Qur’anic Reading

Arabic, as the only medium of performing religious rituals, is a widely used language in Islamic communities. Amongst uses of Arabic, reading and recitation of the Holy Qur’an enjoy a critical position. Accordingly, many religious schools have invested in teaching Qur’an and its required skills. Research findings have shown that Qur’anic teaching follows a traditional procedure in theory and practice. Considering the importance of conducting applied linguistics studies on teaching Qur’anic reading, the current research was an attempt to investigate the effect of semantic-structural elaboration of Qur’anic reading efficiency, encompassing reading reaction time, fluency, and comprehension. To this aim, an intact group of intermediate Qur’anic learners was selected through non-random convenience sampling and an experimental (pretest/intervention/posttest) design was employed in which the group underwent three different experiments. After raising awareness on five frequent Qur’anic roots and their derivations that occurred in different Qur’anic verses, tests were administered and parametric data were collected and analyzed through SPSS. Research findings revealed that intervention adversely affected reaction time by a significant increase (t (24) = -12.067, p < 0.000.) while promoting reading fluency and reading comprehension (t (24) = -9.643, p < 0.000, and t (24) = -6.914, p < 0.000, respectively). It was suggested that, though semantic-structural elaboration significantly increases learners’ knowledge of semantic, syntax, and morphology and promotes language skills, form-focused instruction is cognitively demanding and must be done with due caution. These findings could have implications for Qur’anic teachers, learners, and applied linguists in general.

Research findings have shown that acquiring proficiency in reading is highly dependent on morphology. Also, it has been proved that morphology is a stronger determiner and predictor for reading in Semitic languages such as Arabic. Due to the fact that Qur’anic reading is an important skill for the Muslim community and the gap in the literature on Qur’anic reading, the current research is an attempt to study the effect of morphological awareness on Qur’anic reading fluency and accuracy. To this aim, an intact group entailing 29 native English-speaking adults (aged 19-43) enrolled in a lower-intermediate Qur’anic course was selected through purposive sampling in which outliers were removed (N=27). The remaining participants underwent three sessions of morphological instruction on some of the challenging and frequent Qur’anic roots and morphemes and then took part in three different reading tests on a standard Arabic text, a pseudo-word text, and a Qur’anic text. The results of an analysis through ANOVA (F (2, 72) = 67.483, p = .000) showed that the group performed differently in the three tests, i.e., the morphology instruction enhanced their performance in reading the Qur’anic text as well as the standard Arabic text while leaving the performance on the pseudo-word text almost unaffected. The post-hoc test showed that this effect was strongest in the Qur’anic test, revealing that Qur’anic reading  is significantly affected by morphological awareness-raising. This indicates that raising awareness of morphology through instruction promotes the reading of difficult languages such as the Holy Qur’an and standard Arabic. These findings have implications for Qur’anic teachers, learners, and Arabic language practitioners.