Phonological Awareness of Dyslexic Jordanian Arabic-Speaking Children: The Role of Diglossia

This study examines the impact of diglossia on the phonological awareness of dyslexic Jordanian Arabic-speaking children, focusing on deletion, segmentation, and reading tasks in both Modern Standard Arabic (MSA) and Colloquial Arabic (CA).

Forty dyslexic and 40 typically developing (TD) children from special education resource rooms in four private schools in Amman, Jordan, participated.

Statistical analysis revealed that both groups performed better in MSA than in CA across all tasks, with TD children outperforming dyslexic children and task difficulty decreasing with grade level. Dyslexic children found segmentation easier than deletion, whereas TD children found both tasks equally challenging. A significant relationship was observed between reading and deletion tasks in CA for second-grade TD children and in MSA for second-grade dyslexic children.

MSA-CA performance gap should inform instructional strategies, suggesting that phonological awareness interventions need to target the weaker variety (CA) while maintaining support in MSA. Strengthening phonological processing in CA may reduce the phonological load associated with dialectal mismatch and facilitate bidirectional transfer of phonological skills between CA and MSA. The findings may reflect exposure to multiple dialects, individual learning styles, and the complexities of the Arabic writing system. Overall, the study provides empirically grounded guidance for designing differentiated, dialect-sensitive interventions to support dyslexic learners in diglossic Arabic contexts.