Spelling Development among Triangle versus Native Bedouin Arabic Pupils

Abstract

This study compared spelling development of consonants (guttural: /ḥ/, uvular-velar: /q/ and /ġ/, emphatic: /ḏḍ/, /ṯṭ/, and /ðҐ, and dental: /ṯ/) in the written form of Arabic among native Bedouin Arabic speakers from north and southern Israel (N=666), versus native Arabic pupils from the triangle (N=153), learning in second, fourth, and sixth grades. Three tasks were constructed for this study: real word dictation, pseudo-word dictation, and real word recognition. The results show significantly higher scores for spelling among pupils from the triangle versus Bedouin pupils from southern and north Israel in the second grade. Also, Bedouin males from southern Israel scored significantly less than their female counterparts in the group and from all other male pupils who participated in this study at all ages. It is suggested that the gap is unnecessarily gender-oriented, but mainly affected by socio-economic aspects and by the lack of appropriate teacher training for this community.