Abstract
The purpose of this study was to investigate the potential contribution of decoding efficiency to the development of reading comprehension among skilled adult native Arabic speakers. In addition, we tried to investigate the influence of Arabic vowels on reading accuracy, reading speed, and therefore to reading comprehension. Seventy-five Arabic native speakers read fully pointed, unpointed and pseudowords lists of Arabic and silent reading comprehension of pointed and unpointed paragraphs were tested. Reading speed and accuracy measures revealed a slowest and less accurate in reading pseudowords, and fastest and most accurate in reading unpointed words with pointed word naming speed and accuracy in between. Subjects who were fast and accurate in reading isolated words were also fast and accurate in reading all varieties of printed words. Pearson correlation procedures indicated that silent reading comprehension of pointed and unpointed Arabic texts was uncorrelated with either oral reading speed or accuracy. Our findings with regard to the cross-linguistic research literature as well as the specific features of Arabic language are discussed.