ABSTRACT
This study examines the link between phonological and morphological awareness and reading comprehension among special-education children who attend self-contained special education classes in regular Arab elementary schools.The three hypotheses were: First, the higher the level of phonological awareness in Arabic among special education learners, the better their reading comprehension level. Similarly, the higher the level of morphological awareness in Arabic among special education learners, the better their reading comprehension level. Third, it is possible to point to a joint effect of a child’s phonological awareness and morphological awareness on reading comprehension abilities. This study’s findings confirmed all three hypotheses and can subsequently be applied to understanding the processes underlying phonological and morphological awareness. This may be instrumental in discovering methods for promoting literacy and reading comprehension in special education learners. This study may also contribute to development of teacher training programmes that focus on effective methods for raising phonological and morphological awareness, ultimately resulting in improved reading comprehension in special education learners.
Disclosure Statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. In this paper “diacritisised” means that a word is fully vowelled with all its diacritical vowel markings.
2. Scores were calculated as percent scores (range 0 - 100). A high score indicates a high phonological and morphological awareness and a high level of reading comprehension.