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Word reading in English and Arabic in children who are Syrian refugees
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Resettled Syrian Refugee Children in Canada: Oral Language, Literacy and Well-being
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Abstract:
The Canadian government has resettled over 57,000 Syrian refugees since 2015. This influx of migrants has offered a chance to evaluate the language development and overall well- being of such a unique group. The primary goals of this dissertation were to examine the extent to which morphological awareness skill predicted Arabic reading skills, as well as to investigate the role of child-specific and family-related predictors of English reading in school-aged Syrian refugee children resettled in Canada.The first study investigated the concurrent and longitudinal role(s) of morphological awareness in Arabic word reading and reading comprehension. A total of eighty-three native Arabic Syrian refugee children aged 6-13 years resettled in Canada were administered measures of nonverbal intelligence, vocabulary, phonological awareness, morphological awareness, word reading and reading comprehension at two points in time. Hierarchical regression analyses indicated that morphological awareness was related to word reading and reading comprehension concurrently and longitudinally, after controlling for age, cognitive abilities, phonological awareness, and vocabulary. Interestingly, these relations remained statistically significant even with the addition of autoregressive controls. The second study was designed to examine the extent to which children’s Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder (ADHD) symptoms, as reported by their parents, predict English word reading, in a sample of one-hundred and thirty-three Syrian refugee children 6-13 years. Using multilevel modeling, child’s ADHD score was a strong predictor of English word reading accuracy, above key cognitive variables. Family time spent in refugee camps significantly moderated the association between ADHD symptoms and English word reading. The findings of the study showed that children with higher ADHD scores performed lower on word reading task after controlling for key cognitive variables. Children who spent more time in refugee camps before resettling in Canada showed higher ADHD symptoms and lower word reading performance compared to children who spent less/no time in refugee camps. Overall, the findings of this dissertation support the relevance of cognitive variables in the development of literacy skills in refugee children who are Arabic native speakers relocated in an English dominant country. Furthermore, the findings highlight the importance of overall well- being and pre-migration factors on children’s learning. ; Ph.D.
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Keyword:
0620; ADHD; Arabic first language; English second language; Literacy skills; Morphological awareness; Refugees
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URL: http://hdl.handle.net/1807/109103
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