Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop

Accurate spelling is a fundamental skill for effective written communication. It is regarded to be a predominant goal of literacy since spelling errors may significantly change the meaning of the words or sentences. Spelling skill implicates legitimate phonetic, morphemic and orthographic formations...

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Main Author: Hashemiah Mohammad Almusawi
Format: Article
Language:English
Published: Elsevier 2019-01-01
Series:Ampersand
Online Access:http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215039019300293
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spelling doaj-498953dd68c941ddab7f25cc681548f72020-11-25T00:32:50ZengElsevierAmpersand2215-03902019-01-016Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stopHashemiah Mohammad Almusawi0Department of Special Education, The Public Authority for Applied Education and Training, KuwaitAccurate spelling is a fundamental skill for effective written communication. It is regarded to be a predominant goal of literacy since spelling errors may significantly change the meaning of the words or sentences. Spelling skill implicates legitimate phonetic, morphemic and orthographic formations that require appropriate awareness levels of the language rules and structure. But if the linguistic rules are complex or irregular and the literacy context is diglossic or even tri- or multi-glossic, the ability to accurately spell words is expected to be limited. This paper accounts for the spelling skill of one certain consonant in one specific position, i.e. the hamzah consonant in its middle position, and presents the challenges that might be encountered by Arabic learners in a high educational level. The current study aimed specifically at providing an insight into the spelling proficiency of two groups of college students in Kuwait, hearing and orally-educated deaf, who are undertaking four-year teaching preparation programs in different educational disciplines. The spelling stimuli was balanced for lexical familiarity and the data analysis accounted for the effect of orthographic, phonological and morphological aspects of the hamzah on the spelling outcome. Results indicated that hearing and deaf college students experienced difficulty in attaining all written forms of middle hamzah, but the most and least common errors showed a general tendency to follow the phonological route of phoneme-graphene conversion when spelling. Unfamiliarity with the governing rules of hamzah was also evident since a higher percentage of errors occurred in spelling low-frequency words despite following the regular spelling rules of hamzah. The irregularity and complex orthographic and morphemic rules of hamzah as well as the variability in the acoustic production of hamzah sounds are discussed in light of the multi-glossic context of Arabic. Keywords: Arabic language, Glottal stop, Spelling proficiency, Multi-glossia, Graduate, Students, Deaf, Orthography, Phonology, Inflectional morphology, Derivational morphologyhttp://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215039019300293
collection DOAJ
language English
format Article
sources DOAJ
author Hashemiah Mohammad Almusawi
spellingShingle Hashemiah Mohammad Almusawi
Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
Ampersand
author_facet Hashemiah Mohammad Almusawi
author_sort Hashemiah Mohammad Almusawi
title Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
title_short Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
title_full Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
title_fullStr Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
title_full_unstemmed Determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: The presentation of medial glottal stop
title_sort determinants of spelling proficiency in hearing and deaf graduate students: the presentation of medial glottal stop
publisher Elsevier
series Ampersand
issn 2215-0390
publishDate 2019-01-01
description Accurate spelling is a fundamental skill for effective written communication. It is regarded to be a predominant goal of literacy since spelling errors may significantly change the meaning of the words or sentences. Spelling skill implicates legitimate phonetic, morphemic and orthographic formations that require appropriate awareness levels of the language rules and structure. But if the linguistic rules are complex or irregular and the literacy context is diglossic or even tri- or multi-glossic, the ability to accurately spell words is expected to be limited. This paper accounts for the spelling skill of one certain consonant in one specific position, i.e. the hamzah consonant in its middle position, and presents the challenges that might be encountered by Arabic learners in a high educational level. The current study aimed specifically at providing an insight into the spelling proficiency of two groups of college students in Kuwait, hearing and orally-educated deaf, who are undertaking four-year teaching preparation programs in different educational disciplines. The spelling stimuli was balanced for lexical familiarity and the data analysis accounted for the effect of orthographic, phonological and morphological aspects of the hamzah on the spelling outcome. Results indicated that hearing and deaf college students experienced difficulty in attaining all written forms of middle hamzah, but the most and least common errors showed a general tendency to follow the phonological route of phoneme-graphene conversion when spelling. Unfamiliarity with the governing rules of hamzah was also evident since a higher percentage of errors occurred in spelling low-frequency words despite following the regular spelling rules of hamzah. The irregularity and complex orthographic and morphemic rules of hamzah as well as the variability in the acoustic production of hamzah sounds are discussed in light of the multi-glossic context of Arabic. Keywords: Arabic language, Glottal stop, Spelling proficiency, Multi-glossia, Graduate, Students, Deaf, Orthography, Phonology, Inflectional morphology, Derivational morphology
url http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2215039019300293
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