The contribution of language skills to reading fluency: a comparison of two orthographies for Hebrew

Abstract

The purpose of the present study was to explore the contribution of phonological and general language skills to reading fluency of pointed and unpointed Hebrew scripts. Reading, language and memory tasks were performed by 48 fifth-grade monolingual native Hebrew speakers. Results showed that the most marked predictor for both pointed and unpointed reading texts was the morphological measure, whereas the phonological awareness measure contributed to neither of them. The semantic and syntactic measures contributed only to unpointed text reading fluency. The discussion highlights how readers in script, such as unpointed Hebrew, rely on general language skills in order to achieve fluent reading.