Aug 31, 2010 14:47 GMT  ·  By

Several studies show that because of the complexity of Arabic orthography, the right hemisphere is not involved in decoding the text in the first stages of learning to read.

The Arabic script is graphically complex so it is very difficult to learn to read Arabic, compared to English, studies carried out by the Department of Psychology and the Edmond J. Safra Brain Research Center for the Study of Learning Disabilities at the University of Haifa, suggest.

The studies compared children's and adults' reading speed and language accuracy in their mother tongue – Arabic, Hebrew and English, as well as the speed and accuracy of processing Arabic, Hebrew and English words in readers with Arabic as their mother tongue.

After analyzing the brain's responses, the scientists concluded that the right part of the brain is involved in the reading process only for Hebrew and English.

They explained that Arabic has a number of symbols that are very similar and that represent different letters and sounds, and for making the difference between them, there were only slight variations, such as dots or lines.

Identifying the number and the placement of the dots is critical for differentiating the letters but it is a very hard task for the right brain, since it is used to identify letters first.

In the past ten years, research has shown that reading Arabic is slower and harder than for any other language, and these series of studies carried out by Prof. Zohar Eviatar and Dr. Raphiq Ibrahim, were the first to examine the assumption that this difficulty is due to the visual complexity of the written Arabic system.

“This means that children acquiring languages other than Arabic draw on the use of both hemispheres in the first stages of learning to read, while children learning to read Arabic do not have the participation of the right brain.

“The native Arabic-speaking child is faced with more of a challenge, requiring more practice and particular pedagogic effort - which demonstrates the need for systematic professional involvement in the teaching of Arabic reading, especially for those who have learning difficulties,” said the researchers in their conclusions.

Th studies were published in the prestigious journal Neuropsychology.