Author(s)

Salim Abu-Rabia¹, Eman Sarsour Kedan¹, Haneen Wattad²

¹Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel.
²Al Qasemi Academic College, Baka, Israel.

This study examines the influence of diglossia on syntactic proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) among 63 fourth-graders in central Israel, divided into two groups: regular and struggling. They were given three examinations constructed especially for this study: translating sentences from Spoken Arabic Vernacular (SAV) into MSA, a cloze test, and an oral exam, in which the pupils were asked to describe pictures in MSA. The findings revealed errors in the use of connectives, the use of prepositions, sentence integrity, and verb conjugation. No significant differences were found between regular and struggling pupils in average test scores in terms of errors in syntactic elements. In using prepositions, regular pupils made more errors than did struggling pupils; this was because the latter did not answer questions relating to this element. Several factors explain the effect of diglossia on syntactic proficiency: the similarity of MSA and SAV, the influence of the surroundings, scanty reading of books, the teaching methods used in Arab schools, the influence of Hebrew on the Arab student, and the lack of encouragement from the establishment and the education system. Future research should investigate this effect on a larger sample in order to obtain more representative outcomes.

Diglossia, Struggling Pupils, Regular Pupils, Syntactic Proficiency, Spoken Arabic Vernacular, Modern Standard Arabic

Abu-Rabia, S. , Kedan, E. and Wattad, H. (2022) The Influence of Diglossia on Syntactic Proficiency in Modern Standard Arabic among Regular and Struggling Readers. Creative Education, 13, 252-282. doi: 10.4236/ce.2022.131016.