International Electronic Journal of Elementary Education, 2016, 8(3), 481-506

 

 

 

Short Vowels Versus Word Familiarity in the 
Reading Comprehension of Arab Readers:  
A Revisited Issue 
 

Abdullah M. SERAYE  
King Saud University, Saudi Arabia 

Received: 19 July 2015 / Revised: 31 October 2015 / Accepted: 2 November 2015 

Abstract 

Arab readers, both beginning and advanced, are encouraged to read and accustomed to 
unvowelized and undiacriticized texts. Previous literature claimed that the presence of short 
vowels in the text would facilitate the reading comprehension of both beginning and advanced Arab 
readers. However, with a claimed strict controlling procedure, different results emerged, revealing 
that the only variable that affected the reading process of Arab adult skilled readers was word 
frequency, and its effect was limited to the time load of the reading process; this result raised the 
question of whether the neutral role of short vowels in the text reading process of experienced 
Arab readers would be maintained for less experienced readers, as represented by fourth graders, 
or whether word frequency would be the only variable that plays a role in their reading process. In 
experiment, 1,141 fourth-grade students were randomly assigned to 5 reading conditions: plain, 
only shaddah, short vowels plus shaddah, only short vowels, and finally the wrong short vowels 
plus shaddah. In experiment 2, 38 participants from the same population were assigned to a fully 
vowelized and diacriticized reading condition. Each participant was asked to read two texts, of high 
and low frequency words and then given recall and multiple-choice tests. In general, the 
multivariate analysis showed that the only manipulated variable that was found to affect their 
reading process in terms of reading time load and, to some degree, reading comprehension was 
word frequency, although its effect was marginal. Accordingly, pedagogical recommendations and 
future research were proposed.  

Keywords: Arabic short vowels, Arabic beginning readers, Reading comprehension, Arabic 
orthography. 

 

 

Introduction 

Reading comprehension, both process and product, is affected by many factors that are 
related to the text, the reader, and the interaction between the text and the reader 
(Kendeou, Muis, & Fulton, 2010). Indeed, those factors can also be classified as either 
internal or external factors. Internal factors are considered to be factors that are related to 
the text per se, and thus they are considered to be textual, such as the words embedded in 

                                                 
  Abdullah M. Seraye, King Saud University, College of Education, Dep. Curriculum & Instruction, 
Building 15, 2ND FLR Office, PO BOX 2458, Riyadh 11451 Saudi Arabia, Phone (+966) 467-4611, 
Email: aalseraye@ksu.edu.sa 
 



 
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the text in terms of frequency and abstractness (e.g., Ryder & Hughes, 1985), syntactic 
structures, genre (e.g., Meyer & Freedle, 1984), and text organizing structure (e.g., Meyer, 
1975). External factors, on the other hand, are considered to be exterior factors that are 
related to the reader, such as his/her prior knowledge of the topic (Bransford & Johnson, 
1972; Kendeou, Rapp, & van den Broek, 2004, 2007; Kientch, 1988), reading skills, 
schemata and beliefs (Kardash & Howell, 2000; Kendeou et al., 2010), interest, and 
knowledge of and skills in using cognitive and metacognitive strategies (e.g., Zwaan & 
Brown, 1996).  

One internal factor that is exclusive to texts written in Arabic is its orthography, which 
permits a dual representation of its scripts: a shallow, transparent orthography, in which 
the appropriate short vowels (dhammah   ُ , fatha َ , and kasrah   ) and diacritics (shaddah  _  
and skun  ْ_ ) are supplement with the consonants in the text, and a deep orthography, in 
which only the consonants are presented and no appropriate short vowels or diacritics are 
provided (Abu-Raiba, 1995; Mahmoud, 1980; Seraye, 2004). 

Arabic is a Semitic language written from right to left with an alphabetic-principle-
based writing system that represents both consonants and short vowels, including the 
diacritics, separately and voluntarily. The Arabic writing system visually consists of two 
types of symbols: consonants that represent, to a large extent, the trilateral/quadrilateral 
root of words, and tiny visual signs that are affixed to the consonants and take the shapes 
of diacritics. However, by analyzing the script symbols in terms of functions, we could 
divide the Arabic writing system symbols into four types. (1) There are 26 consonants, 
including the three long vowels that represent both a consonant and a vowel under some 
conditions: “alif: ا ,” “waaw: و ,” and “yaa’: (2) ”. ي There are three short vowels, “fathah,” 
“dhammah,” and “kasrah,” that mark the equivalent short vowels in English, a, u, i, and take 
the forms of diacritics, and the following shapes: ‘  َـ   ‘ ’,ـ,’ and ‘   ـ ‘ respectively. (3) Diacritics 
are very small visual signs that are superscripted to the consonants or the letters in a 
word: skun is represented with the symbol ‘ ْ_’ to indicate that the consonant is vowelless; 
shaddah is represented by ‘   _ ’ and is used to indicate a doubled consonant “geminated,” 
and maddah is represented with the symbol ‘ _~ ’ and is placed over the consonant ‘ ا ’ to 
indicate the combination of two consonants, alif ‘ ا ’ and hamza ‘ ء .’ Finally, (4) the case-
ending markings are very small visual symbols that take the following shapes “ ْ “, “   “, “ َ “, 
“   “, to indicate syntactically different cases, including the nominative, genitive, and 
accusative cases. The short vowels might be doubled to indicate nunation, which takes the 
following shapes:   ـ   ,ـ, and   ـ (Bateson, 1967; Campbell, 1997; Mahmoud, 1979). 

The voluntariness of representing short vowels and diacritics in Arabic print that 
characterizes Arabic orthography has resulted in a dual representation of its print: a 
transparent orthography in which the appropriate diacritics are supplemented with the 
consonants, as can be seen in traditional and young children’s texts; and a deep 
orthography in which only the consonants and no appropriate diacritics are presented, as 
can be seen in public print, newspapers, and books written for adults.  

This uniqueness of Arabic orthography of being of dual representation has attracted 
some researchers to evaluate its effect on the process of reading Arabic at all textual 
levels—word recognition, sentence understanding (specifically parsing), and text 
integration—using different populations and different types of materials and 
methodologies (see for example Abu-Rabia, 1995-2001; Ibrahim, 2013; Ibrahim, Eviatar, & 
Aharon Peretz, 2002; Seraye, 2004). Subsequently, researchers also examined word 
recognition, sentence parsing, and text reading and comprehension to assess the extent to 
which the departure of a writing system from representing speech, as can be realized in 
the absence of short vowels/pointings and diacritics from script, might influence the 
reading process (Chitiri, 1991; Seraye, 2004; Shimron, 1993). Such investigations would 



 
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help researchers in the field of reading to arrive at a universal explanation of the 
“blueprint of the reader” (Perfetti, 1999) through integrating other alphabetical writing 
systems and unique orthographies in the equation, constructing a reading model of the 
Arabic reading process. Finally, they would also help Arabic curriculum designers and 
policy makers to suggest appropriate reading instruction methods and reading scripts for 
school pupils.  

One of the major concerns over the role of those missing tiny short vowels and 
diacritics from Arab students’ print/textbooks was its effect on students’ reading 
comprehension, a concern that drew the attention of some Arab researchers to investigate 
to what extent the absence of short vowels (and diacritics) from Arab reading materials 
would affect students’ reading process while they attempt to integrate the text in order to 
understand it. Abu-Rabia (1999) conducted two experiments to compare the effect of 
short vowels on the reading comprehension of two different populations: second graders 
(given the label “the beginning readers”) and sixth graders (given the label “the advanced 
readers”). In Experiment 1, 74 sixth graders, aged 12 to 12 ½, were divided randomly into 
two groups: in one group, the participants individually and silently read a vowelized short 
story taken from their “basic reader,” and answered 10 multiple-choice vowelized 
questions. In the other group, the participants individually and silently read the 
unvowelized version of the same text and answered 10 multiple-choice unvowelized 
questions. In a within-subject design, the researcher conducted the same procedure by 
asking 71 second graders, aged 7 to 8, to read two different narrative texts, one vowelized 
and the other unvowelized, and then answer seven multiple-choice vowelized questions, 
in two sessions with two days elapsing between them. The results showed that both the 
beginning readers and the advanced ones benefited from the presence of short vowels in 
the texts, which facilitated their reading comprehension, as can be realized from the 
significant difference between the means. The second graders on average scored higher 
with vowelized texts (M= 6.34, SD= 1.58) than with unvowelized ones (M= 5.46, SD= 2.00) 
with a maximum score of 7 for both tests, and the sixth graders on average scored higher 
with the vowelized text (M= 7.20, SD= 1.70) compared with the unvowelized one (M= 6.10, 
SD= 2.22) with a maximum score of 10 for both tests. 

According to Abu-Rabia (1999), this result can be explained in terms of the role of short 
vowels in providing the text with phonological information that “affects working memory 
in processing text information in such a way that, if information is also phonologically 
coded in working memory, this will maintain that information longer during reading, 
which facilitates reading comprehension” (p. 100). 

In another study (Abu-Rabia, 2001), three tasks were designed to investigate the role of 
short vowels, pointings (the counterpart of short vowels in Hebrew orthography), and 
context on the reading process of Arab adults as they read Arabic and Hebrew reading 
materials: words, short paragraphs, and short story texts. In one task, 65 native Arab 
adults, who were university students aged 22 to 30 years and were proficient in Arabic 
and Hebrew, were assessed on their reading comprehension in relation to the presence 
and absence of both short vowels and pointings as they read short story texts written in 
Arabic and Hebrew.  

There were two different short stories: one written in Arabic and another written in 
Hebrew. From each story, two versions were constructed to present the reading condition: 
one was presented fully vowelized for the case of Arabic, or fully pointed for the case of 
Hebrew, and the other was presented fully unvowelized or unpointed, respectively. 
Although it is not clearly stated, it seems that the participants were divided into two 
groups, and each group received one reading condition. One group individually and 
silently read the vowelized Arabic text and the pointed Hebrew text, and the other group 



 
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individually and silently read the unvowelized Arabic text and the unpointed Hebrew one, 
then they answered six multiple-choice questions (with 6 as the ultimate score).  

The results demonstrated that the participants on average performed better with the 
fully vowelized and pointed texts than with the ones presented without short vowels or 
pointings (M= 4.51, SD= 1.20 for the vowelized Arabic text, and M= 4.10, SD= 1.56 for the 
unvowelized Arabic text; M= 2.43, SD= 1.39 for the vowelized/pointed Hebrew text, and 
M= 2.27, SD= 1.16 for the unvowelized/unpointed Hebrew text). Abu-Raiba (2001) 
attributed these results to the presence of short vowels and pointings in the texts, which 
provided “additional phonological information” (p. 52) and subsequently helped in 
understanding the text.  

This finding of a positive effect of short vowels on the reading comprehension of Arab 
adults does not just support Abu-Rabia’s (1999) previous study in showing a consistent 
result, but also empowers the role of short vowels in facilitating the reading 
comprehension process of Arabic readers regardless of their reading skill. Not just 
beginning readers but also experienced ones (adults) benefitted from the presence of 
short vowels in the texts they read. However, examining the mean values for both studies 
shows that the less experienced readers, second graders, benefitted much more from the 
presence of short vowels in the texts; they reached comparatively higher maximum scores 
than the experienced skilled readers, sixth graders and adults.  

In the case of Hebrew texts, the positive effect of short vowels (pointings) on the 
reading comprehension of adults as they read a Hebrew text was in agreement with a 
previous study by Shimron and Sivan (1994), which showed that providing a Hebrew text 
with short vowels/pointings helped the adults comprehend the text to some degree better 
than they comprehended an unvowelized/unpointed text (M= 1.75, SD= 0.44 for correct 
answers for the vowelized text; M= 1.42, SD= 0.72 for the unvowelized text). However, 
reading comprehension, as can be assessed by the load reflected in the reading time it took 
the participants to read the texts, showed that on average it took the participants the same 
amount of time to read the vowelized/pointed and unvowelized/unpointed Hebrew texts 
(M= 68.8 s, SD= 31.3 s for the unvowelized text; M= 69.0 s, SD= 30.4 s for the unvowelized 
text).  

It can be concluded from Abu-Rabia’s (1999, 2001) studies that short vowels (I use his 
term roughly here, because presenting the text fully vowelized does not mean providing 
the text with only short vowels but means providing it with other diacritics that also 
represent speech: shaddah, skun, and case markings) had an effect on the reading 
comprehension of Arab readers as they read a text silently for comprehension, and that 
was consistent regardless of the type of population involved in the process: beginning 
readers with less experience or advanced ones with more experience. Further, the effect 
was noticed on the product of the reading comprehension process as was assessed by the 
multiple-choice test. Other variables for assessing the reading comprehension process, as 
can be realized by the reading time it takes the subjects to read a text, were not 
incorporated in the two studies, although they reflect the reading comprehension process.  

Thus, more than one drawback can be observed in Abu-Rabia’s (1999, 2001) studies. 
These drawbacks are related to the methodology applied, including the dissimilarity and 
type of texts used (e.g., the length of his experimental texts were equalized on the number 
of words, and not on the number of morphemes where they should due to the affixation 
feature of Arabic; nor they were equalized in terms of word frequency, syntactic structure, 
or genre) and their familiarity to the participants, especially in the 1999 study. The author 
also failed to manipulate the short vowels to the degree that their effect alone would be 
isolated, because the author included shaddah and skun as short vowels in Arabic. Further, 



 
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he included even the case endings, tiny signs take the shape of short vowels and the 
diacritic skun, which function in relation to the syntactic structure of the sentence. The 
measurement applied was insensitive (only a multiple-choice test was used, not a recall 
test), and finally the difference in the results was overestimated and the author did not 
point out to the slight difference between the means. In the 1999 study, the means were 
7.20 out of 10 for the vowelized condition and 6.10 out of 10 for the unvowelized 
condition, a difference of 1.10, and 6.34 out of 7 for the vowelized condition and 5.46 out 
of 7 for the unvowelized condition, a 0.88 difference. It should be noted that the 
measurement scale involved one point for each correct answer, and therefore a 1.10-unit 
difference and a 0.88-unit difference between the means were equivalent to differences of 
1.10 and 0.88 correct answers, respectively. Thus, the effects of short vowels on the 
reading comprehension of both advanced and beginning readers should have taken into 
account the sizeable difference between the means and the measurement scales employed 
in the study.  

For the 2001 study, it was found that the participants performed better with the 
vowelized texts and with the pointed texts than with the texts that were presented plain—
that is, without short vowels or pointings. However, examining the means between each 
pair of reading conditions shows the same phenomenon found in the 1999 study; only a 
very slight difference between the means was found. For the Arabic texts, the participants 
scored 4.51 on average for the vowelized Arabic text and 4.10 for the unvowelized Arabic 
text, a difference of 0.41; for the Hebrew texts, the participants on average scored 2.43 for 
the pointed Hebrew text and 2.27 for the unpointed text, a difference of 0.16, which equals 
a 0.16 difference in correct answers. Because the measurement scale involved one point 
for each correct answer, the 0.41-unit difference and the 0.16-unit difference between the 
means were equivalent to differences of 0.41 and 0.16 correct answers, respectively. Thus, 
interpreting the effects found for the short vowels and pointings on the reading 
comprehension of Arab adults should have taken into account the sizeable difference 
between the means and the measurement scales employed in the study. 

Accordingly, attributing this difference in comprehension performance to the short 
vowels per se is still questionable under these conditions, as Abu-Rabia’s studies did not 
control for the short vowels to the degree that would isolate their effect accurately, nor did 
they control for the texts used in terms of being identical, as he used two uncontrolled-for 
texts. Furthermore, he included other diacritics, such as the shaddah sign,   ـ, as short vowel 
signs, which means that “the representation of the short vowels was not scientifically and 
experimentally manipulated to the degree that the extraneous variables were controlled” 
(Seraye, 2004, 56). Therefore, it was necessary to take such realities into account to 
reassess the role of short vowels in the reading comprehension of adult Arabs who were 
exposed only to unvowelized texts and to determine the degree to which such exposure 
would affect their reading process as they read vowelized texts versus unvowelized texts.  

In Experiment 1 of a three-experiment study, Seraye (2004) study responded to such 
concern and assumed that, once we control for the reading materials used, the procedure, 
and the reading condition, the homographic phenomenon that characterizes the 
unvowelized Arabic text would not affect people’s reading comprehension, nor would the 
presence of short vowels. He reasoned that Arab adults (considered to be experienced 
readers) would use their language experience, particularly the morphological stem of the 
Arabic root of the words, their trilateral/quadrilateral root, and the linguistic textual 
context, in understanding the text. Thus, Seraye (2004) used a matching procedure to 
construct matched texts on all textual levels. In terms of short vowels, he differentiated 
between full consonant representation and full “morphological short vowel” 
representation in order to exclude confounding effects of other diacritics (e.g., shaddah, 



 
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case-ending markings, and skun) and thus to determine the role of short vowels in 
comprehension. Further, he built a frequency effect into the design because word 
frequency could covariate with the vowelization effect. He also used a retelling procedure 
(recall), which is considered a better indicator of readers’ performance on texts, in 
addition to a multiple-choice test (Lipson & Wixson, 1997).  

For the purpose of the study, two texts were constructed, one high-frequency text (HF) 
and one low-frequency text (LF), by using a matching procedure to guarantee the 
identicality between the texts, except in word frequency. The two texts, one HF and one 
LF, were of 504 words and 834 morphemes each and served as the main texts in the 
experiment. Five versions of each text were constructed to represent the reading 
conditions: in the first condition the text was given plain (no short vowels or shaddah), in 
the second condition the text was provided with only shaddah, in the third condition the 
text was provided with short vowels plus shaddah, in the fourth condition the text was 
provided with short vowels minus shaddah, and finally in the fifth condition the text was 
provided with wrong short vowels plus shaddah. The author included the only-shaddah 
and only-vowels conditions in his design for control purposes. The participants were 104 
native Arabic speakers aged 19 to 40. They were randomly divided into five groups and 
then assigned randomly to the five reading conditions. Thus, in each reading condition, the 
participant silently read two texts, HF and LF, in two sessions separated by 14–20 days. 
The order of passage presentation was rotated to counterbalance reading materials and 
reading conditions within each group. The first group read the plain texts (no short vowels 
or shaddah were provided); the second group read the texts with only shaddah (only 
shaddah was provided with the text); the third group read the texts vowelized with 
shaddah (both short vowels and shaddah were provided); the fourth group read the 
vowelized texts (only short vowels were provided), and the fifth group read the texts 
wrongly vowelized with shaddah (both short vowels and shaddah were provided on the 
wrong positions in the words, which would lead, if they were read with the consonants, to 
phonemic distortion and not to graphemic distortion). After each reading, the participant 
was asked to recall what he read and then respond to 10 multiple-choice questions. There 
are three dependent variables collected: the reading time it took the participant to 
complete the text, measured in milliseconds; the propositions recalled after the reading 
task and the correct answers on the multiple-choice test; and two independent variables, 
the vowelization conditions and the text types, HF versus LF.  

The results showed that for the reading time data, a significant main effect was found 
for text type (HF vs. LF), but not for reading condition. Further, there was no significant 
interaction between text type and reading condition. As a result, it did not matter which 
reading condition the participant was in; it always took him longer to read the low-
frequency text than the high-frequency text. On average, it took the participant 206.32 s to 
read the LF text and 194.13 s to read the HF text.  

For the number of propositions from the recall test data, no significant main effects for 
text type or reading condition were found. Further, the results did not show any 
significant interaction between text and reading condition. Thus, it did not matter which 
text the participants read or which reading condition they were in; their performance was 
on average the same. There was a 1.5-unit difference in recall between the marginal means 
for the LF and HF texts (30.83 and 29.31, respectively), with the note that the 
measurement scale involved one point for each meaningful proposition, and therefore a 
1.5-unit difference was equivalent to a difference of 1.5 propositions.     

For the number of correct responses as measured by the multiple-choice test, the 
analysis revealed exactly the same result that was obtained from analyzing the data of the 
recall test. That is, no significant main effects for reading condition or text type were 



 
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found, nor was there a reading condition × text type interaction. Thus, it did not matter 
which reading condition the participants were in or which text they read; their 
performance was on average the same. In fact, the difference between the marginal means 
for reading condition and the difference between the marginal means for text was a 
fractional difference (only a 0.1 difference between the HF text marginal mean and the LF 
text marginal mean: 7.62 and 7.52, respectively). Note that the measurement scale 
involved one point for each correct response, with an ultimate score of 10 points.  

In general, the results showed that the presence or absence of short vowels and 
diacritics in combination does not affect the reading process comprehension of skilled 
adult Arabic readers. In sum, the results demonstrated that the only variable that affects 
the reading process of skilled adult Arabic readers is word frequency.   

Those findings of Seraye (2004) did not contribute positively to the subsequent 
investigations conducted by Abu-Rabia and others. For example, in a descriptive 
comparison study of dyslexics of Grade 8 (n= 29) and matching normal readers on both 
reading performance (n= 29 of Grade 6) and chronological age who had similar general 
ability performance (n= 31 of Grade 8), Abu-Rabia and Abu-Rahmoun (2012) compared 
the performance of the three groups on multiple tasks—phonological, orthographic, 
spelling, and reading comprehension tasks—under two reading conditions: vowelized and 
unvowelized. On the reading comprehension task, the participants were asked to read two 
different informational texts (only controlled and equalized on the number of lines), one 
fully vowelized and the other presented plain, which were chosen from their basal reader 
for Grade 8. The analysis revealed that all groups’ participants benefitted from the 
presence of short vowels; that is, the participants performed better with the vowelized 
text (M= 6.44 vs. 5.33 for dyslexics, 7.66 vs. 4.83 for normal readers of matching reading 
level, and 9.48 vs. 8.32 for normal readers of matching chronological age, for the 
vowelized and unvowelized texts, respectively). Furthermore, the two normal groups 
comprehended the vowelized text much better than the dyslexic group. However, the size 
difference between the means, particularly for the dyslexics and the group of normal 
readers matching the dyslexics on age variable, was still a small difference, 1.11 and 1.16 
units.    

In line with Abu-Rabia’s perspectives on the role of short vowels, Abu-Hamour et al. 
(2013) administered two tasks adopted from the curriculum-based management 
assessment in order to ensure its applicability in evaluating the reading performance of 
Arabic fifth graders. There were 131 fifth graders (divided into two groups: 89 of skilled 
reading ability, and 42 with struggling reading ability) and two tasks: oral reading fluency 
and silent reading comprehension. In the second task, which was designed to assess the 
reading comprehension of fifth graders in relation to the presence and absence of short 
vowels, the participants were given a text of 300 words with reading conditions (plain, 
partially vowelized, and fully vowelized) with every seventh word deleted and were asked 
to silently read the passage within three minutes and “restore” the right words from the 
three alternatives provided after every deleted word. Thus, the number of correctly 
restored words was the dependent variable in the study (42 were the maximum score). 
Thus, every participant was asked to read three texts under the three reading conditions 
and restore the deleted words from the three alternative options. Although the skilled 
readers scored higher than the struggling readers, both skilled and struggling readers 
performed better with the vowelized texts (M= 24.19, SD= 5.64 for skilled readers on the 
vowelized text and M= 7.88, SD= 3.82 for the plain text; M= 14.19, SD= 5.51, M= 3.76, SD= 
2.80 for struggling readers on the vowelized and plain texts, respectively. Their 
justification for these results is that, unlike the situation with the plain text, vowelizing the 
text makes it transparent and reserves the attention needed for comprehension.  



 
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From the overall results, two factors were found to play a role in the Arabic reading 
process for reading time and reading comprehension: short vowels, as Abu-Rabia (1999; 
2001), Abu-Rabia and Abu-Rahmoun (2012), and Abu-Hamour et al. (2013) observed; and 
word frequency, as observed by Seraye (2004). Therefore, the question is whether the 
effect of short vowels on reading comprehension, as found by Abu-Rabia (1999) and Abu-
Hamour et al. (2013), holds with the correct categorization of less experienced readers, as 
represented by fourth graders—who are starting to read across the curriculum and for 
learning, and whose textbooks are written in a deep orthography, versus with second 
graders, who are still learning to read, or fifth graders, who were more advanced readers, 
when the appropriate experimental control is taken. Alternatively, should we find word 
frequency, as found in Seraye’s (2004) study on Arab adults, to be the only variable that 
affects both populations’ reading processes, with the more experienced readers 
represented by Arab adults (Seraye, 2004) and the less experienced readers represented 
by fourth graders in the current study? Therefore, a combination effect of both short 
vowels and word frequency on the reading comprehension process of fourth graders as 
they read connected texts is investigated. Such an investigation should accomplish the 
following aims: it should illustrate the role of short vowels, diacritics, and word frequency 
in the reading comprehension process of the less experienced readers, as represented by 
fourth graders, and subsequently tap into the results on how beginning readers’ print and 
textbooks should be presented. Second, the results should help in building a model of the 
reading process in Arabic orthography by determining the factors that affect the process. 
Therefore, the goal of the current study is to assess the effect of short vowels per se, the 
word frequency per se, and the short vowels and word frequency in combination on the 
reading process of fourth graders’ reading time and reading comprehension, as they read a 
connected text.  

Therefore, two main questions were raised to represent the two main independent 
variables found to affect the reading process of Arabic texts: short vowels and word 
frequency. Since reading comprehension can be assessed as a process (reading time) and a 
product (correct responses), two sub-questions under each main question were 
constructed to assess the effect of short vowels and word frequency on the reading 
comprehension of skilled children Arab readers, as represented by fourth-grade students. 

According to the previous observations, presenting the short vowels or the short 
vowels and diacritics in combination within an expository text should not affect the 
reading comprehension of fourth graders, as can be measured by the number of 
propositions they recall or the correct answers they score. The assumption is justified by 
the fact that skilled readers will use their linguistic knowledge, their knowledge of the 
trilateral/quadrilateral root that characterizes Arabic morphology, and the text context to 
compensate for the missing short vowels and diacritics from print (Abu-Rabia, 2002; 
Seraye, 2004; Abu-Rabia & Abu-Rahmoun, 2012). However, their reading process, in terms 
of the time they need to read the text, will be affected by the presence and absence of short 
vowels and diacritics: fourth graders should take more time to read a plain text than a 
vowelized one due to the heterophonic homographic phenomenon in Arabic words that, 
when starting a sentence, might garden-path the reader to the degree that it would force 
him/her to reread the sentence in order to choose the right word form (for more detail, 
see Experiment 2 in Seraye, 2004). 

Further, it is assumed that word frequency might affect their reading time, but not their 
reading comprehension. Inserting 15–25% of the low-frequency words in the text should 
not affect their reading comprehension (Ryder & Hughes, 1985; Seraye, 2004), because 
the fourth graders would exploit their knowledge of the morphological roots of Arabic 
words, trilateral/quadrilateral roots, and the text context in constructing a textual 



 
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representation of the text they read. However, along with reading time, word frequency 
was found to affect Arab adult readers—the experienced readers (Seraye, 2004); 
subsequently, it is also expected to affect the less experienced readers, the fourth graders.  

1) Do short vowels play a psychological role in the reading comprehension process of 
skilled Arab children as represented by fourth graders?  

1a) Is there a significant difference in the reading comprehension process, 
as measured by the reading time, of skilled fourth graders when reading a 
vowelized versus an unvowelized text? 

1b) Is there a significant difference in the reading comprehension product, 
as measured by the multiple-choice and recall tests, of skilled fourth 
graders when reading a vowelized versus an unvowelized text? 

2) Does word frequency play a psychological role in the reading comprehension 
process of skilled Arab children, as represented by fourth graders?  

2a) Is there a significant difference in the reading comprehension process, 
as measured by reading time, of skilled fourth graders when reading a 
high-frequency versus a low-frequency text? 

2b) Is there a significant difference in the reading comprehension product, 
as measured by the multiple-choice and recall tests, of skilled Arab children 
when reading a high-frequency versus a low-frequency text? 

Method 

Experiment 1  

Participants. One hundred and forty fourth-grade native Arab male students were chosen 
from three elementary public schools in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Their ages ranged between 
9 and 10. They were offered R20 as compensation for their participation. All of them had 
normal vision and reported no learning or reading difficulties. The students’ reading 
assessment scores from the first term were initially used to select suitable participants for 
the study, and other criteria—pre- and posttest procedures—were used to screen the 
participants, in terms of their reading proficiency level. Only those who had 40 or more 
correct readings from the 50-word list were included in the study. Further, a post-criteria 
judgment (reading a short passage) was administered in the second session for each 
participant to ensure that only those who expressed reading fluency were included in the 
experiment. Initially, 147 students were selected and then randomly divided into five 
groups, and then randomly into five reading conditions. Consent and admission were 
officially taken before administering the experiments. Out of the 147 participants who 
took part in the study, 6 participants were excluded from the study data due to either the 
post-criteria procedure, which revealed that they were under grade level in reading, or to 
their moving from the schools during the experiment  

Materials. The use of controlled texts instead of familiar and different texts was necessary 
to address the questionable controlling issues observed in previous studies; thus, two long 
expository Arabic texts were constructed for experiment 1: one of high frequency (HF) 
and the other of low frequency (LF). To ensure equality between the two texts, a high-
frequency text was constructed, and its low-frequency counterpart was created using a 
matching process. Other than the word frequency, the two texts were equalized on all 
aspects, including sentence structure, length, neighboring word size, and even on the 
number of words and morphemes, due to the affixation feature of the Arabic 
morphological system. In terms of the test’s organizing structure, the events spots, 
pronoun names, and identities of the characters were replaced with other event spots, 



 
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pronoun names, and identities (see Seraye (2004) for more details on the matching 
technique). Thus, there were two texts of high and low frequency, respectively (each text 
contained 166 words and 320 morphemes). Sixteen words from the HF text (10% of the 
words in the text) were replaced with their low-frequency synonyms. Five versions of 
each text were created to control the short vowels and diacritics, as well as isolate the 
effects of the short vowels per se: one version was left plain—that is, unvowelized; the 
second was fully consonantally presented by providing the text with only the diacritic 
shaddah,  _ ); in the third version, the text was presented with both short vowels and 
shaddah; with the fourth version, the text was supplemented with short vowels only and 
without any diacritics; finally, for a controlling procedure, the text in the fifth version was 
provided with the wrong short vowels and shaddah so that, if ignored and not assembled 
with the consonants, the text would resemble the plain text that the Arab readers were 
exposed to (see Table 1).  

Table 1. Reading conditions 

 Reading condition Arabic Script 

1 Plain  وديةعبدالعزيز يعيش هو وعائلته في قرية من ... السع  

2 Fully consonantly: with shaddah only  ودي ةعبدالعزيز يعيش هو وعائلته في قرية من ... الس ع  

3 short vowels with shaddah   ن ... السَّع يز يَع يش ه و َوَعائ لَته ف ي قَريَة م  يَّةَعبدالعَز  ود   

4 Only short vowels   ن ... الَسع يز يَع يش ه و َوَعائ لَته ف ي قَريَة م  يَةَعبدالعَز  ود   

5 wrongly vowelized and shaddah  َّع ائ لَته  ف ي ق ري ة َمن ... الس  يز ي عَيش  ه و  َوع  يَّةع بدالعَز  َود   

Further, a short passage of 100 words, written in both shallow and deep orthography, 
and a fifty-word list were constructed to assess the participants’ reading proficiency level 
for the inclusion and exclusion criteria. The texts and word list were assessed and judged 
by experts in the Arabic teaching field, and by primary-grade reading teachers.  

Measures. Three types of data were collected: the reading time in which the participant 
read the text, in milliseconds; and reading comprehension, as assessed by the recalling test 
based on the number of propositions recalled and by the correct answers based on the 10-
item multiple-choice test. Both tests were judged by experts in the Arabic teaching field, 
and by primary grade reading teachers for their content validity, format, accuracy, etc. 
Both tests were piloted before the actual experiment. The recall test’s reliability was 
examined using rater judgment, and the correlation coefficient was found to be r = 0.97. 
For the multiple-choice test, the alpha value was 0.67 for the HF test and 0.65 for the LF 
test. Further, a congruent validity was adopted, and the Pearson correlation coefficients 
between the recall and the multiple-choice tests were found to be significant (r = 0.70 for 
the HF test and r = 0.69 for the LF test).  

Design. A split-plot factorial mixed 5 x 2 design was adopted for the current study (Kirk, 
1982), with one between-subject factor (the five reading conditions) and one within-
subject factor (the text type: HF vs. LF), in order to determine the role of each independent 
factor per se and in combination on the fourth graders’ reading comprehension as they 
read a connected text. Counterbalance procedures were conducted between texts within 
every group in order to avoid the order effect.  

Procedure. As explained before, previous studies do not to control for the carry-over effect 
from having the two texts read simultaneously, or from having a short time elapse 



 
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between the reading sessions. In one of Abu-Rabia (1999) experiments, for example, the 
task was given in two sessions with two days elapsing between them. Carry-over effect is 
possible in such a situation. Therefore, in order for the current study to have a controlled 
procedure, the carry-over and order effects were taken into account through 
counterbalancing and 14-20-day time interval between the experimental sessions (Seraye, 
2004). Thus, in experiment 1, the participants were asked to read the two texts (the HF 
and LF texts) in two separate sessions, at intervals between 14 to 20 days. The tests were 
given in an empty, quiet room in the participants’ schools. In session one, the participant 
was asked to read one of the texts for reading comprehension (either HF or LF) silently 
and at his pace; he was asked to read the other text in the second session. Directly 
following each reading, the participant was asked to recall the text he just read (prompts 
were used to prevent the participant from being selective in his recalling). The time it took 
each participant to complete the reading was calculated in milliseconds, and his recall was 
recorded. After the recalling task, the participant was given the multiple-choice test and 
instructed to avoid any guessing responses as well as to answer the questions according to 
what he read. The same procedure was followed for the second session, except that the 
participant was given a short passage at the end of the session to read orally and 
accurately, in order to double check the participant’s reading skill, which would then be 
included or excluded from the data analysis. However, an additional procedure was taken 
for the group that was asked to read the wrongly vowelized and shaddah text. These 
participants were informed about the wrong short vowels and shaddah prior to reading. 
The order of text presentation was rotated within every group to counterbalance the texts 
and reading conditions. Both experiments were conducted and administered by the 
researcher. 

Results. In order to answer the two questions and sub-questions proposed (a and b), three 
dependent variables were collected: reading time, as measured in milliseconds; the 
number of propositions, as assessed by the recall test; and finally, the number of correct 
answers, as assessed by the multiple-choice test. A multivariate analysis (a two-way 
repeated-measures analysis of variance) was adopted to determine whether there was a 
main effect for the short vowels per se, a main effect for the word frequency per se, or an 
interaction between the two independent variables, short vowels and word frequency, on 
the reading comprehension of the fourth graders.  

Reading Time 

For questions 1a and 2a on the reading time data (“Is there a significant difference in the 
reading process, as measured by reading time, among fourth graders when reading a 
vowelized versus an unvowelized text, and when reading a high-frequency versus low-
frequency text?”), the analysis on the reading time data revealed a significant main effect 
for text type only (HF vs. LF), F(1, 135) = 5.59, p = .019, p²= 0.04, and not for reading 
condition F(4, 135) = 0.277, p = .893, nor there was a significant interaction between the 
text type and reading condition, F(4, 135) = 0.878, p = .479. However, the post hoc analysis 
conducted on each pair, using Tukey and Scheffe tests, did not show any significant 
differences between the compared pairs. Subsequently, despite the reading condition the 
participant was in, he would always take more time to read the low-frequency text than 
the high-frequency text. The participants spent 160.60 seconds reading the LF text and 
151.53 seconds reading the HF text (see Table 2). Further, the pair means in Table 2 for 
the five reading conditions show that the participants in reading condition 3—compared 
with the other groups, in which short vowels and shaddah were provided with the text—
spent less time, on average, reading the two texts (146.07 and 148.68 milliseconds for the 
HF and LF texts, respectively). However, both groups, the plain one and the vowelized one, 
spent on average the same time to read the HF text (146.87 and 146.07 respectively). This 



 
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result is inconsistent with the proposed assumption that beginning readers should require 
more time to read a plain text than to a vowelized text due to the heterophonic 
homographic words in Arabic, particularly with the garden-path sentences in the text. 

The partial eta squared value (p²) was calculated as a measure of effect size for the 
text type variable, the word frequency. Its value of 0.04 is considered to be of small to 
medium effect size (Kotrlik & Williams, 2003). It indicates that 4 % of the total variance in 
the dependent variable, the reading time, is attributed to the manipulated word frequency.  

Table 2. Cell and marginal means on the reading time test by reading condition and text 

Group Reading Condition Text  

  High Freq. Low Freq.  

 M SD M SD Margina
l 

1 Plain: no short vowels or shaddah 146.87 69.49 156.33 73.67 151.60 

2 Fully consonantly: with shaddah only 150.96 79.38 173.32 111.70 162.14 

3 Vowelized: short vowels and 
shaddah 

146.07 76.63 148.68 67.77 
147.38 

4 Vowelized: short vowels, with no 
shaddah  

162.46 87.20 169.64 79.23 
166.05 

5 Wrongly vowelized: wrong short 
vowels and shaddah  

151.62 78.01 154.92 82.01 
153.27 

 Marginal Means 151.53 77.32 160.60 83.45 156.06 

Reading Comprehension 

For questions 1b and 2b on the recalling test data (“Is there a significant difference in the 
reading comprehension, as measured by the number of propositions, of fourth graders 
when reading a vowelized versus an unvowelized text, and when reading a high-frequency 
versus a low-frequency text?”), the analysis on the number of propositions in general did 
not reveal any significant results: there were no main effects for text type, F(1, 128) = .022, 
p = .883, or reading condition, F(4, 128) = 0.371, p = .829, nor there was a significant 
interaction between text type and reading condition, F(4, 128) = 0.508, p = .730. 
Regardless of the text type and reading condition, the participants on average performed 
the same in recalling the texts’ propositions. In fact, the differences between the marginal 
means for the text type and between the pair means for every reading condition, as shown 
in Table 3, are very small, when we take into account that the measurement scale adopted 
in the study involved one point for each meaningful proposition recalled. Therefore, a 0.12 
difference between the marginal means of the HF and LF texts (14.46 and 14.58, 
respectively) and the roughly one-proposition difference between the pair means for 
every reading condition (Table 3) are equivalent to a difference of 0.12, and one 
proposition, respectively.  

 

 



 
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 Table 3. Cell and marginal means on the recall test by reading condition and text 

Reading Condition Text  

 High Freq. Low Freq.  

M SD M SD Marginal 

1 13.90 9.97 13.74 10.54 13.82 

2 14.89 8.28 15.19 9.45 15.04 

3 15.48 7.65 14.44 6.30 14.96 

4 14.44 9.61 14.63 8.89 14.54 

5 13.60 9.23 14.92 8.57 14.26 

Marginal Means 14.46 8.95 14.58 8.75 14.52 

For questions 1b and 2b on the multiple-choice data (“Are there any significant 
differences in the reading comprehension, as measured by the number of correct answers, 
of fourth graders when they read a vowelized versus an unvowelized text, and when they 
read a high-frequency versus low-frequency text?”), the analysis on the number of correct 
answers data revealed a significant main effect for text type (HF vs. LF) F(1, 134)= 21.80, 
p= .000, p²= 0.14, but not for reading condition F(4, 134) = 0.28, p= .89, nor for the 
interaction between text type and reading condition, F(4, 134)= 0.61, p= .65 (Table 4). 
Examining the marginal means for the HF and LF texts shows that the participants on 
average scored higher on the HF text, with a mean= 6.44, versus a mean= 5.56 for the LF 
text. However, even with the reported large effect size value of 0.14 (Kotrlik & Williams, 
2003), the marginal means shows only a 0.88 unit difference, which is a very slight 
difference when the measurement scale adopted is taken into account. The current study 
adopted a measurement scale that involves one point for each correct answer; thus, a 0.88 
unit difference is equivalent to a difference of 0.88 correct answer points. However, the 
post hoc analysis conducted on each pair, using Tukey and Scheffe tests, did not show any 
significant differences between the pairs of comparison.  

The partial eta squared value (p²) of 0.14 indicates that 14 % of the total variance in 
the dependent variable, number of correct answers, is accounted for by the manipulated 
word frequency variable.  

  

 

  



 
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Table 4. Cell and marginal means on the multiple-choice test by reading condition and text 

Reading Condition Text  

 High Freq. Low Freq.  

M SD M SD Marginal 

1 6.81 2.52 5.42 2.17 6.11 

2 6.43 2.53 5.79 2.60 6.11 

3 6.60 2.22 5.70 2.20 6.15 

4 6.29 2.32 5.32 2.55 5.80 

5 6.08 2.17 5.58 2.10 5.83 

Marginal Means 6.44 2.35 5.56 2.33 6.00 

General Results 

Two main findings were revealed by the analysis: one is that vowelization is neither 
attributed positively nor negatively to the reading process of beginning readers, as 
represented by the fourth-grade students. That is, the supplemented vowelization did not 
affect their reading process for comprehension, as was measured by the time it took the 
fourth grader to read the text, or by the number of propositions recalled and the correct 
responses scored. Additionally, the only factor that played a role in the reading process of 
beginning readers was word frequency. Its role was observed with the reading time, and 
with the reading comprehension, as assessed by the correct responses scored, although its 
effect might not be practically affected due to the observed sizeable difference between 
the means and the measurement scales employed in the study. Furthermore, insignificant 
results were observed with the other comprehension assessment procedure—the recall 
test—which did not show such a difference. Such an effect of word frequency on the 
reading comprehension process of beginning Arabic readers indicates that students’ 
reading experience, as reflected by word familiarity, in terms of its frequency, was 
obviously involved in such a process. This subsequently drew the researcher’s attention to 
investigate the role of reading experience among the beginning readers, in terms of the 
type of print exposure those readers were familiar with. That is, the extent to which the 
familiarity with the print type (text representation) that the beginning Arabic readers 
were exposed to would affect the way they build a mental representation of the text. As 
was earlier laid out, beginning Arabic readers’ performance did not differ according to the 
type of text representation, in terms of vowelization and diacriticizing. Their performance 
was the same, on average, whether they read a plain text or a vowelized text. However, in 
order for the researcher to isolate the effectiveness of short vowels per se, a strict sound 
controlling procedure ought to be followed, even if this procedure would lead the 
researcher to include unusual reading conditions, in which the texts are presented in a 
way that beginning Arabic readers might not be used to. For example, in one of the reading 
conditions, the text was supplemented with only short vowels, and no diacritics, such as 
shaddah or skun, were included. This raised a concern over the manipulation followed in 
Experiment 1 for control purposes: whether the manipulation of short vowels and 
shaddah (the third reading condition in the design) without the skun diacritic was 
insufficient to exclude the role of short vowels in the reading process of beginning readers, 
especially when we know that the term “vowelizing” (which should mean “providing the 



 
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text with short vowels only”), in a repeated uncontrolled procedure, would add skun 
(which means void of any short vowels) as part of the vowelization. Thus, adding the skun 
and shaddah diacritics along with the short vowels to the consonants when vowelizing a 
text would help to assess whether the Arab children’s reading process, particularly 
reading comprehension, is a habitual act that is directed, not only by the presence and 
absence of short vowels but rather by the diacritics, which represent both the presence 
and absence of the missing short vowels, the diacritics, skun, and shaddah, from the Arabic 
orthography. In other words, would the reading comprehension process of beginning 
readers be affected by how the text is printed and exposed to those children, rather than 
claiming that the effect should be attributed to short vowels alone? Therefore, a follow-up 
experiment in which the vowelization was manipulated differently was necessary in order 
to respond to such a concern. The experiment added another reading condition in which 
the text’s consonants were fully vowelized and discretized (to adhere to how previous 
studies controlled the reading conditions). Accordingly, a reading condition in which the 
text is presented in a familiar form that beginning readers of fourth grade have 
experienced should help in determining the extent to which reading experience is the 
operating factor in their reading comprehension process. Therefore, a reading condition in 
which the text was provided with short vowels, shaddah, and skun was constructed and 
tested.  

Experiment 2 

Participants. A different sample of 38 fourth graders drawn from exactly the same 
population in Experiment 1 participated voluntarily in this experiment. Only the data of 25 
participants were analyzed due to students moving or transferring, or attendance 
circumstances. They were offered R 20 as compensation for their participation. None of 
them had ever participated in a similar study.  

Materials. The same methodology adopted in Experiment 1 was applied in Experiment 2, 
in terms of text formats, measures, design and procedure, with exceptions only in how the 
two texts, HF and LF, were presented. That is, the same texts were supplemented with 
short vowels, shaddah, and skun (fully vowelized and diacriticizing). The vowelization and 
diacriticizing of the two texts were assessed and judged by a team of Arabic experts and 
reading teachers in primary grades (Table 5).  

Table 5. Reading conditions  

6 fully vowelized and diacriticized   َّْن ... الس ْيش  ه َو َوَعائ لَت ه  ف ْي قَْريَة  م  ْيز  يَع  يَّة  َعْبد اْلعَز  ع ْود   

Results. As can be seen in Table 6, the participants spent 133.76 seconds on average 
reading the high-frequency text and 134.56 reading the low-frequency text; note the small 
difference between the two means (0.8 milliseconds difference). However, incorporating 
the current data of the fully vowelized and diacriticized reading condition with the 
previous reading conditions and reanalyzing the data show the following results: there 
were no significant main effects were found for text type, F(1, 160) = .817, p = .37, or for 
reading condition F(5, 160) = 0.62, p = .68, nor there was a significant interaction between 
text type and reading condition, F(5, 160) = 0.79, p = .56. Subsequently, the participants’ 
performance, in terms of their reading time for the two texts, was on average the same. 
However, observing the marginal means and the mean values for both texts (HF and LF) 
for all groups together and for group 6 individually shows that the participants, in general, 
took longer to read the low-frequency text than the high-frequency text (marginal means: 
148.62 and 156.24, respectively; these values are after summing up the values for all 
reading conditions). Further, the participants in reading condition 6 (group 6) took less 
time on average to read both texts, compared with the other groups (133.76 seconds to 



 
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read the high-frequency text and 134.56 to read the low-frequency text; see Tables 2 and 
6).  

Table 6. Cell and marginal means on the reading time test by reading condition and text for 
group 6 

Reading 
Condition 

Text  

 High Freq. Low Freq.  

M SD M SD Marginal 

6 133.76 51.34 134.56 52.05 134.16 

Recall Test 

As can be seen in Table 7, the participants on average recalled 16.88 propositions in the 
high-frequency text, and 15.72 propositions in the low-frequency text; note the small 
difference between the two means and the measurement unit in the scale (only 1.16 
propositions difference between the means). However, incorporating this data of the fully 
vowelized and diacriticized reading condition with the previous reading conditions and 
reanalyzing the data show the following results: no significant main effects were found for 
text type, F(1, 156)= 0.03, p= 0.87, or for reading condition, F(5, 156)= 0.29, p= 0.92, nor 
there was a significant interaction between text type and reading condition, F(5, 156)= 
0.40, p= 0.85. Subsequently, their recalling was not affected by the type of text they read or 
the reading condition they were in; their performances on average were the same.  

The marginal means (Table 7) show that the groups in general scored the same 
(marginal means: 14.87 and 14.77 for HF and LF, respectively; these values are after 
summing up the values for all reading conditions), with a 0.09 difference, which means a 
0.09 unit difference equivalent to a difference of 0.09 propositions. However, the data 
analysis shows that the participants in group 6 recalled, to some degree, more 
propositions in both texts than the participants in the other reading conditions (16.88 in 
the high-frequency text and 15.72 in the low-frequency text); this was particularly 
noticeable with the low-frequency text. However, there was only a 1.16 unit difference 
between the two marginal means for the LF and HF texts, which equals a 1.16 unit 
difference.  

Table 7. Cell and marginal means on the recall test by reading condition and text for group 6 

Reading 
Condition 

Text  

 High Freq. Low Freq.  

M SD M SD Marginal 

6 16.88 9.31 15.72 9.43 16.30 

 



 
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The Multiple-Choice Test 

The mean values of correct answers showed that the participants on average scored 
higher on the HF text than on the LF text (6.84 for the HF text and 6.48 for the low 
frequency text); note the very small difference between the two means (the 0.36 
difference is equivalent to a difference of 0.36 correct answer points). However, 
incorporating this data of the fully vowelized and diacriticized reading condition with the 
previous reading conditions and reanalyzing the data show the following results: a 
significant main effect was found for text type, F(1, 159) = 19.91, p= .000, p²= 0.111, but 
not for reading condition F(5, 159)= 0.59, p= .71. Further, there was no significant 
interaction between text type and reading condition, F(5, 159)= 0.76, p= .58. Examining 
the means shows that the participants on average scored higher on the HF text than on the 
LF text (marginal means: 6.51 and 5.72, respectively; these values are after summing up 
the values for all reading conditions). Note that there was only a 0.79 unit difference 
between the marginal means for the LF and HF texts, and that the measurement scale 
involved one point for each correct answer; therefore, a 0.79 unit difference was 
equivalent to a difference of 0.79 correct answer points. However, conducting a post hoc 
analysis on every pair using both Scheffe and Tukey tests did not show any significant 
differences between the compared pairs. That is, the participants did well on the high-
frequency text, regardless of the reading condition they were in and which text they read 
first. Further, generally speaking, the participants in group 6—the reading condition in 
which the participants read a fully vowelized and diacriticized text—scored higher, to 
some degree. This was particularly noticeable with the low-frequency text, compared with 
the other groups (6.84 and 6.48 for the HF and LF texts, respectively), but still with very 
close means, given the measurement unit of the scale, in which each correct answer was 
given one point (Table 8).  

The reported partial eta squared value, p², is considered to be a value of a medium 
effect size (Kotrlik & Williams, 2003), and indicates that 11 % of the total variance in the 
dependent variable, number of correct answers, is attributed to word frequency variable. 

Table 8. Cell and marginal means on the multiple-choice test by reading condition and text 
for group 6 

Reading 
Condition 

Text  

 High Freq. Low Freq.  

M SD M SD Marginal 

6 6.84 2.29 6.48 2.14 6.66 

General Results 

Despite the non-significant results observed over the reading time variable after adding 
group 6’s data to the analysis, the marginal means between the text, and the pair of means 
for each group did show noticeable differences in the amount of reading time between the 
texts (see Tables 2 and 6). Fourth graders always took more time to read texts in which 
10% of its words were of low-frequency. Thus, we could say that word frequency affects 
the reading process of the less experienced and skilled Arab readers (beginning readers), 
as reflected in the reading time it takes them to read a text. Further, the supplemented 
vowelization did not affect their reading process for comprehension, as was measured by 
the time it took the fourth grader to read the text, or by the number of propositions 



 
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recalled and the correct responses scored. The statistically nonsignificant effect of the 
reading condition variable on the three dependent variables, reading time, number of 
propositions recalled, and correct responses scored, was trivial. The Partial Eta Squared 
value, p², was found to be between 0.011 and 0.008, which means that the reading 
condition variable accounts for 1% to 0.8 % of the variance of those dependent variables. 
Additionally, the only factor that played a role in the reading process of beginning readers 
was word frequency. Its role was observed with the reading time, and with the reading 
comprehension, as assessed by the correct responses scored. Although its effect might not 
be practically affected due to the observed sizeable difference between the means and the 
measurement scales employed in the study, a percentage proportion of 11 to 14 % of 
variance in the number of correct answers is explained by the manipulated word 
frequency factor.  

However, giving beginning Arabic readers a plain text, with 10% percentage of its 
vocabulary of low frequency, did not affect their recalling of the text’s propositions, nor 
did it affect severely their understanding of the text, as was observed from the close mean 
values.  

Another observation worth mentioning is that it took the less experienced Arabic 
readers less time to read texts that were both vowelized and diacriticized, as can be 
observed in Group 6, which was asked to read the versions of texts with short vowels, 
shaddah, and skun together; this result is not in agreement with a previous study by Al-
Fahid (2000), which claimed (from examining the reading rates of some individual 
participants in his study) that adding short vowels and diacritics to the consonants 
prolongs the reading process of Arab adults as they read fully diacriticized text. Further, it 
was noticed that Group 6 had smaller differences between the pairs of means (the high- 
and low-frequency texts) for each reading condition (133.76 for HF; 134.56 for LF). Can 
we say that the expected effect of the word frequency in processing a text diminishes 
when the orthography of the texts is transparent? Oppositely, when the orthography of the 
texts presented is plain or partially presented, does the effect of word frequency become 
larger?  

Further, the reading process of the low-frequency texts becomes much longer when the 
orthographies of the texts only present consonants, have only short vowels presented, or 
have incorrect vowels presented (see Table 2). The readers took 173.32 seconds to read 
the only consonantly presented text; 169.64 seconds to read the texts with only short 
vowels presented; and 154.92 seconds to read the wrongly vowelized text. Therefore, can 
we say that children’s Arabic reading learning and reading experience were accustomed to 
either plain or fully vowelized and diacriticized texts (sight words), and that they were 
affected by the experience of their reading exposition to print, which they brought to the 
reading conditions? 

This finding is in accordance with a previous study (Seraye, 2004) conducted on Arab 
adult readers when reading connected texts, which showed that the only variable that 
played a role in their reading processing as reflected in the reading time it takes them to 
read a text was word frequency. However, in terms of reading comprehension, as can be 
realized by the products of their reading process, their performance in recalling more 
information from the text and getting the correct responses, showed, on the surface, 
conflicting results. However, examining the analysis closely resolves such a conflict. The 
analysis reveals that the reading comprehension of beginning Arabic readers was not 
affected by missing short vowels from text, nor it was affected by the low frequency: their 
performance, on average, was always the same. This conclusion is more obvious when the 
beginning Arabic readers were asked to recall as many propositions, as they could. 
However, this was not always the case. In the multiple choice test, the result showed that 



 
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beginning Arabic readers’ reading comprehension was correlated with word frequency, 
and not with the presence or absence of short vowels. On average, they scored higher with 
the high-frequency texts. That is, they comprehended high-frequency texts better than the 
low-frequency ones. However, the differences between every pair of means for all groups 
were still very small. Further, the post hoc analyses conducted on those pairs of means did 
not reveal any significant differences between the pairs of means. Furthermore, even 
when accepting the small differences found between the means (bowing to the reported 
large effect size), the average scores of 6.51 for the high-frequency text and 5.72 for the 
low-frequency one are far from the maximum score of 10 in the multiple-choice test, 
which indicates that their performance is obviously average, if not quite weak.  

In conclusion, the current data does not support attributing the high scores in the 
multiple choice data to the presence of short vowels (even to the short vowels and 
diacritics in combination). This finding is not in accordance with previous studies, such as 
Abu-Rabia’s (1999) and (2001) studies, as well as Shimron and Sivan (1994) study, which 
all claimed—except with caution, as did Shimron and Sivan’s study in their comments on 
the results—that short vowels have a positive effect on the reading comprehension of both 
adults and children (as represented by second graders), although they neither 
manipulated the short vowels to a degree that should isolate their effect, nor did they 
reinterpret, cautiously, the slight difference found between the means. Such a conflict can 
be explained in terms of the controlling procedures of the reading conditions and the 
reading texts used, which did not take into account that short vowels and diacritics are 
different forms that represent different aspects of the orthography, nor did it take into 
account the involvement of word frequency in text reading difficulty and thus the 
necessity of having similar texts (as can be achieved by using a matching procedure) in 
their experimental design. Further, even after accepting their experimental design, as 
mentioned before, the differences between the means reported for the groups that read 
the vowelized text versus those that read the unvowelized one are very small, once we 
take the measurement unit into account. In fact, some of the researchers (Shimron & Sivan, 
1994) stated explicitly that the difference was nearly significant, since the p = 0.05.  

On the other hand, Abu-Hamour’s (2013) study showed that fifth-grade students, both 
poor and skilled, performed better with the vowelized text, and the benefit was higher for 
the skilled readers. The difference between the means was large enough to attribute such 
a difference to the dependent variable (24.19 for the vowelized text vs. 7.88 for the 
unvowelized one). However, there were still some questionable observations in the 
analysis. For example, the skilled students scored 24.19 on average, compared with 7.88; 
however, the score range was from 18 to 43, an indication that that 24.19 is still far from 
the maximum score; in fact, it is almost close to the minimum score (18). Second, the 
researchers manipulated the diacritics to be part of the short vowels and considered the 
fully vowelized text to be supplemented with short vowels and diacritics. In fact, they even 
considered the case markings to be part of this vowelization. Therefore, attributing the 
positive results to the presence of short vowels is neither accurate nor valid. The 
researchers did not isolate the role of short vowels accurately. Further, the authors used a 
within-subject design and different texts, and word frequency was not manipulated, 
despite the fact that word frequency is implicated in the text-reading process (Seraye, 
2004).  

General Discussion 

The only variable implicated in the less experienced/skilled readers’ reading process, as 
represented by fourth graders, was word frequency, which was obvious in the reading 
time and reading comprehension product data as measured by the number of correct 
answers. Indeed, the effect of word frequency was also found with the more experienced 



 
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readers, as represented by Arab adult readers at the graduate and postgraduate academic 
levels (Seraye, 2004). The opaqueness and depth of the texts, when presented without 
suitable short vowels and diacritics, did not affect the children’s reading process, as 
reflected in the time load needed to process the texts, nor did it interact with the type of 
text they read, in terms of word frequency. Rahbari and Senechal (2009) arrived at the 
conclusion that “it is not the orthographic depth of a language, but it is the reading skills, 
or more precisely the experience with reading words, as well as a task demand that affect 
processes used to read” (p. 523). 

Previous literature, in general, has demonstrated that sensitivity to word frequency 
was found in tasks such as word naming and word recognition. High-frequency words are 
read more quickly than low-frequency words, which has been a consistent finding for 
different orthographies that both differ from and resemble Arabic orthography (Seraye, 
2004, for Arabic; Raman & Baluch for Turkish, 2001; Baluch, 1996, for Persian).  

In fact, well-established research on eye movement has shown that the fixation 
durations for high-frequency words while reading a sentence or passage are shorter than 
the fixation durations for low-frequency words; this was documented for both adults and 
children readers (e.g., Joseph, Nation, & Liversedge, 2013; Rayner et al., 2006; Rayner & 
Duffy, 1986; Rayner, Sereno, & Raney, 1996; Sereno & Rayner, 2000). Similarly, 
predictable words take short duration times to fixate, compared to their non-predictable 
counterparts (e.g., Balota, Pollatsek, & Rayner, 1985; Miellet, Sparrow, & Sereno, 2007; 
Rayner & Well, 1996).  

Thus, these higher time fixations for low-frequency words are assumed to add more 
time to the process of reading the text and subsequently prolong its reading time process. 
This effect was more salient due to the controlling procedure for word frequency as a 
variable adopted in the current study by intentionally inserting low-frequency 
counterpart words in one of the versions of the text. Therefore, we can say that reader’s 
experience, as reflected in his/her lexical representation of the word—word familiarity, 
specifically—plays a major role in the reading process of the less experienced Arabic 
readers, as it did with the more experienced Arabic readers (e.g., Seraye, 2004).  

Such an effect should not be surprising, since individual words and their characteristics 
were found to play a central role in the reading process of different orthographies (see for 
example the three experimental studies by Seraye, 2004, for Arabic; and Rahbari and 
Senechal, 2009, for Persian). The ease and speed in accessing the mental lexicon from 
memory during reading affects the reader’s reading fluency and comprehension (Perfetti, 
2007).  

This finding can be justified by the explanation given by the so called restricted-
interactive theory proposed by Perfetti (1994), which presents—in the researcher’s 
opinion—a suitable framework for explaining the effects of the reader’s experience, as 
reflected in word familiarity, on the reading processing of texts. Perfetti (1994) stated that 
“learning to read is the acquisition of increasing numbers of orthographically addressable 
words (quantity acquisition) and the alteration of individual representations along quality 
dimensions: specificity and redundancy” (p. 857). His theory is based on two principles: 
specificity (an increase in the number of position-correct specific letters in a 
representation) and redundancy (the increasing establishment of redundant phonemic 
representations), which would lead to a quality word representation in a reader's mind 
and subsequently to a resource-cheap reading. As noted by Perfetti (1994), “[A]s 
individual words become fully specified and redundant, they move from the functional 
lexicon, which allows reading, to the autonomous lexicon, which allows resource-cheap 



 
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reading” (p. 857). In Macleod and Kampe’s (1996) words, “automaticity is a direct function 
of experience” (p. 132).  

However, the effect of word frequency on the reading process was found to be equally 
present, regardless of the boundary of exposure to print, whether limited, as was the case 
with fourth graders, versus unlimited, as was the case with skilled adult readers at the 
undergraduate and graduate academic levels.  

For reading comprehension, as assessed by the two tests measuring the number of 
propositions and the correct answers, the absence and presence of short vowels and 
diacritics did not implicate the reading comprehension process of the less experienced 
readers, as represented by the fourth graders. Further, their reading comprehension, 
although found to be significantly correlated with word frequency, was not severely 
affected, as can be seen from the closeness of the mean values. Such a finding can be 
attributed to the fact that beginning Arabic readers use their knowledge of the 
morphological aspects of the language in comprehending the text; indeed, they exploit 
their knowledge of the trilateral/quadrilateral root of Arabic words that is needed to 
comprehend the text. A study by Badry (1982) arrived at the conclusion that Arab 
Moroccan children from ages 3 to 6 “are aware of the underlying morphological root in 
their spoken language, and this awareness was reflected in the production stage of their 
acquisition” (Seraye, 2004, p. 83). Further, in their comparison study between dyslexics 
and normal readers in sixth and eighth grades, Abu Rabia and Abu-Rahmoun (2012) 
reached to the conclusion that, while reading, both dyslexic and normal readers rely 
heavily on the morphological aspects of the Arabic language—particularly the root. This 
reliance on the roots of Arabic words appears more clearly with the reading materials that 
were presented unvowelized, particularly observed with the normal Arab readers (Abu 
Rabia & Abu-Rahmoun, 2012). Their conclusive statement is that, “[r]oots of words are the 
key to initial lexical access” (Abu Rabia & Abu-Rahmoun, 2012, p. 1265). Furthermore, 
well-documented research in languages with alphabetic-based writing systems revealed 
that children in fifth grade and up employ morphological information to infer the 
meanings of unfamiliar and low-frequency words while reading (McCutchen & Logan, 
2011).  

Therefore, by combining the findings in the current investigation with those from 
previous research, we can reach a conclusive statement: in the absence of short vowels 
and diacritics from print, beginning readers still can compensate for such an absence by 
relying on their linguistic knowledge, particularly the morphological roots of Arabic 
words, and the textual context to understand the text.  

Limitations 

The current study’s findings should be restricted to only fourth graders, particularly male 
fourth graders population, whose reading levels are at the fourth-grade instruction 
reading level, and should not be generalized to fourth graders in general. Further, the 
interpretation should be restricted to students who have mastered the reading skill and 
just started to read for learning across the curriculum. Therefore, the roles of vowelization 
(short vowels plus diacritics) and word frequency in the reading process of less-skilled 
fourth graders should be assessed for two reasons: to help determine the degree to which 
exposing such readers to plain reading materials would affect their reading 
comprehension, and subsequently, whether they would be able to compensate for such an 
effect by exploiting their knowledge of the morphological roots of Arabic language.  

Additional caution should be taken into account, regarding the finding of no explicit 
additional benefits regarding the presence of short vowels and diacritics for the reading 
comprehension of Arabic readers, both experienced and less experienced readers. The 



 
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benefits should be interpreted in the context of silent-mode reading tasks and not be 
extended to other reading modes such as reading accuracy tasks.  

Recommendations  

The current study targeted beginning readers, as represented by skilled fourth-grade male 
students; thus, replicating the same procedure for non-skilled readers is recommended. 
Further, due to the segregated nature of the education system in Saudi Arabia, replicating 
the same procedure for female fourth graders of skilled and non-skilled reading levels is 
encouraged. Additionally, according to my aforementioned explanation, the small 
subscripts and superscripts in written Arabic words do not represent only short vowels, 
but also diacritics (such as skun, shaddah, maddah) as well as case ending markers that 
take the shape of short vowels and skun. Therefore, the term “fully vowelized”, as reported 
in the current and previous studies, needs to be given a new meaning when investigating 
its effect. That is, the role of short vowels needs not be investigated separately from the 
other diacritics included in the fully vowelized reading condition.  

 

• • • 

 

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