Abstract/Summary

Morphological awareness (MA) has been shown to be an important linguistic skill in both Arabic and English monolingual readers (Breadmore et al., 2021; Saiegh-Haddad, 2018). The first aim (Study 1) of the research was to examine the relationship between MA and word reading among typically developing (TD) students and students with a reading difficulty (RD) in the 4th and 5th grade attending bilingual (Arabic-English) schools in Kuwait (N = 53). The second aim (Study 2) was to examine Arabic word reading (voweled and unvoweled), phonological processing, and MA among students with RD attending bilingual and monolingual schools (N = 40). This research contributes to knowledge by providing an understanding of the role of MA in English and Arabic among biliterate students with and without RD and whether schooling (monolingual vs. bilingual) had an influence on students with RD. MA was measured using judgement and analogy tasks administered in the written and oral modality focusing on derivational morphology only. Results of Study 1 demonstrated that the students with RD showed deficits in phonological processing, MA, and word reading skills in both English and Arabic when compared with the age-matched TD controls, with the exception of Arabic rapid automatized naming (RAN) scores. MA was significantly related to English exception word reading among TD children only. MA was significantly related to Arabic nonword reading accuracy, among TD children, and Arabic voweled reading accuracy and nonword reading fluency, among RD children. Results of Study 2 showed no significant differences between students attending bilingual schools and those attending monolingual schools in phonological processing, MA, and word reading, though there was a significant difference in reading accuracy which showed higher scores for students attending monolingual schools. The results demonstrated the importance of MA in both Arabic and English word reading among biliterate children. These findings also show that there is no harm for children with RD in learning an additional language.