Examining ‘vowel blindness’ among native Arabic speakers reading English words from the perspective of eye-tracking

This eye-tracking study examines L2 word-recognition processes among native Arabic speakers. Previous studies suggest that word-level reading difficulties experienced by these EFL learners are generally a product of cross-linguistic transfer of L1 Arabic reading processes. These transferred L1 reading strategies involve a specific focus on the tri-consonantal root and much less focus on vowel letters in words, a hypothesis known in the literature as ‘vowel blindness’. Data was collected from 30 Arabic learners, at upper-intermediate and advanced level, preparing to pursuing higher degrees at a British university. The subjects read ‘context-free’ words and the results of these learners were compared to the performance of 20 native English speakers. The results appear to contradict previous research. The Arabic group did not demonstrate a specific focus on consonants relative to vowels. However, they demonstrated longer fixation durations and a larger number of fixations on both letter-type and on words in total than the control group. The findings confirm a word-level processing difficulty and suggest that these learners may be depending on a phonological decoding route in L2 reading. This study discusses the possible reasons why Arab EFL learners exhibit exceptional word-level difficulties and the implications of these difficulties on higher-level reading processes.