Purpose: We investigated the role of spoken language in the acquisition of literacy in the context of Arabic diglossia, where the written language, Standard Arabic, deviates substantially from the spoken language, Colloquial Arabic, children acquire naturally from birth. Method: The participants (N = 110; 40 girls) were Saudi Arabic--speaking…

Despite recent calls to more fully incorporate multimodal perspectives into literacies research, there is still limited scholarship examining how students critically engage in reading activities by drawing on embodied practices. Racially and linguistically minoritized students are particularly disadvantaged by dominant logocentric and…

This research explores structural relations among the component skills of reading comprehension in Kiswahili. Furthermore, the study examines the relationship between socio-economic status, home and school language use, and home literacy environment with Kiswahili reading outcomes. The study utilized secondary data from the baseline Tusome…

Background: Arabic is recognised as diglossic; one manifestation of diglossia is the co-existence of two varieties of the language used in different social settings: standard (or literary) Arabic (StA) and spoken Arabic (SpA). The study investigated the impact of lexical-phonological distance in Arabic (identical, cognate, unique, which are…

Purpose: This study examines the development of narrative microstructure elements of productivity, lexical diversity, and syntactic complexity in the oral story production of preschool- and school-age Kuwaiti Arabic-speaking children. It also explores the effects of story task complexity on the target microstructural features. Method: This study…

Children's writing development is a matter of concern for Australian and other education systems. Factors related to the nature of writing as a literate skill, school writing pedagogy, and diminishing role of writing in a screen-dominant environment may account for this educational concern. What happens in a child's writing when immigrant parents…