Learning to Spell in Arabic: The Impact of Script-Specific Visual-Orthographic Features.

Learning to spell is a challenging process, especially for young learners, in part because it relies on multiple aspects of linguistic knowledge, primarily phonological and morphological. However, alongside these universals, there are significant writing system specifics, namely, language-specific and script-specific factors that may also challenge young readers and writers (Daniels and Share, 2018). The current study focuses on the impact of four distinctive visual-orthographic features of the Arabic abjad on spelling, namely, (i) the similarity of many basic letter-forms, (ii) allography (the positional variants of the letter forms), (iii) ligaturing (the joining of letters), and (iv) non-linearity (extra-linear diacritic-like signs used to mark consonantal, short vowel and morpho-syntactic distinctions).

Is susceptibility to cross-language interference domain specific?

The ability to overcome interference from the first-language (L1) is a source of variability in second language (L2) achievement, which has to date been explored mainly in same-script bilinguals. Such interference management, and bilingual language control more generally, have recently been linked to domain general executive functions (EF). In the current study, we examined L2 proficiency and executive functions as possible predictors of susceptibility to L1 interference during L2 processing, in bilinguals whose languages do not share an orthographic system.