Examining Knowledge Sources and Strategies for Inferring Meaning of Persian words derived from Arabic: A comparison of Successful and less Successful Arab-speaking Persian Readers

The present study aimed to examine and compare the knowledge sources and strategies used to infer the meaning of Persian words derived from Arabic by successful and less successful Arab-speaking learners of Persian. To achieve this objective, a standard reading test and think-aloud protocols were used to collect the necessary data. At the outset of the study, 10 Lebanese Arab speaking learners of Persian were asked to express the meanings of 64 de-contextualized Persian words derived from Arabic. Then, depending on the number of words whose meanings were unknown to them, each participant was asked to express the meanings of the 64 unfamiliar words in a short story. During this process, they were asked to elaborate on the knowledge sources and strategies they used to infer the meanings of the unknown words. Meanwhile, their voice was recorded, and later transcribed, and coded. Inter- and intra-coding reliabilities were also checked. Moreover, the reading comprehension test was given to the participants in order to categorize them into successful and less successful readers. Results of the study showed that the successful readers used fewer knowledge sources and strategies to infer the meanings of Persian words derived from Arabic compared to their less successful counterparts.