Thesis Alaa GHANDOUR

Most research on reading acquisition and the cognitive processes involved relates to Indo-European languages, and mainly English (Share, 2008). Very few studies have looked at other language families, especially Semitic languages such as Arabic. As a result, theoretical models of reading and learning to read that are now widely accepted internationally may be highly biased. Instead of responding to the demand for the universality they claim, some postulates of these models might in fact only apply to Indo-European languages (Frost, 2012; Hansen, 2014). This is more problematic as theoretical views on learning to read have consequences for teaching practices.
In many Arabic-speaking countries, the teaching of reading adopts the principles of teaching French, emphasizing phonological recoding and the development of phonemic awareness. However, many studies underline that Arabic more than French calls for morphological treatments and more mobilizes visual and visuo-attentional treatments for the identification of letters and relevant units within written words (Saiegh- Haddad & Malatesha-Joshi, 2014).
The thesis project aims to create tools for training cognitive visuo-attentional processes. These training sessions will be offered to Arabic-speaking students who are just starting to learn to read. The performance progress of the students will be evaluated (pre-post training comparison) by comparison with untrained control groups. The objective is to offer a first experimental validation of training protocol, followed by validation on a larger scale in ecological conditions. Ultimately, validated training could be made available to teachers and be the subject of national recommendations.

Supervisors :
- Sylviane VALDOIS -  Sylviane.Valdoisuniv-grenoble-alpes.fr (Sylviane[dot]Valdois[at]univ-grenoble-alpes[dot]fr)
- Dominique GUILLO - Dominique.GUILLOum6p.ma (Dominique[dot]GUILLO[at]um6p[dot]ma) -

Keywords : Orthographic complexity,visuo-attentional skills,Arabic language,Reading,Spelling,Children,