake a legal sentence. For example:

Incorrect sentence in Arabic:Correct sentence in Arabic:______________________________.Incorrect sentence in English: sun / rises / the / east / from / the.Correct sentence in English:_____________________________.

Second task: Complete sentences. Participants were given incomplete sentences andwere asked to add proper connecting words to complete them. For example:

Sentence in Arabic: ________Sentence in English: The Second World War started _____ 1939.

Reading in Arabic (Alpha = 0.90) and English (Alpha = 0.86)

This examined reading accuracy. Each participant received 30 isolated words in Arabic and30 in English and was instructed to read them aloud for accuracy.

Reading Comprehension in Arabic (Alpha = 0.92) and English (Alpha = 0.88)

Each participant received two texts in Arabic and two in English. Each text was accompaniedby 10 multiple-choice questions for a total of 20 questions in Arabic and 20 in English. Theparticipant was instructed to read the text silently and then answer the multiple-choice compre-hension questions. The texts matched the Arabic and English language curricula for sixth grade.The questions were composed by the researcher in consultation with highly experienced teachersin the field. It is important to note that the Arabic and English groups were formed by a committeeof experts in accordance with the Arabic and English curricula for sixth grade.

To be approved for participation in the reading comprehension assessment in the entire study,the participants first completed an examination and were evaluated by three teachers of Arabicand three teachers of English with long-term experience in teaching these languages in the sixthgrade.

RESULTS

To consider whether participants’ language skills in both languages improved after the inter-vention, differences in English and Arabic knowledge before and after intervention in theexperimental and control groups were examined. The significance of the difference between skilllevels before and after the intervention was examined using the t-test. Tables 1 and 2 present theexperimental and control groups’ average grades (in percentages) obtained on English and Arabic

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tests before and after the intervention, along with the standard deviation of the grades and the tvalues for each of the linguistic skills in English and Arabic.

The findings in Table 1 indicate a significant difference between the mean scores in all English-language and all Arabic-language skills before and after the intervention in the experimentalgroup. However, the improvement in Arabic orthographic skills was relatively low in comparisonwith the improvement rate in all other Arabic linguistic skills. The average grade for orthographicknowledge in Arabic before the intervention was M = 74.66% and M = 77.66% after the inter-vention. Furthermore, the rate of improvement seen in the average overall grade in Arabic forall linguistic skills together (before M = 62.09% and after intervention M = 73.92%) was muchhigher than the improvement seen between the averages for orthographic knowledge before andafter the intervention. Similarly, the findings in Table 1 point to the fact that the change thatoccurred in overall average grades in English before and after the intervention was higher thanthe change seen in the overall average grades in Arabic before and after the intervention, althoughthe differences between the means before and after the intervention in English and in Arabic wereboth significant.

The findings in Table 2 indicate the change in the mean English scores of the control groupin all language skills, which is minimal. This indicates that no improvement was observed inthe control group in English during the intervention with the experimental group, and in factsometimes a slight decline in average scores was detected after the intervention period comparedthe earlier test scores. The findings in Table 2 also show that there was almost no change inthe overall average of all linguistic skills together in English before (M = 51.78%) and after(51.35%) the experiment. The findings in Table 2 for Arabic are essentially the same as thosefor English. This means that the difference between control group participants’ average gradeson Arabic linguistic skills before and after the experiment was very small, and sometimes evena slight decline in averages was noted after the experiment. Similarly, the overall grade of allArabic linguistic skills together before (M = 62.09%) and after (M = 62.04%) the experimentperiod was almost identical. Overall, the main findings of the study were:

1. Significant improvement in all linguistic and metalinguistic skills in English among theexperimental group after the intervention program. Moreover, strong positive correlationswere found between the experimental group’s pre- and postintervention scores on allEnglish-language skills.

2. Significant improvement on all linguistic and metalinguistic skills in Arabic except for theorthographic knowledge task in the experimental group after the intervention program.

3. The level of improvement in the experimental group’s English-language skills after theintervention was higher than the improvement in Arabic language.

4. There was no improvement in the control group’s language scores in either English orArabic (the control group did not receive any controlled intervention).

DISCUSSION

According to the research findings, the research assumption was fully confirmed and validated,i.e., there was a significant improvement in the experimental group’s achievements in all linguisticand metalinguistic skills after intervention in both Arabic and English, except for orthographicknowledge in Arabic. This leads to the conclusion that a CRT did occur from English L2 to

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TABLE 1Averages (%), Standard Deviation, t Values, and Significance of Grades in Linguistic Skills in English and

Arabic Before and After Intervention in the Experimental Group

Language Skills Variables Mean N SD t df

Experimental Group English b 50.66 270 14.75 −41.2 269English a 73.47 270 1820Arabic b 61.85 270 16.01 −25.89 269Arabic a 73.92 270 17.13

Orthographic Knowledge English b 60.44 30 11.57 −14.42 29English a 83.66 30 12.84Arabic b 74.66 30 12.27 −5.13 29Arabic a 77.66 30 13.39

Phonological Awareness English b 50.66 30 12.26 −23.56 29English a 76.77 30 13.71Arabic b 56 30 10.94 −11.6 29Arabic a 72 30 15.05

Morphological Awareness 1 English b 39.11 30 14.75 −16.1 29English a 55.8 30 17.76Arabic b 49.33 30 12.45 −8.72 29Arabic a 60.22 30 16.83



Syntax Awareness 1 English b 48.66 30 10.26 −13.48 29English a 70.88 30 14.35Arabic b 70.33 30 11.52 −9.65 29Arabic a 83.22 30 12.04

Syntax Awareness 2 English b 58.11 30 13.2 −13.97 29English a 83.77 30 14.71Arabic b 74.66 30 11.26 −11.08 29Arabic a 89.22 30 9.53

Reading Accuracy English b 48.33 30 13.46 −15.66 29English a 71.33 30 18.37Arabic b 65.11 30 16.62 −10.14 29Arabic a 77.55 30 17.72

Reading Comprehension English b 36.33 30 11.73 −14.86 29English a 58.5 30 16.24Arabic b 44.66 30 12.17 −12.17 29Arabic a 58.33 30 14.87

Note. The value of p in all linguistic skills in English and Arabic was p < .01. Morphological Awareness1 = Morphological awareness on identification level of stem/root that makes up words. Morphological Awareness2 = Morphological awareness on derivative level: deriving words from given term. Morphological Awareness 3 =Morphological awareness on inflection level: changing from singular to plural. Syntax awareness 1 = correcting sen-tences by rearranging words. Syntax Awareness 2 = Completing sentences by inserting proper connecting words. Englishb = English before intervention, English a = English after intervention; Arabic b = Arabic before intervention, Arabic a= Arabic after intervention.

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TABLE 2Means (%), Standard Deviation, t Values, and Significance of Grades in Linguistic Skills in English and

Arabic Before and After Intervention in the Control Group

Language Skills Variables Mean N SD t df p

Control Group English b 51.78 270 15.12 2.44 269 .01∗English a 51.35 270 15.1Arabic b 62.09 270 15.53 0.2 269 .83Arabic a 62.04 270 15.67

Orthographic Awareness English b 59.22 30 11.79 0.44 29 .66English a 59 30 11.84Arabic b 75.22 30 14.16 −0.52 29 .601Arabic a 75.44 30 14.66

Phonological Awareness English b 53.66 30 11.52 2.11 29 .04∗English a 53.22 30 11.76Arabic b 60.77 30 12.97 1 29 .32Arabic a 60.44 30 12.12

Morphological Awareness 1 English b 35.66 30 10.61 −2.26 29 .03∗English a 36.33 30 11.08Arabic b 51.22 30 12.7 −1.22 29 .23Arabic a 51.77 30 13.66

Morphological Awareness 2 English b 55.66 30 11.28 2.56 29 .02∗English a 54.55 30 11.02Arabic b 58.11 30 11.19 3.26 29 .03∗Arabic a 56.66 30 11.34

Morphological Awareness 3 English b 65.33 30 12.7 −1.36 29 .18English a 66 30 13.02Arabic b 62.77 30 11.54 −0.64 29 .52Arabic a 63.55 30 12.77

Syntax Awareness 1 English b 45.22 30 10.78 −1.43 29 .16English a 45.88 30 10.45Arabic b 65.33 30 11.43 1.49 29 .14Arabic a 64.44 30 12.45

Syntax Awareness 2 English b 59.55 30 12.02 2.57 29 .02∗English a 57.77 30 10.58Arabic b 73.11 30 10.93 −0.29 29 .76Arabic a 73.22 30 11.26

Reading accuracy English b 49.88 30 14.18 1.14 29 .26English a 49.55 30 14.61Arabic b 66.44 30 14.9 −1.27 29 .21Arabic a 66.88 30 14.8

Reading Comprehension English b 41.83 30 15.39 2.35 29 .02∗English a 39.83 30 15.67Arabic b 45.83 30 15.09 −0.18 29 .85Arabic a 46 30 13.54

Note. p < .01∗∗, p < .05. Morphological Awareness 1 = Morphological awareness on identification level ofstem/root that makes up words. Morphological Awareness 2 = Morphological awareness on derivative level: deriv-ing words from given term. Morphological Awareness = Morphological awareness on inflection level: changing fromsingular to plural. Syntax awareness 1 = correcting sentences by rearranging words. Syntax Awareness 2 = Completingsentences by inserting proper connecting words. English b = English before intervention, English a = English afterintervention; Arabic b = Arabic before intervention, Arabic a = Arabic after intervention.

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Arabic L1 in all of the skills investigated in this study, with the sole exception of orthographicknowledge transfer, which was found to be language specific.

Orthographic Transfer

After the intervention program, a significant improvement in English orthographic skills in theexperimental group was found compared to a small significant improvement in orthographicknowledge in English in the control group. A smaller degree of improvement was found in Arabicorthographic knowledge among the experimental group. Further, the degree of improvement inArabic orthographic knowledge after intervention was much lower than the improvement notedon all other Arabic skills after intervention. It is quite likely that the improvement in orthographicskills in Arabic was not a result of transfer from English but rather of the advance in participants’chronological age, since the control group also demonstrated a slight improvement in Arabicorthographic knowledge. Nevertheless, the control group’s improvement in Arabic orthographicknowledge was much smaller than that of the experimental group. It is therefore reasonable toassume that in this case both explanations are pertinent: There was a weak transfer of orthographicskills from English to Arabic as a result of progress in the chronological age of the participants.To conclude, evidence of orthographic knowledge transfer from English L2 to Arabic L1 wasweak and unequivocal, a finding which supports the script dependent hypothesis (Liberman et al.,1974; Lindgren et al., 1985).

This research finding is supported by other studies that did not find cross-language transfer oforthographic knowledge (Abu-Rabia, 2001a, Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Sun-Alperin & Wang,2009). In contrast, the current findings contradict those of Deacon, Wade-Woolley, and Kirby(2009), which demonstrated a transfer of orthographic knowledge from English to French. It wassuggested that the greater the similarity between the two orthographic systems, the greater theprobability of orthographic transfer between the two languages (English and French). Accordingto this argument, Arabic is essentially different from English: The former is a Semitic language,written from right to left, in which letters have more than one written form, and it is defined as ashallow orthography when it is vowelized and a deep orthography when it is not vowelized (Abu-Rabia & Saliba, 2008). English belongs to the Indo-European family of languages, is written leftto right, the letters have a single written form, and it is defined as a deep orthography (Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2003; Kahn-Horwitz et al., 2005). Thus, it may be assumed that the transfer oforthographic skills between English and Arabic is unlikely. According to Abu-Rabia and Siegel(2003), orthographic skills are language dependent, because each language has its own uniquewriting conventions. Consequently improvement of this skill is experience based, and not relatedto metalinguistic cognition.

Phonological Transfer

The findings demonstrate a significant improvement in the scores of the experimental group onthe phonological skills before and after the intervention, both in English and in Arabic, whereasno change was seen among the control group in this skill in English. The advancement in theexperimental group’s achievements in English was higher than in Arabic. Overall, the study’sfindings prove in the clearest way possible that a transfer of phonological awareness from English

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L2 to Arabic L1 did occur, which is similar to the findings of Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002), Abu-Rabia and Sanitsky (2010), Keung and Ho (2009), and Wade-Woolley and Geva (2000). Thisfinding suggests that phonological awareness is not a language-dependent skill and that increasedexposure and practice of the sounds of any language may help improve one’s metalinguisticphonological abilities in other languages.

Morphological Transfer

The findings indicate a significant and meaningful improvement in morphological awarenessskills (identification, derivation, and inflexion levels) among the experimental group in Englishand in Arabic before and after the intervention. However, the improvement in Arabic was lowerthan the improvement noted in those same skills in English. No improvement was noted betweenthe control group’s morphological awareness test results at the beginning and at the end ofthe experiment, proving the effect of the intervention program on the experimental group’sachievements. These morphological findings of the CRT of metalinguistic morphological skillsare similar to those of other studies that morphological awareness is transferred from L1 to L2(Deacon et al., 2009; Schiff & Calif, 2007). At the same time, the finding of the current studycontradicts those of others (Jarvis & Odlin, 2000; Ramírez, Chen, Geva, & Kiefer 2010; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008; Wang et al., 2003), which suggested that only a one-way transfer ofmorphological skills is possible, from languages of transparent orthography (such as Arabic,Spanish, Finnish, and Korean) to languages of deep orthography (such as English) and not in theother direction. Ramírez et al. (2010) explained that usually transparent orthographies have a deepand complex morphological system, whereas deep orthographies have a transparent and simplemorphological system. Consequently, it should be easier to transfer morphological skills fromdeep morphological systems to transparent morphological systems. The morphological transferresults shown in the current study were in the opposite direction, from L2 to L1. Also the claim ofDeacon et al. (2009), which argued that bidirectional transfer of morphological awareness skillscan occur when the morphological languages systems are of a similar complexity level, is refutedby the findings of the current study. These differences and the current findings can be explainedby the fact that this study examined metalinguistic morphological skills common to both Englishand Arabic. Therefore, we can conclude, despite the difference in the composition of the morpho-logical systems of each language, that there are basic morphological skills that are common toall alphabetic languages and that such morphological universality allows transferability betweenlanguages regardless of orthographic and morphological depths.

Syntactic Transfer

The experimental group, unlike the control group, demonstrated a significant improvement insyntax skills in completing and correcting sentences in English after the intervention, thus estab-lishing the influence of the intervention program. A significant improvement was seen also inthe experimental group’s achievements in syntax skills in Arabic after the intervention, despitethe fact that the group did not receive any intervention in Arabic, proving the transfer of syntaxawareness skills from English L2 to Arabic L1. Furthermore, as in other skills, also in syntactic

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skills the improvement seen in the experimental group’s achievements in English was higher thanthe improvement in the same skills in Arabic.

This finding is similar to those of studies that support the cross-language transfer of syntaxawareness skills (Abu-Rabia, 2001a; Abu-Rabia & Siegel, 2002; Geva and Siegel, 2000). Thistransference can be explained by the fact that syntax awareness is a feature of linguistic logicthat is not language specific; consequently, exposure to any language can help develop goodmetalinguistic syntax skills, i.e., an awareness of the internal grammatical structure of a sentencein any language. This metalinguistic ability is transferable between writing systems, regardlessof orthography type.

Reading Accuracy Transfer

Overall, the findings indicate a significant improvement in the experimental group’s achieve-ments in reading accuracy after intervention, both in English and Arabic, despite the fact that thisgroup did not receive intervention in Arabic. This finding supports the transfer of word decodingskills from English L2 to Arabic L1. No improvement occurred in the control group in readingaccuracy after the experiment period, whether in English or Arabic, when compared with theirachievements before the start of the experiment period. This finding confirms the assumption thatthe transfer of word decoding skills from English L2 to Arabic L1 does occur.

This finding parallels those of others that support the transfer of word decoding ability fromL1 to L2 (Durgunoglu et al.,1993; Geva & Siegel, 2000; Geva, Wade-Wooley, & Shany, 1997;Lindsey, Manis, & Bailey, 2003). We can explain this finding by the fact that exposure to linguisticand metalinguistic skills of one language, accompanied by practice in word decoding skills, canimprove the learner’s reading accuracy skills. This ability is transferable to other languages towhich learners are exposed, especially when alphabetic orthographies are involved. Consistently,Durgunoglu et al. (1993) found that learning linguistic and metalinguistic skills of languagesimproves the reading accuracy skills of those languages.

Reading Comprehension Transfer

The findings of the present study show a significant improvement in the experimental group’sachievements after intervention in reading comprehension skills both in English and Arabic.Further, there is a significant positive correlation between the experimental group’s postin-tervention reading comprehension achievements in English and its postintervention readingcomprehension achievements in Arabic. The control group showed no improvement in readingcomprehension skills in either Arabic or English. Therefore, the experimental group’s improvedachievements in Arabic reading comprehension can be attributed to the group’s improvement inEnglish reading comprehension skills, suggesting the transfer of reading comprehension skillsfrom English L2 to Arabic L1.

These findings are similar to those studies that indicated a transfer of reading-comprehensionskills from L1 to L2 (Sparks et al., 2008; Wang et al., 2003). The findings of the reading com-prehension coincide with those of Van der Leij, Bekebrede, and Kotterink (2010). In the latterstudy, Dutch bilingual children’s reading comprehension skills in their L1, Dutch, were betterthan those of Dutch monolingual children, suggesting that exposure to an additional language

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can benefit reading skills in the L1. This benefit may reflect the transfer of comprehension skillstrategies from L2 to L1, regardless of orthographic depth of the languages.

The CRT hypothesis is essentially an extension and expansion of the linguistic interdepen-dence hypothesis suggested by Cummins (1979, 1981), adding only the direction of the linguisticskills transfer—from L2 (or 3, etc.) to L1. In conclusion, only orthographic knowledge skillswere found to be language specific and did not transfer from L2 to L1.

The present findings indicate that as a result of the intervention program, significant improve-ment was noticed in the experimental group in all linguistic and metalinguistic skills in EnglishL1. Similarly, a significant improvement was noted in the same group in the same skills in ArabicL1, with the one exception of orthographic knowledge, for which no improvement was seenafter the experiment period. On the other hand, there was no improvement in the control group’sachievement in those same skills in English or in Arabic after the experiment period. This find-ing proves that there was no transfer of these skills within the control group. We can concludethat the improvement in the linguistic and metalinguistic skills in Arabic among the experimen-tal group after intervention was the result of these skills being transferred from English L2 toArabic L1.

These findings, therefore, validate the CRT hypothesis regarding the transfer of phonologicalawareness, morphological awareness, syntactic awareness, reading accuracy, and reading com-prehension skills from English L2 to Arabic L1. This transfer of skills is in the opposite directionof what has been found in previous studies. The CRT hypothesis is an extension and expansionof the linguistic interdependence hypothesis suggested by Cummins (1979, 1981). It’s recom-mended for researchers to examine the CRT theory in different orthographies and among differentpopulations: poor, learning disabled, young, and adult readers. This will further validate the CRTtheory and teach us more about the possible transferability of different language skills form L2 orFL to the first language.

Practical Implications

The present results can be practically applied mainly in the field of language education. Althoughit is common for teachers to work in separate language teams, this study suggests a differentapproach that should be brought to the attention of supervisors, principals, subject coordina-tors, and teachers: Given that many linguistic and metalinguistic skills are shared by differentlanguages, especially the alphabetic ones, and have been found to be transferable from one lan-guage to another, improving students’ achievements in one language can bring about similarimprovements in other languages. Therefore, all educational teams teaching languages shouldcooperate and work together. Such cooperation could include holding at least one weekly meet-ing for preparing joint lessons, study units, lesson plans, and joint monitoring and review ofstudents’ progress in all of the languages being studied. Such cooperation may help alert teachersto discover the strong linguistic and learning aspects of individual students and offer options torely on transfer to boost these in a different language. Teachers taught English in small groupsizes up to four students in each group and worked with the students using direct teaching meth-ods for developing students’ reading accuracy and comprehension, sharing conversations with thestudents and writing missions for the rest of the language skills. It is clear that learning anotherlanguage can help students develop an awareness of their first language. This metalinguistic

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awareness is important for language development in the first, as well as the second, language.The significance is that if a second language is properly taught, it can help students develop anawareness of the syntactic aspects of their own language. This awareness has the potential ofimproving reading comprehension as well as oral language skills.

The conclusions of this study also have implications for helping students diagnosed with learn-ing difficulties. Typically, these students are exempted from learning L2 and are instructed toconcentrate first and foremost on developing skills in their mother tongue. In light of the currentstudy’s conclusions, this approach may be reconsidered. Instead, it may be advisable to preparea work plan specifically tailored to the learning capabilities of the poor students, in order to helpimprove their achievements in L2 skills, which in turn would lead to similar improvements intheir L1 skills.

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Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) of Language Skills Among Bilingual Arabic-English Readers

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