Vol. 3,No. 4, April 2013

Author(s): Ahmad M. Al-Samawi, Husam Solaiman

Abstract: The present study investigated the effect of syllabicating transliterated Arabic road signs on their pronunciation by non-native speakers of Arabic. It was hypothesized that syllabicating transliterated road signs results in better pronunciation by non-native speakers of Arabic than writing them as whole words. Twenty subjects who participated voluntarily in the study were asked to read a list of twenty Arabic road signs transliterated into English, taken from real road signs in the UAE and written as whole words (Method 1). The same signs were syllabicated and shuffled before they were given to the subjects to read them (Method 2). Participants were recorded in both times. Records were played by three raters who scored participants on a Likert scale of four categories. For reliability of agreement, Fleiss' Kappa revealed substantial agreement (K= 0.667) for the Method 1 and moderate agreement (K= 0.599) for Method 2. Paired T test was applied to test the difference between the means of the first and the second method. The results showed a significant difference between the two means (t = -11.145, p<= 0.0001), which supports the research hypothesis. Results were discussed and implications were provided with further research suggested.

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