Journal Article

When Developmental Language Disorder Meets Diglossia: A Cross-Sectional Investigation of Listening Comprehension Among Native Arabic-Speaking Preschoolers

Khoury-Metanis, Afnan, Mansour-Adwan, Jasmeen, Asadi, Ibrahim A, Khateb, Asaid

2022

Overview

Diglossia in the Arabic language refers to the existence of two varieties of the same language: the Spoken Arabic (SA) and the Literary Arabic (LA). This study examined the development of listening comprehension (LC) among diglossic Arabic K1–K3. For this purpose, a large sample of typically developing (TD; N = 210) and developmental language disorder children (DLD; N = 118) were examined using SA and LA texts. The analysis of variance conducted on their performance in LC revealed significant effects of K-level, group (TD vs. DLD) and text affiliation (SA vs. LA): higher scores in TD and in SA. A significant interaction between text affiliation and K-level was observed among the TD but not the DLD group. This interaction indicated that the gap in LC between the SA and LA varieties decreased with age only among TD children. The theoretical and pedagogical implications of these results are discussed.

• Publisher: Springer Nature B.V
• Subject: Age differences / Arabic language / Bilingualism / Brain / Child Development / Cognition & reasoning / Communication / Comprehension / Developmental disabilities / Dialect Studies / Dialects / Diglossia / Elementary Education / Elementary Schools / Grammar / Kindergarten / Language Acquisition / Language disorders / Language Impairments / Language varieties / Learning disabilities / Lexicology / Linguistics / Listening comprehension / Literacy / Literary language / Long Term Memory / Memory / Morphology / Oral Language / Pedagogy / Phonology / Preschool children / Preschool education / Psycholinguistics / Reading comprehension / Reading Instruction / Semantics / Spoken language / Syntax / Variance analysis