Open Journal of Modern Linguistics
2013. Vol.3, No.1, 58-68
Published Online March 2013 in SciRes (http://www.scirp.org/journal/ojml) http://dx.doi.org/10.4236/ojml.2013.31007
58
Spelling Errors’ Analysis of Regular and Dyslexic Bilingual
Arabic-English Students
Salim Abu-Rabia, Rana Sammour
Faculty of Education, University of Haifa, Haifa, Israel
Received September 3rd, 2012; revised November 12th, 2012; accepted November 20th, 2012
The present study is an investigation of spelling errors of 8th grade dyslexic students (n = 20) and a group
of 5th and 6th graders (n = 21) matched to the dyslexic group according to their spelling level. All students
were tested on spelling isolated words in Arabic and English. The spelling errors were classified into four
categories: phonetic, semiphonetic, dysphonetic, and word omissions. The results of the present study re-
vealed that phonetic errors were more prevalent in Arabic than in English, while semiphonetic errors were
more prevalent in English than in Arabic. Furthermore, the dyslexic group made significantly more semi-
phonetic errors in Arabic than the spelling-level matched group, while the two groups made a similar
number of semiphonetic errors in English. The discussion attempts to clarify and explain the results by
analyzing the specific features in Arabic and English that posed difficulty for the dyslexic and regular
Arab students. A number of instructional recommendations regarding the teaching of English spelling to
Arabic speakers are presented.
Keywords: Bilingualism; Arabic; English; Spelling Error Analysis; Phonetic Errors; Semiphonetic Errors;
Dyslexic Readers
Introduction
Successful English spelling performance involves the proc-
esses of segmenting the spoken word into its phonemic com-
ponents and then selecting the appropriate graphemes to repre-
sent the phonemes. In addition, it entails learning a large num-
ber of letter combination rules (orthography) and many excep-
tions due to affixation, assimilation, and the inflow of new
words (morphology) to the language (Varnhagen, McCallum, &
Burstow, 1997).
A great deal of research on spelling development supports
the idea that the phonological, orthographic, and morphological
knowledge and strategies that children acquire follow a se-
quence of stages that are characterized according to the pre-
dominant information and strategies used during that stage of
development (e.g. Ehri, 1986; Frith, 1980; Gentry, 1982; Hen-
derson, 1985). Gentry (1982) proposed the existence of five
stages of spelling development. In the first, precommunicative
stage, children combine letters and letter-like symbols in a rela-
tively random manner. In the second semiphonetic stage, chil-
dren represent part of the phonetic information in the word. In
the phonetic stage, children systematically develop knowledge
of letter-sound correspondence. In the transitional stage, chil-
dren demonstrate their knowledge of English orthography in
addition to their beginning understanding of the manner in
which morphological information affects spelling. According to
Gentry (1982), children reach the correct stage of spelling when
they master the phonological, orthographic, and morphemic
aspects of their written vocabulary.
More recent analyses of spelling development are adding to
and modifying stage approaches, putting an emphasis on the
child’s employment of diverse strategies and various types of
knowledge in spelling (Ehri, 1992; Rittle-Johnson & Siegler,
1999; Treiman & Bourassa, 2000; Treiman & Cassar, 1997;
Varnhagen et al., 1997). Ehri (1992) argued that the stages of
spelling development may be better defined in terms of sets of
features rather than individual features. Varnhagen et al. (1997)
conducted a study to examine whether children’s spelling de-
velopment proceeds through a series of stages, as described by
scholars. They argued that if spelling development can be
characterized by stages, then it should be possible to observe
qualitative differences in children’s spelling at different devel-
opmental stages, as well as consistency in spelling within a
certain stage of development. They also analyzed the spelling
patterns for silent -e long vowel words and past tense mor-
pheme -ed words, but did not find significant qualitative dif-
ferences between first and sixth graders. Further, they showed
that children of the same age group were not consistent in their
spelling. Varnhagen et al. (1997) concluded that the develop-
ment of children’s spelling ability at elementary school grades
cannot be adequately characterized by developmental stages.
Rather, children use a variety of sources of knowledge and stra-
tegies in their spelling performance from a very early age.
Understanding the process of spelling development is mostly
based on observations of children’s spelling errors (Varnhagen
et al., 1997). These errors provide interesting insights on the
ways children conceive the sound and spelling system of the
English language (Stage & Wagner, 1992). Error analysis has
been used to infer previous knowledge and cognitive strategies
that children may have employed in their spelling. It has also
yielded ample information as to children’s phonological, ortho-
graphic and morphological knowledge and the way they may
use their knowledge in order to translate oral language into a
written form (Read, 1975; Treiman, 1993). Further, error analysis
has been used to identify learning disabilities; acquired and
developmental dyslexia in both children and adults have been

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
diagnosed based on error patterns (Goldsmith-Phillip, 1994;
Temple & Marshall, 1983).
The present study aims to examine and analyze the types of
spelling errors made by regular and dyslexic Arab students in
Arabic as a first language (L1) and English as a foreign lan-
guage (FL).
Review of the Literature
The Arabic Writing System
Arabic is an alphabetic orthography that contains 28 conso-
nantal letters, and it is written and read from right to left. Most
of the Arabic letters have more than one written form, depend-
ing on their position in the word. However, the essential shape
of the letter is maintained in all cases (Abd El-Minem, 1987).
In addition, the letters of the alphabet can be categorized on the
basis of shared basic forms, and can be distinguished from each
other by the number (one, two or three) and position (in, on or
under the letter) of the dots, or their absence.
Arabic has two forms: literary Arabic (also known as Mod-
ern Standard Arabic) and non-standard spoken Arabic. Literary
Arabic is taught at school along with instruction in reading and
writing and is used all over the Arab world for writing and for-
mal communication purposes, whereas spoken Arabic is a local
dialect that has no written form. Actually, the spoken dialect is
the native language of all native speakers of Arabic. However,
each Arab country (or people) has a different local spoken dia-
lect (or dialects). In spite of sharing a limited group of words,
the two forms of Arabic are phonologically, morphologically,
and syntactically different (Eviatar & Ibrahim, 2000).
The Arabic language has three short vowels depicted by dia-
critical marks placed beneath or above the letter. The short
vowels are:
1) Fatha—a short diagonal stroke above the letter (e.g.  
/da/).
2) Damma—the sign 
 above the letter (e.g.   /du/).
3) Kasra—a short diagonal stroke below the letter (e.g. 
 /di/).
Arabic has also three long vowels represented by the letters
Alif  (e.g.  /d/), Waw  (e.g.  /d/) and Ya  (e.g. 
/d/). In the vowelized version of the Arabic orthography, both
consonants and vowels (short and long) are represented. In the
nonvowelized version, on the other hand, the diacritical marks
are omitted and only the consonants and long vowels are repre-
sented. This version is used in most reading materials and texts,
except in reading and writing instruction, in children’s books,
in the Koran, in dictionaries, and some literary materials, where
the vowelized version is used. Skilled readers are expected to
read texts without short vowels and use contextual clues in
order to fill in the missing vowels. Reading accuracy in Arabic
requires vowelizing word endings according to their grammati-
cal function in the sentence, which entails an advanced phono-
logical and syntactical ability (Abu-Rabia, 2001).
In Arabic, as in other Semitic languages, words are con-
structed by combining a root and a word pattern. This morpho-
logical structure is nonlinear and constructed by interdigitating
the root consonants in their designated sites in the pattern. The
roots are generally triliteral or quadrilateral, that is, consisting
of three or four consonants, and they carry most of the semantic
information of the words. The word patterns include vowels as
well as consonants and provide information about the word
class and its morphological status, in addition to the complete
structure of the word. Therefore, content words in Arabic are at
least bi-morphemic, but none of these morphemes are words by
themselves (Ibrahim, 2006). The second type of morphological
structure is linear and constructed by attaching prefixes and
suffixes to real words. Most grammatical markings of number,
gender and person on nouns, adjectives and verbs are expressed
linearly.
The Status of Vowels in Arabic and English
As mentioned before, short vowels in Arabic are typically
omitted from written texts and can easily be filled in by skilled
readers. Skilled readers use contextual clues to fill in the miss-
ing vowels as they typically represent grammatical information
(e.g. part of speech, person, number, tense, and voice) that can
be inferred from the semantic and syntactic context and would
often be redundant if presented in writing. The lack of short
vowel information in Arabic texts is probably permissible be-
cause short vowel patterns are highly predictable based on con-
textual information (Abu-Rabia & Taha, 2004; Hayes-Harb,
2006; Taouk & Coltheart, 2004).
In contrast, the overt representation of vowels is vital to Eng-
lish written word processing since changing one vowel in an
English word often changes the meaning of the word entirely.
Therefore, in English, vowel letters provide important informa-
tion for distinguishing lexical items and are not predictable
based on grammatical function, as they are often in Arabic. A
related difference is that in English, words with similar conso-
nant structures are often not semantically related. Given these
differences between the English and Arabic orthographies, the
written word identification processes used by readers of English
and Arabic differ in their degree of dependence on written
vowel information. Since Arab readers were found to be less
aware of and devote less visual attention to vowel letters rela-
tive to consonants when reading English texts (Hayes-Harb,
2006; Ryan & Meara, 1991), they are expected to be less aware
of vowel letters, and consequently, under-represent them in
writing as well.
Spelling Errors in Arabic
In Arabic, few studies have analyzed the spelling errors of
normal and disabled readers. Azzam (1993) examined the spell-
ing errors made by children learning Arabic, aged 6 to 11 years.
The spelling errors were analyzed and classified according to
categories derived from linguistic and orthographic features of
the Arabic script. The results showed that the misspellings of
Arabic speaking children persisted through primary school,
pointing to the difficulties involved in mastering the Arabic
written language. The spelling errors centered around context
sensitive rules, additions and omissions of letters.
Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004) investigated the spelling errors
of 5th grade dyslexic Arabic readers compared with age-
matched and reading-level-matched young normal readers. Their
spelling errors were classified into seven categories: phonetic
errors, semiphonetic errors, dysphonetic errors, visual letter
confusion, irregular spelling rules, word omission and func-
tional word omission. Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004) found that
the spelling error profiles of the dyslexic group were similar to
those of the reading-level-matched group in both percentage
and quality. The analysis of the spelling errors revealed that the
most prominent type of spelling errors was phonetic. In addi-
tion, they found that the nature of the Arabic orthography
contributed to the types of spelling errors made by the different

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
groups. Based on the same spelling error categories, Abu-Rabia
and Taha (2006) investigated the spelling error profiles of Ara-
bic speaking students in grades 1 - 9. The results indicated that
phonological spelling errors predominated in all grades over
other error categories and represented 50% of the total errors.
The researchers explained their finding by arguing that the
phonological stage of spelling in Arabic does not end, even at
grade 9, and that spellers find it difficult to pass from this stage
to a more advanced level, the orthographic stage. They con-
cluded that phonology poses the greatest challenge to students
developing spelling skills in Arabic.
Spelling Errors in English
In English, as opposed to Arabic, the spelling patterns of
normal and disabled readers have been widely investigated
(Bruck, 1988; Carlisle, 1987; Moats, 1983, 1996) These studies
reported that spelling errors of individuals with dyslexia are
similar to those of younger children.
Nelson (1980) analyzed the spelling errors of dyslexic and
normal spelling-level-matched children and classified their errors
into three categories: order errors, phonetically inaccurate er-
rors, and orthographically illegal errors. In both groups, more
phonetically inaccurate misspellings were made than either of
the other two error types. Also, there was no significant differ-
ence between the groups in the frequency of the three error
types, which indicates that the quality of the dyslexic children’s
spelling is essentially normal. Moats (1996) analyzed the spell-
ing errors of adolescent dyslexic students. She divided the er-
rors into three categories: orthographic errors—those that used
the wrong symbol but that represented the speech sounds in
some plausible manner (e.g. homophones), phonological errors—
omissions, substitutions, additions, or errors in the way speech
sounds were represented, and morphophonological error s—er-
rors that occurred on inflected morphemes. She found that the
poorer spellers made more errors than the better spellers on
certain phonological and morphophpnological constructions.
Specifically, the poorer spellers made a disproportionately large
numbers of errors in their representation of liquid and nasal
consonants, especially after vowels, and in their spellings of the
inflections -ed and -s.
Snowling, Goulandris, and Defty (1996) investigated the de-
velopment of literacy skills among dyslexic children compared
to reading age controls and chronological age controls. Their
spelling errors were analyzed and classified into three catego-
ries: first, phonetic errors—these errors were caused by the in-
appropriate application of letter-sound correspondence rules
(e.g. cigarette-sigaret). Second, semiphonetic errors—these er-
rors contain a single phonemic error and could be created by
omission of a single phoneme, addition of a phoneme and sub-
stitution of one phoneme with a similar one. Third, dysphonetic
errors—all other errors that did not represent the sound struc-
ture of the word correctly (e.g. million-miyel). The research-
ers found dysphonetic errors to be prominent among dyslexic
children, suggesting that they had problems with the use of
phonological spelling strategies, and they attributed this to a
phonological delay.
Transfer of L1 Skills to L2
The effects of first language (L1) on second language (L2)
learning have been extensively investigated in the past few
decades (Akamatsu, 1999, 2003; Brown & Haynes, 1985; Fender,
2003; Hakuta, 1976; Koda, 1988, 1990). Some studies used
correlational analyses of ESL (or EFL) learners’ L1 skills and
English literacy skills to investigate L1 influence. For example,
Abu-Rabia and Siegel (2002) examined the language skills in
three different orthographies, Arabic, Hebrew and English,
among native Arabic speakers. They found that several L1
skills, including reading, phonological and orthographic proc-
essing, working memory and spelling, correlated with English
spelling.
Other studies compared the literacy skills of ESL learners
from different L1 backgrounds. For example, Koda (1988) in-
vestigated the effects of L1 orthographic structures on cognitive
processes involved in L2 reading. Experiment 1 tested the ef-
fects of blocking either visual or sound information on lexical
decision-making among four groups (Arabic, English, Japan-
ese, and Spanish), whereas experiment 2 examined the effects
of visual confusability, by using heterographic homophones
(e.g. eight and ate), on reading comprehension among the same
four groups. The two experiments demonstrated that L1 ortho-
graphic structure exerts a significant effect on cognitive proc-
esses in L2 reading, and suggested that cognitive process trans-
fer occurs in L2 reading. Hayes-Harb (2006) conducted a study
to determine whether native Arabic speakers approach English
texts with written word identification strategies that reflect the
nature of their native Arabic writing system. Specifically, she
investigated whether native Arabic speakers devote less visual
attention to vowels when reading English texts than speakers of
other languages. In experiment 2, three groups (native Arabic
speakers learning ESL, ESL learners with L1 backgrounds
other than Arabic, and native English speakers) were given a
letter detection task and were asked to identify all instances of a
target letter while reading a text for comprehension. She found
that native Arabic speakers exhibited less accurate detection of
vowels relative to consonants than either of the other two
groups. According to Hayes-Harb, a possible explanation for
this finding may be that the relatively less prominent role of
written vowel information in Arabic reading was transferred to
English letter and word processing, resulting in the higher rela-
tive rate of vowel detection errors for native Arabic speakers.
This finding also shows that native Arabic speakers transfer
visual word-processing strategies from Arabic to reading in
English. Koda (1995) concluded that the native language or-
thography influenced the strategies employed in L2 reading,
adding that the transfer of strategies from an L1 may cause
difficulties for readers when L1 and L2 have different orthog-
raphies.
To explain the relation between proficiency in L1 and L2,
Cummins (1979) suggested the Interdependence Hypothesis
(IH), which holds that L2 competence of an academic skill is
partially related to L1 competence at the time L2 is being ac-
quired. For instance, an ESL learner with a good spelling ability
who has had several years of formal instruction in his/her L1,
may have sufficient knowledge of L1 norms on which to draw
upon when beginning to spell in English. On the other hand, an
ESL learner who struggles with spelling and has underdevel-
oped phonological and orthographic processing skills may not
benefit as much from L2 transfer (Figueredo, 2006). In addition,
Cummins (1981) maintained that academic skills, such as spell-
ing, share an underlying proficiency across languages, even
though the surface aspects of each language, such as orthogra-
phy, may differ.
60

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
In sum, the results of the studies mentioned previously showed
that L1 orthographic features affect L2 literacy skills. Thus, it
seems that in learning a second language, the nature of L1 as
well as L2 orthographies play a major role in the learning proc-
ess. Therefore, in the present study, the English spelling errors
performed by native Arabic speakers are expected to be influ-
enced by the Arabic orthography.
According to the Linguistic Coding Differences Hypothesis
(LCDH) suggested by Sparks and Ganschow (1991), successful
FL learning is founded upon phonological, orthographic and
syntactic skills in the native language. A second assumption,
based on the first, is that FL failure is founded upon native
language deficits (Miller-Guron & Lundberg, 2000). Studies
conducted recently by Ganschow and Sparks strongly suggest
that the difficulties experienced by poor FL learners are a con-
sequence of weak native language skills (Ganschow, Sparks, &
Schmeider, 1995). Thus, it seems as if native language weak-
nesses, including dyslexia, impede the development of FL pro-
ficiency.
The present research compares the spelling errors of dyslexic
Arab students with age-matched and spelling-level-matched
regular students in two different orthographies: Arabic and
English. Spelling errors’ analysis of dyslexic and regular read-
ers in Arabic and English will shed light on the nature of the
learning process of L1 as well as FL, respectively, among the
different groups.
On the grounds of the above literary review, it was hypothe-
sized that:
1) The spelling errors in Arabic and English would reflect the
nature of the corresponding orthography; however, the errors in
English would be influenced by the Arabic orthography as well.
2) The dyslexic group and the spelling-level-matched group
would show similar errors.
Method
Participants
Sixty one students were screened out of a total of 167 who
participated in this study: 20 8th grade dyslexic students, 20 8th
grade regular students matched to the dyslexic group according
to their age, and 21 young regular students, who were matched
to the dyslexic group according to their spelling level. The stu-
dents were sampled from a private school in Haifa, Israel. They
were native speakers of Arabic, and most of them came from a
medium socio-economic status. Bilingual students or those
whose mother tongue is not Arabic were excluded from the
study.
The dyslexic group (14 boys and 6 girls) consisted of 8th
graders who studied in a special class for disabled learners, and
whose spelling level was in the 30th percentile or below, ac-
cording to the Initial Spelling Test. In addition, the usual exclu-
sionary criteria were applied: None of the dyslexic children had
serious language impairment or a primary emotional distur-
bance. They had normal hearing and vision abilities and at-
tended school regularly. Their mean age was 13.58, with a
standard deviation of .33. The age-matched group (13 girls and
7 boys) consisted of 8th grade students whose spelling level was
in the 70th percentile or above in the Initial Spelling Test. Their
mean age was 13.53, with a standard deviation of .29.
The spelling-level-matched group (10 girls and 11 boys) in-
cluded regular 5th and 6th grade students who matched the dys-
lexic group on spelling level, which was determined according
to their performance on the Initial Spelling Test. Their mean
age was 11.34, with a standard deviation of .54. As shown in
Table 1, there was no significant difference between the dys-
lexic and the spelling-level-matched group on spelling accuracy.
Nonetheless, the difference between the dyslexic and the age-
matched group on the same task was significant.
Materials
There were a total of five basic measures. The first one—Ini-
tial Spelling Test—was used to select the three groups, and the
other four were used to validate the eighth graders’ division
into regular and dyslexic students. Additionally, two spelling
tests were administered: one in Arabic and the other in English.
All tests were built especially for this study.
Basic Measures
Initial Spelling Test. A list of words from the basal reader of
the 8th grade was used to determine the spelling level of the
participants by testing their spelling accuracy. It consisted of 40
words with gradually increasing difficulty in terms of fre-
quency, word length, and morphological complexity, and in-
cluded elements that were likely to pose difficulty for students
such as spelling rules and homophonous letters The participants
were required to write short vowels at word endings ( = .82).
Table 1.
Means and standard deviations of all groups on the different basic measures.
Basic measures Dyslexic Age-matched Spelling-level-matched
M SD M SD M SD
Initial spelling 26.25 4.55 36.35 1.81 28.05 2.36
Letter naming 30.45 5.38 25.95 4.31 - -
Number naming 20.45 2.37 18.25 2.95 - -
Phonological awareness 14.05 2.67 17.8 2.42 - -
Pseudoword reading accuracy 16.9 5.64 24 5.73 - -
Pseudoword reading speed 84.35 24.86 59.95 12.35 - -
Word reading accuracy 32.2 4.11 35.95 2.06 - -
Word reading speed 64.9 17.51 40.5 8.63 - -
Note: Dashes indicate that the task was not administered to this group.

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
Error Analysis
Phonological Awareness Test. Phonological awareness was
measured by a phoneme deletion test. Participants were orally
presented with a word and then asked to delete a single pho-
neme from the beginning, middle, or end of it (e.g. ketab with-
out /k/ is etab). This task consisted of 20 items ( = .80).
Rapid Automatized Naming. Rapid Letter-Naming and Rapid
Number-Naming Tests were administered. In both Rapid Nam-
ing Tests, five rows of five letters/digits were presented to the
participants. The five letters/digits in each row were arranged in
different orders. Participants were required to name all the let-
ters or digits in the corresponding task at the fastest possible
speed. Given the very few errors made on these tasks, error
rates were not included in the analyses.
Reading Pseudowords. A list of 30 vowelized pseudowords
was used in order to assess the participants’ phonemic decoding
efficiency. The pseudowords were constructed by incorporating
unreal roots that do not exist in Arabic into real word patterns.
The pseudowords became increasingly difficult, depending on
the number of syllables and on morphological complexity. The
accuracy and speed of reading were recorded ( = .84).
Reading Words. A list of 40 non-vowelized words from the
basal reader of the 8th grade was presented to the participants.
The words became increasingly difficult, depending on the
number of syllables and on morphological complexity. The
accuracy and speed of reading were recorded ( = .68).
As shown in Table 1, there was a significant difference in
performance between the dyslexics and the age-matched group
on measures of phonological awareness, rapid automatized
letter and number naming, reading pseudowords (accuracy and
speed) and reading words (accuracy and speed).
Spelling Tests
Spelling Test in Arabic. A list of 80 isolated words from the
basal reader of grade 8 was chosen for spelling. The words
increased in difficulty in terms of frequency, number of sylla-
bles, and morphological complexity, and included elements that
were likely to pose difficulty for students such as spelling rules
and homophonous letters. The participants were asked to write
short vowels at the end of the words, when and where necessary.
The spelling accuracy was measured and the spelling errors
were analyzed.
Spelling Test in English. A list of 80 words in English was
chosen for spelling. The words increased in difficulty in terms
of the number of syllables and frequency, and included ele-
ments that were expected to pose difficulty for students such as
vowel and consonant digraphs, and silent letters. In addition,
the list included regular and exception words. The spelling
accuracy was measured and the spelling errors were analyzed.
Word Frequency
In order to control for word frequency, the lists of words in
Arabic and English were given to 7 Arabic and 7 English
teachers, who were asked to rate the frequency of the test items
on a scale of 1 - 5 (1 least frequent, 5 most frequent). Inde-
pendent samples t-test comparing the ratings of the word fre-
quencies in Arabic and English showed no significant differ-
ences between the two languages (t(158) = .18, p = .86), with
mean frequencies of words being 3.87 in Arabic and 3.85 in
English.
The analysis of each pupil’s spelling errors was carried out in
both Arabic and English using the following criteria:
1) Phonetic errors (Snowling et al., 1996): These errors
adequately portrayed the sound structure of the target word, but
were created by the inappropriate application of letter-sound
correspondence rules (e.g. black-blak,  /yastat/-
/yastat/). This mismatch between phonology and orthography
is made when the writer cannot rely on lexical writing.
2) Semiphonetic errors (Snowling et al., 1996): These errors
contain a single phonemic error and could be created by omis-
sion of a single phoneme, addition of a phoneme or substitution
of one phoneme with a similar one (danger-denger,  /ram/-
 /rm/). In this type of errors, the major phonological-
orthographic chunk of the word is preserved.
3) Dysphonetic errors (Snowling et al., 1996): This type of
error occurs when words are misspelled in more than one pho-
neme, and when the spelled orthographic chunk does not rep-
resent most of the phonemes of the target words (e.g. continue-
countine,  /lisiynatih/- /liyasuntah/).
4) Word omission: Errors of omitting whole words.
Procedure
During the first phase of the experiment, the five basic
measures (Initial Spelling Test, Phonological Awareness Test,
Rapid Automatized Naming, Reading Pseudowords, and Read-
ing Words) were administered individually to the 8th grade stu-
dents. The order of the tests was counterbalanced across par-
ticipants. Each student participated in one session that lasted 20
to 30 minutes, varying according to the level of proficiency, at
a quiet location within school. Immediately prior to the testing
session, participants filled out a short background questionnaire
(regarding age, gender, mother tongue, and learning difficul-
ties). Also, the Initial Spelling Test was collectively adminis-
tered to the younger regular students in order to select the
spelling-level-matched group. The first phase took place in
March, 2007.
During the second phase of the experiment, the Arabic and
English spelling tests were each collectively administered to the
8th graders as well as to the 5th and 6th graders in one session
that lasted 30 to 45 minutes, depending on the grade of the
participants. The class teacher was present during testing but
did not participate. This phase took place at the end of May,
2007.
Results
Three separate analyses of variance for repeated measures
were carried out on three spelling error categories: phonetic,
semiphonetic, and dysphonetic, with group (dyslexic, age-mat-
ched, spelling-level-matched) as the between subject factor and
language (Arabic, English) as the within subject factor. A small
number of word omission errors was made in Arabic (.33 words
on average) and English (.67 words on average); therefore, no
statistical analysis was carried out on this type of error.
Phonetic Errors
Table 2 presents the means and standard deviations of pho-
netic errors made by the three groups in Arabic and English. A
repeated measures analysis of variance (2 languages: Arabic
62

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
Table 2.
Means and standard deviations of phonetic spelling errors in Arabic and
English among the three groups.
Arabic English
Group M SD M SD
Dyslexic 14 4.59 9.05 3.78
Age-matched 6.8 3.56 4.9 2.71
Spelling-level-matched 16.28 4.30 8.81 3.23
and English × 3 groups) for the number of phonetic errors re-
vealed a significant main effect of language (F(1, 58) = 79.53,
p < .001), indicating more phonetic errors in Arabic than in
English. There was a significant main effect of group (F(2, 58)
= 27.2, p < .001) with significant differences in the number of
errors made by the three groups. Scheffe post hoc tests indi-
cated that the dyslexic group made significantly more errors
than the age-matched group (p < .001). However, the difference
between errors made by the dyslexic and the spelling-level-
matched group was not significant (p = .58). In addition, there
was a significant interaction between group and language (F(2,
58) = 8.2, p < .001).
Paired-samples t-test conducted for each group separately
revealed significant differences between the number of pho-
netic errors in Arabic and English among all three groups (t(19)
= 4.89, p < .001, t(19) = 2.51, p < .05, t(20) = 7.59, p < .001,
for the dyslexic group, age-matched group and spelling-level-
matched group, respectively). Analysis of variance carried out
on the difference between the number of phonetic errors in Ara-
bic and English revealed that the above interaction arose due to
significant differences between the groups (F(2, 61) = 9.12, p
< .001). Scheffe post hoc test indicated that the difference be-
tween the number of phonetic errors in Arabic and English was
significantly larger among the spelling-level-matched group as
compared to the age-matched group (p < .001), whereas the dif-
ferences between the dyslexic group and the other two groups
were not significant (p = .08, p = .16, comparisons with the
age-matched group and the spelling-level-matched group, re-
spectively).
Semiphonetic Errors
Table 3 summarizes the means and standard deviations of
semiphonetic errors made by the three groups in Arabic and
English. A repeated measures analysis of variance (2 languages:
Arabic and English × 3 groups) for the number of semiphonetic
errors revealed a significant main effect of language (F(1, 58) =
31.98, p < .001), indicating more semiphonetic errors in Eng-
lish than in Arabic, and a significant main effect of group (F(2,
58) = 18.44, p < .001), indicating significant differences in the
number of errors between the different groups. Scheffe post hoc
tests showed that the dyslexic group made significantly more
errors than the age-matched group (p < .001). However, the
difference between the dyslexic and the spelling-level-matched
group was not significant (p = .62). There was a significant
interaction between group and language (F(2, 58) = 5.58, p
< .01).
Paired-samples t-test conducted for each group separately
showed that the above interaction occurred because the number
of semiphonetic errors made by the dyslexic group was equal in
Arabic and English (t(19) = 1.70, p = .11), whereas the number
of semiphonetic errors made by the other two groups was sig-
nificantly higher in English than in Arabic (t(19) = 3.35, p < .01,
t(20) = 5.0, p < .001, for the age-matched group and spell-
ing-level-matched group, respectively).
In addition, Scheffe post hoc tests showed that, in English,
significantly more errors were made by the dyslexic than by the
age-matched group (p < .001), whereas the difference between
the errors made by the dyslexic and the spelling-level-matched
group was not significant (p = .63). In Arabic, however, the
dyslexic group made significantly more errors than both the
age-matched (p < .001) and the spelling-level-matched groups
(p < .05).
Dysphone ti c Er r or s
Table 4 presents the means and standard deviations of dys-
phonetic errors made by the three groups in Arabic and English.
A repeated measures analysis of variance (2 languages: Arabic
and English × 3 groups) for the number of dysphonetic errors
revealed a significant main effect of language (F(1, 58) = 14.44,
p < .001), indicating more dysphonetic errors in English than in
Arabic. There was a main effect of group (F(2, 58) = 3.49, p
< .05). Scheffe post hoc tests indicated that the dyslexic group
made significantly more errors than the age-matched group (p
< .05). However, there was no significant difference in the
number of errors between the dyslexic and the spelling-level-
matched group (p = .17). There was no interaction between
group and language (F(2, 58) = 1.05, p = .36).
Discussion
The results of the present study reveal that more phonetic er-
rors were made in Arabic than in English, while more semi-
phonetic and dysphonetic errors were made in English than in
Arabic. In other words, more spelling errors in Arabic ade-
quately portrayed the sound structure of the target word, whereas
more errors in English occurred as a result of omissions or ad-
ditions of single phonemes, or substitutions of one phoneme
with a similar one. In addition, more errors in English occurred
as a result of misspellings that did not represent most of the
phonemes of the target words. In order to better understand
these results, the Arabic and English spelling errors were fur-
ther analyzed by qualitatively examining the specific elements
in which the students tended to err.
Table 3.
Means and standard deviations of semiphonetic spelling errors in Ara-
bic and English among the three groups.
Arabic English
Group M SD M SD
Dyslexic 12.05 6.02 14.85 5.05
Age-matched 4.35 2.91 7.35 3.33
Spelling-level-matched7.61 5.08 16.67 8.30
Table 4.
Means and standard deviations of dysphonetic spelling errors in Arabic
and English among the three groups.
Arabic English
Group M SD M SD
Dyslexic 1.5 2.54 2.70 2.90
Age-matched .15 .37 1.0 .79
Spelling-level-matched.67 1.06 2.76 4.07

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
In Arabic, many phonetic errors occurred as a result of poor
mastery of spelling rules. One of the main spelling rules in
Arabic which the pupils did not master concerns the writing of
the consonant  “Hamza”. The Hamza has several written
forms, depending on its position in the word (i.e., initial, medial,
or final), and on the diacritical marks surrounding it (Azzam,
1989). For example, at the beginning of a word, the Hamza is
written above the letter Alif  when followed by the short
vowels /a/ or /u/, and under the Alif  when followed by the
short vowel /i/. The pupils in this study had difficulty choosing
the right form of the Hamza. Another main spelling rule in
Arabic involves the writing of the consonant t at the end of
words. This consonant can be written as
 at the end of verbs
and feminine plural nouns and adjectives, and
 or  (de-
pending on the letter preceding it) in nouns and adjectives in
the feminine single form (Azzam, 1989). Pupils had trouble
with writing the correct form of the letter. For example, the
word 
 /almasati/, which functions as a nouns in the
feminine single form, was misspelled as 
* /almasati/.
An additional type of error occurred in the spelling of the
long vowel // at the end of words, which can be represented by
the letters
 (Alif) or  (Alif Maqsura). Pupils had difficulty
choosing the appropriate letter. In the case of verbs, for exam-
ple, some of the pupils wrote * /da/ instead of  /da/
and * /ram/ instead of  /ram/. With triliteral verbs, the
rule is: if the verb in the present tense ends with the letter
 , it
is written with
 when in the past tense. Alternatively, if the
verb in present ends with the letter
 , then its past tense is
written with
 . The choice between  and  is also determined
by the part of speech of the word (verb or noun) and the num-
ber of the root letters (triliteral or quadriliteral roots).
Another common spelling error involved the writing of
“Hamzat-lwasl”
 . In Arabic, if a word begins with a Hamza,
which in this position is written over or under the letter Alif (
 or
 ), the Hamza with its vowel are pronounced only when the
word is at the beginning of the sentence. In the middle of the
sentence, however, the Hamza with its vowel are dropped, and
a sign called “Wasla” is put over the Alif instead of the Hamza.
In this case, the Alif is not pronounced and only serves to com-
bine the following vowelless letter with the last vowel of the
preceding word, and then the two words are read as if they were
one. The Hamza changed this way is called “Hamzat-lwasl”—
the Hamza of linking (Kapliwatzky, 1940-1976). Since Hamzat-
lwasl is not pronounced, many pupils tended to omit it in writ-
ing. For example, the word  /fastayqaða/ was written as
* /fastayqaða/ and the word  /fastadahu/ was writ-
ten as   * /fastadahu/.
Due to the complexity of the rules mentioned above, many
students had difficulty mastering them, and therefore they made
many spelling errors. According to Azzam (1989), pupils need
orthographic skills to deal with most of these context sensitive
rules, but they need grammatical and semantic skills to master
spelling.
Further, many errors occurred as a result of substitution be-
tween the consonants
 /t/-  /t/,  /d/-  /d/,  /s/-  /s/,
and
 /ð/-  /ð/ that are phonologically similar and differ in
emphasis, which is an Arabic phonetic feature. For example, /s/
is an emphatic dento-alveolar fricative, while /s/ is a non-em-
phatic dento-alveolar fricative (Mitchell, 1990). In addition,
these emphatics influence regressively or progressively the
quality of consonants and vowels at frequently considerable re-
move before or after them. Consequently, whenever an em-
phatic consonant occurs within a syllable, the whole syllable is
emphaticized. This phenomenon is not confined to the syllable
boundary, but may have an influence on the neighboring sylla-
ble as well (Al-Ani, 1970). As a result of the phonological
similarity between the emphatic consonants and their plain
counterparts, many spelling errors were made. For instance, the
word  /taqs/ was misspelled as * /taqs/ and the word
 /faqtanas/ was incorrectly spelled as  * /faqtanas/.
Thus, the errors described so far in Arabic adequately repre-
sented the sound structure of the target words, and therefore
they were considered phonetic. This result, namely, that the
most prominent error type in Arabic was phonetic, is consistent
with the findings of Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004). Abu-Rabia
and Taha attributed the phonetic spelling errors to a limited
orthographic lexicon.
The finding that phonetic errors were more prevalent in Ara-
bic than in English was observed among all three groups.
However, this difference between errors in the two languages
was more prominent among the younger spelling-level-matched
group compared to the older age-matched group. This finding
implies that the difference in spelling between the two lan-
guages decreases as pupils grow older. It should be noted that
this difference decreased due to the improvement of spelling
ability, especially in Arabic. A possible explanation for this
finding is that as Arab pupils grow older, they become more
and more exposed to Arabic print, since they encounter it in
their daily life and in different subjects at school such as history
and geography. Their exposure to English, on the other hand, is
confined mainly to English lessons.
In English, many errors occurred as a result of substitution,
addition or omission of letters, especially vowels. One common
substitution error occurred between the vowels e and i, corre-
sponding to the phonemes // and /i/, respectively (for example,
listen-*lesten, children-*cheldrin, ship-*shep, tell-*till). This
error could be explained by the phonological similarity between
the phonemes // and /i/ as both of them are front, unrounded
vowels (Treiman, 1993). Children as well as adults were found
to rate // and /i/ as highly similar (Fox, 1983; Read, 1973;
Singh & Woods, 1971).
Many errors also occurred in vowel doublets and vowel di-
graphs. A doublet is a spelling of two identical letters that are
adjacent and symbolize a single phoneme such as ee and oo,
whereas a digraph is a group of two different letters that repre-
sent one phoneme such as ei (Treiman, 1993). Vowel doublets
and digraphs do not exist in Arabic, as vowel phonemes are
represented by single letters, and therefore they pose difficulty
for Arab pupils. Some examples of such errors were *frind for
friend, *whel for wheel, *hose for house, *clin for clean, etc.
An additional type of error occurred in spellings of the silent
e at the end of words. In some cases, the silent e alters the pre-
ceding vowel to its long sound (e.g. the vowel in sit is /i/, while
the vowel in site is /ai/, the long sound of the vowel /i/). In
other cases, however, the silent e has no phonetic value, as in
the case of some common exception words such as have and
give. The misspellings in the final silent e involved the omis-
sion and the addition of silent es at the end of words such as
*phon for phone, *hom for home, *dolphine for dolphin and
*kile for kill. Silent e does not exist in Arabic, and therefore
Arab pupils tend to omit it. However, as they become more and
more exposed to the English print, they notice its common oc-
currence and start using it and adding it to words, even when
unnecessary. The misspellings in final silent e were also seen
64

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
among native speakers of Hebrew (Tal, 2005).
Another error type worth mentioning was omission of vow-
els, especially from words with two syllables or more. Some
examples were: *orgnize instead of organize, *contnue instead
of continue, *exprience instead of experience, *hpen instead of
happen, and *pblish instead of publish. A possible explanation
for this type of error may be related to the nature of the Arabic
orthography. As mentioned earlier, short vowels in Arabic are
typically omitted from written texts because they can be filled
using contextual clues, and would often be redundant if pre-
sented in writing. Therefore, Arab readers do not devote much
attention to them while reading. Native Arabic speakers were
also found to approach English texts with written word identi-
fication strategies that reflect the nature of their native Arabic
writing system, that is, they devote less visual attention to
vowel letters as opposed to consonants when reading English
(Hayes-Harb, 2006). As reading and spelling are closely related
processes, and the correlation between them is high (Ehri, 2000;
Zuttle & Rasinski, 1989), native Arabic speakers who do not
normally pay much attention to English vowels in reading, do
not pay much attention to them in writing either, and may omit
them.
In addition, many of the errors involved substitutions, addi-
tions or omissions of consonants. One spelling error worth
mentioning is the substitution of the letter p with the letter b
and vice versa. The phoneme /p/ does not exist in Arabic, and
therefore some pupils tended to represent it with the letter b,
which has a similar sound to /p/, as both of them are bilabial
stop consonants (with /b/ being voiced and /p/ being voiceless).
However, it is interesting to note that errors also indicated
overcompensation by the pupils, in the sense that they em-
ployed the strategy of writing p where the correct spelling is b.
Some examples were *bage for page, and *bublish or *puplish
for publish. These findings are consistent with those of Haggan
(1991). In her study, she found that Arab university students in
Kuwait made spelling errors that stemmed from the problems
with /p/ and of their strategy to overcompensate by putting p
where the correct spelling is b.
Further, many errors occurred in consonant doublets and
consonant digraphs. As mentioned earlier regarding vowel dou-
blets and digraphs, consonant doublets and digraph are also
absent in Arabic, as consonant phonemes are represented by
single letters, and thus they create difficulty for Arab students.
Some common errors were *hapen for happen, *ofice for of-
fice, *tree for three, and *pone for phone. To summarize, the
errors described thus far in English did not adequately portray
the sound structure of the word; nonetheless, the major phono-
logical-orthographic chunk of the word was preserved.
It should be noted, however, that some English errors did
portray the sound structure of the target word properly, and
therefore were considered phonetic. Most of these errors oc-
curred as a result of omitting silent letters, which are repre-
sented graphically but are not pronounced (e.g. *rite for write,
*now for know), and as a result of substituting letters with
other single letters or digraphs that may represent the same pho-
neme (*weal for wheel, *kut for cut, *dolfin for dolphin, *kwit
for quit, *paje for page and so forth).
Treiman (1993) ascribes the complexity of the English writ-
ing system to at least four factors, three of which are relevant in
the present study. First, the English orthography has one-to-
many relations from phonemes to graphemes, and most pho-
nemes are not represented with the same grapheme every time
they occur. For instance, /k/ is sometimes symbolized with k,
sometimes with c, and sometimes with other graphemes. Sec-
ond, for those phonemes that have more than one spelling, it is
sometimes impossible to predict when each spelling occurs, and
there are often exceptions to the rules that exist. Yet, a third
source of complexity is that English has many-to-one relations
from phonemes to graphemes. For example, // and /ð/ are both
spelled with th.
Although significantly more semiphonetic errors were made
in English than in Arabic, this was not the case for all groups.
While the age-matched and the spelling-level-matched groups
did show this pattern, the dyslexic group did not, as they made
an almost equal number of semiphonetic errors in Arabic and
English. One possible explanation is that the dyslexic group
made not only a higher number of semiphonetic errors in Eng-
lish, but also in Arabic, thus reducing the difference between
the two languages. It should be noted that some of the Arabic
semiphonetic errors, especially among the dyslexics, were the
result of confusion between the short vowels  , 
 and 
 and
their corresponding long vowels  ,  and  , which may have
been occurred due to difficulties in phonological discrimination.
Some examples were:  /kibrit/ for  /kibrt/, *
/aallaa/ for  /aalla/ and * /yatma/ for 
/yatma u/. Other semiphonetic errors in Arabic involved sub-
stituting “Hamzat-lwasl” with a Hamza. For instance, the word
 /fantalaqat/ was written as  /faintalaqat/, and the
word  /fastayqaða/ was written as  /faistayqaða/.
These errors probably occurred as a result of poor mastery of
this rule in Arabic.
With regard to dysphonetic errors, the study revealed that
more errors were made in English than in Arabic, though the
number of dysphonetic errors was low in both languages. These
errors occurred because words were misspelled in more than
one phoneme and the spelling did not correctly represent the
sound structure of the word. Examples include: *countine for
continue, *rogmnt for recommend, * /fastah/ for 
/fastadhu/, and * /liyasuntah/ for  /lisiynatih/.
According to the model Abu-Rabia and Taha (2004) suggested
to account for the spelling process among native Arabic speak-
ers, semiphonetic and dysphonetic errors occur when there is no
reliance on lexical knowledge or, simultaneously, when the
phonological routes are not developed enough due to a phono-
logical lag. Then it is assumed that the phoneme-grapheme
mapping strategies will not be correctly applied, leading to the
performance of semiphonetic and dysphonetic errors.
Snowling et al. (1996) examined the phonological spelling
strategies of dyslexic children (mean age 9.65 years) as com-
pared to age-matched normal readers (mean age 9.70 years) and
younger reading age-matched controls (mean age 7.3 years).
The researchers found that the performance of the dyslexic
readers was broadly similar to that of the reading age-matched
group, with dysphonetic errors being more frequent than either
phonetic or semiphonetic errors among both groups. The results
of the present study are at odds with those of Snowling et al.; in
their study, the dyslexic children were found to make a high
proportion of dysphonetic errors as compared to semiphonetic
and phonetic ones. In the present study, however, the most
prominent error type among the dyslexics was semiphonetic in
English, whereas an equal number of phonetic and semipho-
netic errors was made in Arabic. One factor that may explain
the discrepancy between the findings of studies comparing
dyslexic readers is the severity of the disability. Children with

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
severe dyslexia are expected to have poorer phonological abili-
ties and phonological spelling strategies than dyslexics with a
milder disability, resulting in the occurance of a relatively
higher proportion of dysphonetic errors. In fact, in the present
study, the dyslexic pupils with a severe disability (according to
their extremely low performance on the Initial Spelling Test
basic measure) tended to make a higher proportion of dyspho-
netic errors than other dyslexics. However, this could not be
examined statistically due to the small number of pupils that
had a severe disability.
The results of the present study also showed that the dyslexic
and the spelling-level-matched group made an equal number of
phonetic, semiphonetic and dysphonetic errors, and both groups
made more errors than the age-matched group. However, when
English and Arabic were examined separately, it was found that
the dyslexic group made significantly more semiphonetic errors
in Arabic than the spelling-level-matched group. This finding is
inconsistent with that of Abu-Rabia and Taha’s study (2004)
which indicated that the semiphonetic errors were similar
among the dyslexic children and their reading-level-matched
controls. It should be noted, however, that the findings of stud-
ies comparing dyslexic and normal readers can be expected to
vary, depending on the age and the stage of development of
both the dyslexic and the normal control groups (Rack, Snowl-
ing, & Olson, 1992; Snowling et al., 1996). In Abu-Rabia and
Taha’s study, the mean ages of the dyslexic group and the
reading-level-matched group were 11.19 and 8.04 years, re-
spectively, whereas, in the present study, the mean ages of the
dyslexics and the spelling-level-matched group were 13.58 and
11.34 years, respectively. The pupils in the control group in
Abu-Rabia and Taha’s study were very young (grade 2), and
they were still in the early stages of spelling acquisition. Their
phonological and orthographic knowledge was not fully devel-
oped yet, much like those of the older dyslexic pupils in the
same study who had poor phonological and orthographic abili-
ties, due to a developmental lag. In the present study, on the
other hand, the pupils in the control group are older (grades 5
and 6), and have more advanced phonological spelling strate-
gies and orthographic knowledge, unlike the dyslexic group
who has poor phonological spelling abilities. These poor pho-
nological abilities result in the incorrect application of pho-
neme-grapheme mapping strategies and, thus, leading to more
semiphonetic errors. Analyzing the Arabic semiphonetic errors
revealed that most of them occurred as a result of substitution
between letters that are phonologically similar, especially vow-
els.
Summary of Findings
The aim of the present study was to examine and analyze the
types of spelling errors among regular and dyslexic students in
Arabic as L1 and English as FL. The results indicated that most
of the spelling errors in Arabic occurred as a result of poor
knowledge of spelling rules as well as substitution between the
emphatic consonants and their plain counterparts, especially
when the latter underwent assimilation due to the existence of
an emphatic consonant in the same or in the adjacent syllable.
These spelling errors did not change the sound structure of the
target words, but properly represented it; therefore, they were
phonetic in nature.
In English, most of the spelling errors occurred as a result of
substitution between letters that are phonologically similar,
substitution between letters or digraphs that may represent the
same phoneme, omission of letters from vowel and consonant
doublets or digraphs, poor knowledge of writing conventions,
and omission of vowels and silent letters. Many of these ele-
ments do not exist in Arabic, and therefore they pose difficult-
ties for Arab pupils. Others occurred due to apparent influence
of the Arabic writing system (such as vowel omission and con-
fusion between p and b). Most of the errors in English were
misspellings in one phoneme that preserved the major phono-
logical-orthographic chunk of the word, and therefore they
were considered semiphonetic.
Based on the above findings, it can be concluded that most of
the elements that pose difficulties for native Arabic speakers in
Arabic lead to the occurrence of phonetic errors, whereas most
of the aspects that create difficulties for them in English result
in the occurrence of semiphonetic errors. Put differently, some
problems encountered in a language are specific to the script,
and the types of errors are influenced by the nature of the writ-
ing system. However, the types of errors performed in a foreign
language also seem to be influenced by the nature of the first
language.
Another finding of the present study is the similar error pro-
files that the dyslexic and the spelling-level-matched group
displayed, as both of them made an equal number of phonetic,
semiphonetic and dysphonetic errors. However, when Arabic
and English were examined separately, the dyslexic group was
found to have made significantly more semiphonetic errors in
Arabic than the spelling-level-matched one. These errors re-
sulted from substitution between letters that are phonologically
similar, especially vowels.
Future Research
The dyslexic students in the present study were found to
make more semiphonetic errors in Arabic than their spell-
ing-level-matched controls. However, the types of errors in this
study were general in nature; therefore, it was difficult to pin-
point the aspects in Arabic that posed a greater difficulty for
dyslexics than for younger regular spellers and whether some
aspects create difficulties only for dyslexic students. In order to
answer these questions, a study needs to be conducted, where
error types will rely on fine-grained analysis of the Arabic or-
thography, and will be categorized according to the specific
aspects that are expected to pose difficulties for native Arabic
speakers. The spelling error profiles of dyslexics and spell-
ing-level-matched group needs to be compared.
As mentioned earlier, while only few dysphonetic errors
were made by all three groups, there was a tendency among the
students with severe dyslexia to perform a higher proportion of
dysphonetic errors than those with a milder disability. However,
since only a small number of students were considered to have
a severe disability, this tendency could not be examined statis-
tically. Therefore, a study could be conducted in which the
spelling error types of dyslexic students classified according to
the severity of their disability would be compared, in order to
find out whether severity has an influence on spelling error
profiles.
Instructional Implications
Considering the results of the present study, several instruc-
tional implications can be suggested for teaching English spell-
66

S. ABU-RABIA, R. SAMMOUR
ing to Arabic speakers. First, since many elements that were
found to pose difficulty for Arab pupils do not exist in Arabic,
such as silent e, doublets and digraphs, they should be given an
additional instructional emphasis. This recommendation is in
accordance with Treiman’s (1993) conclusion that more time
and effort should be allocated to the instruction of elements that
children find difficult than elements which they find easy. She
explains that children will be able to master and gain knowl-
edge of the easy things on their own, but they will struggle with
difficult things unless the difficulties can be overcome by
means of teaching.
Second, as some errors were presumed to occur as a result of
transfer from L1, such as vowel omission and confusion be-
tween /p/ and /b/, there seems to be a need to teach spelling
while emphasizing the differences that exist between Arabic
and English. Pupils should understand, for example, that while
vowels can be omitted from written texts in Arabic, their repre-
sentation is vital in English, since changing one vowel in a
word completely changes its meaning.
Third, on account of the fact that English vowels are abun-
dant and different from Arabic ones, special consideration
should be placed on vowel discrimination in the initial stages of
English acquisition. For example, the pupils in the present
study had difficulty in spelling the vowels e and i. The first step
that should be taken to overcome this difficulty is to work with
them on the phonological difference between the phonemes //
and /i/. Afterwards, they should be taught that the phonemes //
and /i/ are usually symbolized with the graphemes e and i, re-
spectively.
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