Reading and spelling processes in EFL amongst Hebrew and Arabic speakers of differing ability levels: similarities and differences

ABSTRACT The present study examined reading and spelling of regular and irregular words in English as a foreign language (EFL) amongst 4th-grade native Arabic and Hebrew speakers. The reading and spelling tasks was drawn from the same pool of lexical items, which were categorised based on how closely they adhered to basic grapheme-phoneme correspondences (regular/irregular). Results showed overall reading scores were higher than spelling scores. Arabic speakers outperformed Hebrew speakers on the word reading task, indicating a potential multilingual advantage. No difference was found between the language groups on word spelling. Irregular words received higher scores than regular words on the reading task whereas opposite results were found for the spelling task, with regular words receiving higher scores than irregular words. When the participants were divided into good and poor ability groups, the three-way interaction indicated that whilst language and word regularity were not related to word reading within the good group, within the poor group irregular words were read with higher accuracy scores. The applicability of existing theoretical models of reading and spelling development for English L1 is considered in light of these cross-linguistic findings. Pedagogical implications relating to differences between language and ability groups are discussed.