The Effect of the Linguistic Status of Text Previewing in Arabic on the Reading Comprehension Outcomes Among Second and Sixth Grade Native Arabs Readers: A Cross-Sectional View.

The current study examined the effect of the linguistic status of the verbal previewing strategy on the outcomes of reading comprehension tasks among second (N = 25, age 7.08 ± .3), and sixth-grade students (N = 25, age 11.75 ± .25), with typical reading development. The texts for each group were carefully matched and were divided into three conditions of verbal previewing: (a) Standard Arabic previewing (hereafter: StA previewing); (b) spoken Arabic previewing (hereafter: SpA previewing); (c) without previewing. The results showed that for the second-grade readers, SpA previewing had a significant contribution to the reading comprehension outcomes compared to the other conditions of previewing while for the sixth-grade readers; StA previewing had a significant contribution to the outcomes of reading comprehension. The findings were explained according to the assumption that relatively native Arab speaking students develop a progressive change toward activation of StA representations for verbal learning. Such representations become more efficient as a result of the dominant exposure to StA during performing reading and writing tasks.