Abstract/Summary

Although children with developmental language disorder (DLD) are known to have difficulties with emergent literacy skills, none of the available Arabic studies have examined emergent literacy skills in children with DLD. This is unexpected given that Arabic is the native language of approximately over 300 million people in the world. It has been suggested that oral language skills contribute significantly to emergent literacy skills in English-speaking children, so this study aims to fill this gap in Arabic studies by being the first to examine the associations between different oral language and emergent literacy skills in Arabic-speaking children, with and without DLD, aged 4;0 to 6;11 (years; months). The study will also investigate the relationships between verbal short-term memory (VSTM), socioeconomic status (SES), home literacy environment (HLE), and emergent literacy skills, and their impact on Arabic children with and without DLD. The aim is to provide additional new insights into relationships between oral language, VSTM, and emergent literacy skills in the Arabic language, and contribute to the understanding of emergent literacy development in Saudi Arabic-speaking children. In terms of methodology, this study administered comprehensive Arabic language, VSTM and emergent literacy batteries to a typically developing (TD) group and DLD group of children based in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Consistent with existing literature, findings demonstrated that the TD group significantly outperformed the DLD group on emergent literacy measures. Findings also showed significant associations between oral language skills, VSTM, and emergent literacy skills in both TD and DLD groups; however, these associations were stronger in the DLD group than the TD group. Results also revealed that vocabulary knowledge and digit recall were significant predictors for emergent literacy skills in the DLD group only. This study represents an important first step in understanding emergent literacy skills and their relationships to language in Arabic-speaking children with and without DLD.