Topical Analysis of Early Grade Reading Instruction

Helen Boyle and Samah Al Ajjawi Florida State University December 2, 2013

Introduction to the Study Purpose: • To review current evidence-based scholarly/

ministry/donor/nongovernmental organization (NGO) research on teaching and learning Arabic in an effort to identify what content and practices are most effective in helping pupils read with comprehension and express themselves in writing.

Methods: Literature Review and Interviews

Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA) Results Table 8: Composite scores across countries and grades

Egypt** Iraq Jordan Morocco Yemen

*Tasks P2 P3 P2 P3 P2 P3 P2 P3 P2 P3

1

Letter name knowledge (100 letters

presented; pupils had 1 minute of time to

name the letters)

16.78 21.52

2 Initial sound identification (10 items) 1.04 1.35

3

Letter sound knowledge (100 letters

presented; pupils had 1 minute of time to

make letter sound)

9.76

18.8

13.6 13.5 26.5 26.3 23 33 4.74 6.22

28.47

4 Familiar word reading (50 familiar words

presented to be named in 1 minute)

7.35

6.74 12.32

15.5

5

Non-word decoding (out of 50

pronounceable made-up words/1 minute of

time) 5.9

3.7 4.7 4.4 7 10 15 2.63 4.5

6

Oral reading fluency (50 word story to read

aloud/1 minute of time)

11.0

9

21.9

11.4 21.2 15.2 23.7 16 27 5.85 11.98

21.14

7 Reading comprehension (6 questions about

the story—basic facts) 1.9 0.9 1.6 2 2.9 0.74 1.49 0.24 0.59

8 Listening comprehension (passage read to

pupils; 6 questions about passage) 3.2 2.9 3.4 2.2 2.9 2.34 3.37 0.85 1.51

9

Dictation (3 words made up of 15 letters; first

score is # of words written correctly second

score is # of letters taken down correctly)

0.62 0.91

*The highlighted lines indicate tests that were only given in Yemen; hence there will be no comparable scores from the

other countries.

**Egypt is the only country that had pre- and post- test data to report; the number on top is the baseline and the

number below the post-test score.

7.28 10.22

Early Grade Reading Assessment (EGRA): What factors contributed to poor performance?

Third Grade Students

Reading with at least

80% comprehension

Corresponding

average ORF (cwpm)

Egypt 9% 49 +

Iraq 9% 65 +

Jordan 26% 46 +

Morocco* 4% 63 +

Yemen* 2% 57 +

Key Variables in the Reading Process in Arabic

1. Diglossia

2. Voweling

3. Phonological awareness

4. Morphology

5. Sentence Context

Diglossia: What does the evidence say?

– Listening to a daily story in MSA in kindergarten resulted in significantly better performance in MSA listening comprehension and oral language use (Feitelson et. al. 1993).

– Reading comprehension tests in grades 1 and 2

were significantly better for those exposed to MSA in pre-school (Abu-Rabia, 2000).

– Exposure to MSA in the home environment,

including playing alphabet games with parents, book reading with a parent and joint (parent-child) writing activities were significantly correlated with literacy achievement in grade 1 (Aram et. al. 2013).

Diglossia: Implications for instruction

– Early exposure to MSA is important; pre-

school and kindergarten-aged children are not too young to be exposed to MSA, provided it is done in a pedagogically appropriate manner (i.e. story reading vs. grammar lessons)

– Educators should make parents aware of the importance of home-based literacy activities design assignments that call for parent-child reading or writing activities

Voweling: What does the evidence say?

– Vocalized materials provided additional phonological information to readers, which aides in word recognition, reading accuracy and comprehension

Voweling: Implications for instruction

– Purposefully transitioning pupils from voweled to unvoweled text must be thought out and managed by the teacher; struggling readers may need a longer transition period;

– Pupils must be explicitly taught skills and

strategies for word identification and comprehension when text is unvoweled.

Phonological Awareness: What does the evidence say?

–“…fluency in the beginning grade levels relies on accuracy of decoding—a skill highly dependent on phonological awareness.” (Taibah &

Haynes, 2011, pp. 1036-37).

Phonological awareness: Instructional implications

–Phonological awareness must be explicitly taught from the beginning (i.e. in kindergarten or first grade and preferably in the home as well);

–Children must be explicitly taught sound/symbol correspondence (phonics) in first grade;

– Letters should most likely be taught in order of difficulty although there does not seem to be a uniform opinion on what that order is as countries we looked at all had different orders for letter introduction.

Morphological awareness: What does the

evidence say?

“…Those [pupils] with good phonological and good morphological skills are more likely to show better reading comprehension levels. (Mahfoudhi, et. al, Introduction

to the special issue on literacy in Arabic, 2010, pp. 509-510)

“…There is clear evidence of a relationship between morphological awareness and reading in the early stages of reading.” (Abu-Rabia, 2012, p. 486)

Morphological awareness: Instructional

implications

– Word patterns in Arabic seem to be taught most frequently through grammar; other methods could be more effective (word games, wordworks etc.) to help children develop morphological knowledge they can apply in their reading

– “Word unpacking strategies” need to be developed for classroom use (Mahfoudhi, Everatt, &

Elbeheri, Introduction to the special issue on literacy in Arabic, 2010, p. 510)

Sentence contexts: What does the evidence say?

The researchers found that “as age or level of fluency increases, readers rely more on sentence context and less on word-final vowels [emphasis added] to identify the meaning, grammatical function and pronunciation of words.” (Taouk and Coltheart

2004 p. 51)

Sentence context: Instructional implications

• Identifying context clues must be taught explicitly; teachers can model their own thinking process as they read to help pupils develop this reading skills

How is Reading Taught in the Arabic-speaking

world?

Instructional Content:

Reading (Morocco)

% of class time

devoted to skill

Letters/Sounds 2.3%

Reading isolated words 4.3%

Reading sentences 8.0%

Vocabulary (word

meanings)

2.8%

Writing/Dictation 3.4%

Reading texts 54.4%

Reading comprehension

– text

24.8%

Writing – creating texts 0.6%

Instructional Content:

Reading (Jordan)

% of class time

devoted to skill

Sounds without print 0.5

Letters/sounds 1.0

Reading a letter inside a

word

0.7

Reading syllables inside a

word

1.5

Reading isolated words 4.8

Reading sentences 7.7

Vocabulary 5.5

Dictation 5.4

Reading texts 20.3

Reading comprehension 46.6

Writing–creating texts 2.6

Other 3.4

How is Reading Taught in the Arabic-speaking

world?

Other Significant Factors • Regular Attendance

• Teacher feedback, especially written feedback

o Iraq, pupils whose notebooks did have teacher feedback read 7.1 more wpm than pupils whose notebooks had no comments.

o Jordan: pupils whose notebooks contained written feedback had better oral reading fluency scores, reading 4.6 more words per minute than pupils whose books contained no written feedback.

Reading as a Subject in the Curriculum • Reading is taught as part of Arabic language

instruction; it is not a separate subject

Books and Resources

• Access to textbooks was not generally a problem in class;

• Access to non-textbook reading material was an issue

Books and Resources

• There was a correlation between the existence of a school library and higher EGRA scores

• Classrooms that had additional reading materials were 4X more likely to be high performing on EGRA

• Access to books in the home was also positively correlated with better ORF

Conclusions and Recommendations

• More instructional time on foundational skills

• Teachers trained to:

– teach the component skills of reading

– to manage the transition from voweled to unvoweled text

– to give pupils regular written feedback

• Reading aloud to early grade pupils in MSA and independent reading time for pupils should be encouraged—both correlate with higher reading scores

Recommendations • The use of MSA for reading activities in the

home, preschool and kindergarten and for should be encouraged and increased;

• Pupils need reading materials in addition to the textbook

• Regular school attendance is important in learning to read