The current research examined the acquisition of Hebrew as a second language amongst both Arab students and Jewish students, for whom it is their mother tongue, studying in bilingual schools. Their achievements in Hebrew were compared to their peers’ achievements in monolingual schools: Jews were compared to their Jewish peers in Hebrew monolingual schools and Arabs were compared to their peers in Arabic monolingual schools. The students were given various assignments in Hebrew to test words recognition, pseudowords, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, morphology, syntax judgment, working memory, spelling and reading comprehension. The data was analyzed by one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test. The results that stand out are that Hebrew as a second language does not come at the expense of birth tongue skills amongst Arab students and that the birth tongue of Jewish students was not impaired either. The consequence was that all students “earned” a second language. This study was compared to other similar researches conducted in other countries with spoken languages, and was discussed in the context of meta-linguistics theories, Cummins theory of mutual threshold, the monolingual facilitation theory and the Structural Sensitivity Hypothesis.
References
[1]
Abu-Rabia, S. (1997). Verbal and Working Memory Skills of Bilingual Hebrew-English Speaking Children. International Journal of Psycholinguistics, 13, 25-40.
[2]
Abu-Rabia, S. (2001). The Role of Vowels in Reading Semitic Scripts: Data from Arabic and Hebrew. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 14, 39-59.
https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008147606320
[3]
Abu-Rabia, S., & Sanitsky, E. (2010). Advantages of Bilinguals over Monolinguals in Learning a Third Language. Bilingual Research Journal, 33, 173-199.
https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2010.502797
[4]
Abu-Rabia, S., & Siegel, L. S. (2002). Reading, Syntactic, Orthographic, and Working Memory Skills of Bilingual Arabic-English Speaking Canadian Children. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 31, 661-678.
[5]
Abu-Rabia, S., & Siegel, L. S. (2003). Reading Skills in Three Orthographies: The Case of Trilingual Arabic-Hebrew-English-Speaking Arab Children. Reading and Writing, 16, 611-634. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1025838029204
[6]
Abu-Rabia, S., & Taha, H. (2004). Reading and Spelling Error Analysis of Native Arabic Dyslexic Readers. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 17, 651-689.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-004-2657-x
[7]
Abu-Rabia, S., Shakkour, W., & Siegel, L. (2013). Cognitive Retroactive Transfer (CRT) of Language Skills among Bilingual Arabic-English Readers. Bilingual Research Journal, 36, 61-81. https://doi.org/10.1080/15235882.2013.775975
[8]
Akamatsu, N. (2003). The Effects of First Language Orthographic Features on Second Language Reading in Text. Language Learning, 53, 207-231.
https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9922.00216
[9]
Amara, M., & Mar’i, A. A. R. (2006). Language Education Policy: The Arab Minority in Israel (Vol. 1). Springer Science & Business Media.
[10]
August, D. A., Calderon, M., & Carlo, M. (2001). The Transfer of Skills from Spanish to English. NABE News, 11-12, 42.
[11]
Ben-Zeev, S. (1977). The Influence of Bilingualism on Cognitive Strategy and Cognitive Development. Child Development, 48, 1009-1018. https://doi.org/10.2307/1128353
[12]
Bernhardt, E., & Kamil, M. L. (1995). Interpreting Relationships between L1 and L2 Reading: Consolidating the Linguistic Threshold and the Linguistic Interdependence Hypotheses. Applied Linguistics, 16, 15-34. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/16.1.15
[13]
Bialystok, E. (2001). Bilingualism in Development: Language, Literacy, and Cognition. Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511605963
[14]
Bialystok, E., & Martin, M. M. (2004). Attention and Inhibition in Bilingual Children: Evidence from the Dimensional Change Card Sort Task. Developmental Science, 7, 325-339. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-7687.2004.00351.x
[15]
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., & Ryan, J. (2006). Executive Control in a Modified Antisaccade Task: Effects of Aging and Bilingualism. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 32, 1341. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.32.6.1341
[16]
Bialystok, E., Craik, F. I., Green, D. W., & Gollan, T. H. (2009). Bilingual Minds. Psychological Science in the Public Interest, 10, 89-129.
https://doi.org/10.1177/1529100610387084
[17]
Bialystok, E., Luk, G., & Kwan, E. (2005). Bilingualism, Biliteracy, and Learning to Read: Interactions among Languages and Writing Systems. Scientific Studies of Reading, 9, 43-61. https://doi.org/10.1207/s1532799xssr0901_4
[18]
Bialystok, E., Majumder, S., & Martin, M. M. (2003). Developing Phonological Awareness: Is There a Bilingual Advantage? Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 27-44.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S014271640300002X
[19]
Bindman, M. (2004). Grammatical Awareness across Languages and the Role of Social Context: Evidence from English and Hebrew. In Handbook of Children’s Literacy (pp. 691-709). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1731-1_36
[20]
Borgwaldt, S. R., Bolger, P., & Jakab, E. (2010). Shallow versus Deep Footprints in Pseudo-Word Grapheme-to-Phoneme Conversion: Dutch and English. Journal of Germanic Linguistics, 22, 425-443. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1470542710000139
[21]
Bruck, M., Genesee, F., & Caravolas, M. (1997). A Cross-Linguistic Study of Early Literacy Acquisition. In Foundations of Reading Acquisition and Dyslexia: Implications for Early Intervention (pp. 145-162). Routledge.
[22]
Caravolas, M., Volín, J., & Hulme, C. (2005). Phoneme Awareness Is a Key Component of Alphabetic Literacy Skills in Consistent and Less Consistent Orthographies: Evidence from Czech and English Children. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 92, 107-139. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2005.04.003
[23]
Castles, A., & Coltheart, M. (2004). Is There a Causal Link from Phonological Awareness to Success in Learning to Read? Cognition, 91, 77-111.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0010-0277(03)00164-1
[24]
Chung, S. C., Chen, X., & Deacon, S. H. (2017). The Relation between Orthographic Processing and Spelling in Grade 1 French Immersion Children. Journal of Research in Reading, 41, 290-231. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12104
[25]
Cisero, C. A., & Royer, J. M. (1995). The Development and Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological Awareness. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 20, 275-303.
https://doi.org/10.1006/ceps.1995.1018
[26]
Cummins, J. (1979). Linguistic Interdependence and the Educational Development of Bilingual Children. Review of Educational Research, 49, 222-251.
https://doi.org/10.3102/00346543049002222
[27]
Cummins, J. (1981). The Role of Primary Language Development in Promoting Educational Success for Language Minority Students. In Schooling and Language Minority Students: A Theoretical Framework (pp. 3-49). California State Department of Education.
[28]
Cummins, J. (1991). Interdependence of First- and Second-Language Proficiency in Bilingual Children. In E. Bialystok (Ed.), Language Processing in Bilingual Children (pp. 70-89). Cambridge University Press. https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511620652.006
[29]
Cummins, J. (2000). Language, Power, and Pedagogy: Bilingual Children in the Crossfire (Vol. 23). Multilingual Matters. https://doi.org/10.21832/9781853596773
[30]
Da Fontoura, H. A., & Siegel, L. S. (1995). Reading, Syntactic, and Working Memory Skills of Bilingual Portuguese-English Canadian Children. Reading and Writing, 7, 139-153. https://doi.org/10.1007/BF01026951
[31]
De Jong, P. F., & Van der Leij, A. (2003). Developmental Changes in the Manifestation of a Phonological Deficit in Dyslexic Children Learning to Read a Regular Orthography. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 22-40.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.1.22
[32]
Deacon, S. H., Wade-Woolley, L., & Kirby, J. R. (2009). Flexibility in Young Second-Language Learners: Examining the Language Specificity of Orthographic Processing. Journal of Research in Reading, 32, 215-229. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2009.01392.x
[33]
Defior, S., Martos, F., & Cary, L. (2002). Differences in Reading Acquisition Development in Two Shallow Orthographies: Portuguese and Spanish. Applied Psycholinguistics, 23, 135-148. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716402000073
[34]
Durgunoglu, A. Y., & Oney, B. (1999). A Cross-Linguistic Comparison of Phonological Awareness and Word Recognition. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 11, 281-299. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008093232622
[35]
Durgunoglu, A. Y., Nagy, W. E., & Hancin-Bhatt, B. J. (1993). Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological Awareness. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 453.
https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.85.3.453
[36]
Ellis, R. (2002). The Place of Grammar Instruction in the Second/Foreign Language Curriculum. In E. Hinkle, & S. Fotos (Eds.), New Perspectives on Grammar Teaching in Second Language Classrooms (pp. 17-34). Lawrence Erlbaum.
[37]
Frost, R. (1994). Prelexical and Postlexical Strategies in Reading: Evidence from a Deep and a Shallow Orthography. Journal of Experimental Psychology-Learning Memory and Cognition, 20, 116-129. https://doi.org/10.1037/0278-7393.20.1.116
[38]
Georgiou, G. K., Parrila, R., Kirby, J. R., & Stephenson, K. (2008). Rapid Naming Components and Their Relationship with Phonological Awareness, Orthographic Knowledge, Speed of Processing, and Different Reading Outcomes. Scientific Studies of Reading, 12, 325-350. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888430802378518
[39]
Geva, E., & Ryan, E. B. (1993). Linguistic and Cognitive Correlates of Academic Skills in First and Second Languages. Language Learning, 43, 5-42.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-1770.1993.tb00171.x
[40]
Geva, E., & Siegel, L. (2000). Orthographic and Cognitive Factors in the Concurrent Development of Basic Reading Skills in Two Languages. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 1-30. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1008017710115
[41]
Gombert, J. E. (2003). Implicit and Explicit Learning to Read: Implication as for Subtypes of Dyslexia. Current Psychology Letters: Behaviour, Brain & Cognition, 10, 25-40.
https://doi.org/10.4000/cpl.202
[42]
Gonzalez, J. E. J., & Garcia, C. R. H. (1995). Effects of Word Linguistic Properties on Phonological Awareness in Spanish Children. Journal of Educational Psychology, 87, 193-201. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.87.2.193
[43]
Gottardo, A., Yan, B., Siegel, L. S., & Wade-Woolley, L. (2001). Factors Related to English Reading Performance in Children with Chinese as a First Language: More Evidence of Cross-Language Transfer of Phonological Processing. Journal of Educational Psychology, 93, 530-542. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.93.3.530
[44]
Hakuta, K., & Diaz, R. M. (1985). The Relationship between Degree of Bilingualism and Cognitive Ability: A Critical Discussion and Some New Longitudinal Data. In K. E. Nelson (Ed.), Children’s Language (Vol. 5). Erlbaum.
[45]
Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., & Zelniker, T. (2007). Education in the State of Israel: A Multicultural Approach. In A. Pinter, & A. Gramigna (Eds.), Education in the State of Israel: A Multicultural Approach (pp. 109-129). Anicia Press (Italian).
[46]
Hertz-Lazarowitz, R., Azaiza, F., Peretz, H., Zelniker, T., & Sharabany, R. (2007). Haifa University: Is It an Umwelt for Dialogue between Religions and Identities? In The World Council of Comparative Education Societies (WCCES) (pp. 109-129). Anicia Press.
[47]
Jarvis, S., & Odlin, T. (2000). Morphological Type, Spatial Reference, and Language Transfer. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 22, 535-556.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0272263100004034
[48]
Kahn-Horwitz, J., Shimron, J., & Sparks, R. L. (2005). Predicting Foreign Language Reading Achievement in Elementary School Students. Reading and Writing, 18, 527-558.
https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-005-3179-x
[49]
Katz, L., & Frost, R. (1992). The Reading Process Is Different for Different Orthographies: The Orthographic Depth Hypothesis. Advances in Psychology, 94, 67-84.
https://doi.org/10.1016/S0166-4115(08)62789-2
[50]
Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2008). The Role of Derivational Morphology in the Reading Comprehension of Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners. Reading and Writing, 21, 783-804. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-007-9092-8
[51]
Kuo, L. J., & Anderson, R. C. (2010). Beyond Cross-Language Transfer: Reconceptualizing the Impact of Early Bilingualism on Phonological Awareness. Scientific Studies of Reading, 14, 365-385. https://doi.org/10.1080/10888431003623470
[52]
Lefranois, P., & Armand, F. (2003). The Role of Phonological and Syntactic Awareness in Second-Language Reading: The Case of Spanish-Speaking Learners of French. Reading and Writing, 16, 219-246. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1022874425314
[53]
Liberman, I. Y., Shankweiler, D., Fischer, F. W., & Carter, B. (1974). Explicit Syllable and Phoneme Segmentation in the Young Child. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 18, 201-210. https://doi.org/10.1016/0022-0965(74)90101-5
[54]
Lindgren, S. D., De Renzi, E., & Richman, L. C. (1985). Cross-National Comparisons of Developmental Dyslexia in Italy and the United States. Child Development, 56, 1404-1417. https://doi.org/10.2307/1130460
[55]
Lindsey, K. A., Manis, F. R., & Bailey, C. E. (2003). Prediction of First-Grade Reading in Spanish-Speaking English-Language Learners. Journal of Educational Psychology, 95, 482-494. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.95.3.482
[56]
Manis, F. R., Lindsey, K. A., & Bailey, C. E. (2004). Development of Reading in Grades K-2 in Spanish-Speaking English-Language Learners. Learning Disabilities Research & Practice, 19, 214-224. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-5826.2004.00107.x
[57]
Melby-Lervag, M., & Lervag, A. (2011). Cross-Linguistic Transfer of Oral Language, Decoding, Phonological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: A Meta-Analysis of the Correlational Evidence. Journal of Research in Reading, 34, 114-135.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2010.01477.x
[58]
Nassaji, H., & Geva, E. (1999). The Contribution of Phonological and Orthographic Processing Skills to Adult ESL Reading: Evidence from Native Speakers of Farsi. Applied Psycholinguistics, 20, 241-267. https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716499002040
[59]
Palermo, F., Mikulski, A. M., Fabes, R. A., Martin, C. L., & Hanish, L. D. (2017). Cross-Language Associations and Changes in Spanish-Speaking Preschoolers’ English and Spanish Academic Abilities. Applied Psycholinguistics, 38, 347-370.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716416000217
[60]
Pasquarella, A., Chen, X., Lam, K., Luo, Y. C., & Ramirez, G. (2011). Cross-Language Transfer of Morphological Awareness in Chinese-English Bilinguals. Journal of Research in Reading, 34, 23-42. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9817.2010.01484.x
[61]
Ramirez, G., Chen, X., Geva, E., & Kiefer, H. (2010). Morphological Awareness in Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners: Within and Cross-Language Effects on Word Reading. Reading and Writing, 23, 337-358. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9203-9
[62]
Ryan, A., & Meara, P. (1992). The Case of Invisible Vowels: Arabic Speakers Reading English Words. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 531-539.
[63]
Schiff, R., & Calif, S. (2007). Role of Phonological and Morphological Awareness in L2 Oral Word Reading. Language Learning, 57, 271-298.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2007.00409.x
[64]
Shanny, M., Lahman, M., Shalim, L., Bahat, S., & Zinger (2003). Hebrew Assessment Battery for Elementary Schools in Israel. University of Haifa.
[65]
Singh, L., Fu, C. S., Tay, Z. W., & Golinkoff, R. M. (2017). Novel Word Learning in Bilingual and Monolingual Infants: Evidence for a Bilingual Advantage. Child Development, 89, e183-e198. https://doi.org/10.1111/cdev.12747
[66]
Siu, C. T. S., & Ho, C. S. H. (2015). Cross-Language Transfer of Syntactic Skills and Reading Comprehension among Young Cantonese-English Bilingual Students. Reading Research Quarterly, 50, 313-336. https://doi.org/10.1002/rrq.101
[67]
Sparks, R. L. (1995). Examining the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis to Explain Individual Differences in Foreign Language Learning. Annals of Dyslexia, 45, 187-214.
https://doi.org/10.1007/BF02648218
[68]
Sparks, R. L., & Ganschow, L. (1991). Foreign Language Learning Differences: Affective or Native Language Aptitude Differences? The Modern Language Journal, 75, 3-16.
https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1540-4781.1991.tb01076.x
[69]
van der Leij, A., Bekebrede, J., & Kotterink, M. (2010). Acquiring Reading and Vocabulary in Dutch and English: The Effect of Concurrent Instruction. Reading and Writing, 23, 415-434. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-009-9207-5
[70]
Verhoeven, L. (2000). Components in Early Second Language Reading and Spelling. Scientific Studies of Reading, 4, 313-330. https://doi.org/10.1207/S1532799XSSR0404_4
[71]
Verhoeven, L. (2007). Early Bilingualism, Language Transfer, and Phonological Awareness. Applied Psycholinguistics, 28, 425-439.
https://doi.org/10.1017/S0142716407070233
[72]
Wang, M., Cheng, C. X., & Chen, S.-W. (2006). Contribution of Morphological Awareness to Chinese-English Biliteracy Acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 542-553. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-0663.98.3.542
[73]
Wang, M., Ko, I. Y., & Choi, J. (2009). The Importance of Morphological Awareness in Korean-English Biliteracy Acquisition. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, 132-142. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cedpsych.2008.12.002
[74]
Wimmer, H., & Goswami, U. (1994). The Influence of Orthographic Consistency on Reading Development: Word Recognition in English and German Children. Cognition, 51, 91-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/0010-0277(94)90010-8
[75]
Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading Acquisition, Developmental Dyslexia, and Skilled Reading across Languages: A Psycholinguistic Grain Size Theory. Psychological Bulletin, 13, 3-19. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.131.1.3
[76]
Ziegler, J. C., Bertrand, D., Tóth, D., Csépe, V., Reis, A., Faísca, L., & Blomert, L. (2010). Orthographic Depth and Its Impact on Universal Predictors of Reading: A Cross-Language Investigation. Psychological Science, 21, 551-559.
https://doi.org/10.1177/0956797610363406
