title: Assessment of Arabic phonological awareness and its relation to word reading ability.
abstract: Phonological awareness (PA) is one of the most important components in the development of normal reading ability. It refers to the ability to detect and manipulate the sound structure of words independently of their meaning. The current study aimed to assess Arabic PA skills and the relation to word reading abilities in Egyptian Arabic-speaking children. The designed assessment was applied to 80 typically developing children, divided into two subgroups ranging in age from 5 years 6 months to 8 years 6 months. The design of assessment involved six PA tasks covering three levels: rhyme awareness, syllabic awareness, and phonemic awareness, as well as the assessment of reading abilities that include real word and nonsense word reading tasks. Descriptive statistics (mean, standard deviation), Student's t tests, and Pearson correlation coefficient tests were used to analyze the data. The reliability of the test was proven using the test-retest procedure. Validity of the test was estimated through internal consistency validity. The results revealed that the Arabic PA assessment test (APAAT) proved to be a reliable and valid tool for assessing Arabic reading skills. Findings from the study provided important insights into the developmental patterns of Arabic PA. In addition, the findings revealed a strong relationship between phonological awareness skills and the proficiency in word reading abilities in Arabic school-aged children.
authors.affiliation: a Unit of Phoniatrics, ENT department , Faculty of Medicine, Mansoura University , Mansoura , Egypt ;
authors.forename: Tamer
authors.initials: T
authors.lastname: Abou-Elsaad
authors.affiliation: b Phonetics and Linguistics department , Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University , Alexandria , Egypt.
authors.forename: Rawhia
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Ali
authors.affiliation: b Phonetics and Linguistics department , Faculty of Arts, Alexandria University , Alexandria , Egypt.
authors.forename: Haidy
authors.initials: H
authors.lastname: Abd El-Hamid
mesh_terms: D001077:Aptitude Tests; D001364:Awareness; D002648:Child; D002657:Child Development; D002675:Child, Preschool; D004534:Egypt; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D000067010:Literacy; D008297:Male; D010700:Phonetics; D011237:Predictive Value of Tests; D011932:Reading; D015203:Reproducibility of Results
keywords: Arabic orthography; Arabic phonology; child disability; learning disability; phonological awareness; reading ability