The Role of Diacritics in Word Recognition and their Impact on Arabic L2 Learners' Reading Speed, Accuracy, and Comprehension at Different Stages of Arabic L2 Acquisition

Abstract

Based on the available instructional materials, practitioners of Arabic as a foreign language are divided into two camps: those who believe that Arabic textbook script should contain diacritics due to their utility in clarifying word pronunciation and meaning and those who believe that Arabic textbook script should not contain diacritics because they could burden the already heavily charged decoding system of Arabic and the learners could become too dependent on diacritics and may encounter later difficulty when reading texts without diacritics. A small number of studies relating to the role of diacritics in Arabic word recognition have been conducted on Arabic as a first language (L1). Even fewer studies have investigated the role of Arabic orthography in word recognition on Arabic as a second language (L2). To fill this gap in Arabic second language acquisition research, the present study examines the role of diacritics in word recognition and their impact on Arabic L2 learners’ reading speed, accuracy, and comprehension at different stages of Arabic L2 acquisition. Fifty-four Arabic L2 learners from three proficiency levels (beginner, intermediate, and advanced) participated in this study. The participants belonged to two groups: those who were exposed to instructional materials containing diacritics, vowelized textbook (VT), and those who were exposed to instructional materials not containing diacritics un-vowelized textbook (UVT). Both groups in each level read two lists of isolated words and two types of texts under vowelized (V) and un-vowelized (UV) conditions. In the isolated words reading, the results indicate that the participants of the VT group significantly read isolated words under both (V) and (UV) conditions at a faster speed than the participants in the corresponding UVT group in all proficiency levels. Moreover, the results show that the beginner, intermediate and advanced participants of the VT group read isolated words more accurately than participants in the corresponding UVT group. In the text reading, results show that participants in the beginner and intermediate VT groups read texts at a significantly faster speed than participants in the corresponding UVT group. Moreover, the beginner, intermediate, and advanced participants in the VT group were more accurate in reading target words in texts than participants in the UVT group. Finally, the results of the comprehension analysis of target words in texts show that the participants in the beginner, intermediate, and advanced VT groups maintained an advantage of target word comprehension over their UVT counterparts. The main result indicates that the participants who relied on VT in their learning program achieved an excellent and more stable reading performance over their counterparts who relied on UVT. This positive role of diacritics in terms of Arabic word recognition and reading performance suggests that including diacritics in words and texts does not only benefit the Arabic L2 learner by removing ambiguity from words, but it also positively influences improvement in reading performance in general.