What Predicts Listening Comprehension in Standard Arabic? The Interdependence of Linguistic and Metalinguistic Skills in Spoken and Standard Arabic

Purpose: All Arabic-speaking children grow up in diglossia. They use a Spoken
Arabic (SpA) variety for everyday speech but Modern Standard Arabic (StA), a linguistically
distant variety, for all literacy-related spheres of use including reading
and writing. Given this sociofunctional complementarity, children are continuously
required to shift between the spoken and standard varieties. The study tested the
contribution of executive functions (EFs) and of linguistic and metalinguistic skills in
SpA and StA to listening comprehension (LC) in StA among kindergarten children.
Method: A total of 775 Palestinian Arabic–speaking children were tested on LC
and sentence processing in StA, on EFs (inhibition, switching, memory), and on
parallel linguistic (vocabulary and lexico-phonological representations) and
metalinguistic (phonological and morphological awareness) skills in SpA and in
StA independently.
Results: Structural equation modeling showed that all three EF skills were indirectly
related to LC via linguistic and metalinguistic skills in SpA and StA, yet
working memory showed a direct contribution as well. With respect to linguistic
and metalinguistic skills, the results showed that these were interrelated across
the two language varieties. Moreover, SpA skills were related to LC indirectly,
via their corresponding skills in the StA, yet importantly also directly.
Conclusions: The study demonstrates the centrality of EFs in LC in StA. Furthermore,
they underscore the interdependence of linguistic and metalinguistic
skills in SpA and StA as well as the direct and indirect contribution of language
and metalinguistic skills in the spoken variety to comprehension in StA.