الفهرس 
IntroductionOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Reading is using printed information to function in society, to achieve one’s goal and to develop one’s knowledge and potential. No other skill taught in school and learned by school children is more important than
reading. It is the gate to gather knowledge. In the reading
performance there are three types of procedures. The first one is a procedure for pronouncing words and non-words using the most common mapping between letters and
sounds. The second is a procedure for mapping familiar
written words directly into their corresponding phonological (sounds) forms. The last one is a procedure
for mapping word directly onto its meaning. The three
procedures are needed for making sounds in appropriate
matching between outer stimulus (words) and inner storage
(visual and phonological lexicon) in minds. Difficulty of reading is the most common complaint
in learning disability children. Learning disability is a
neurobehavioral developmental disorder manifested by significant difficulties in the acquisition and use of efficient
reading (’dyslexia’), writing (’dysgraphia’) and/ or
mathematical (’dyscalculia’) abilities despite conventional
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instruction, intact senses, normal intelligence, proper
motivation and adequate sociocultural opportunity.
Assessment of reading has been an issue to discuss through the past years. Among the tests assessing Arabic
reading abilities, the ARST will be considered the only
whole test that screen and assess the child’s reading
abilities.The Arabic reading test (Abou El-Ella et al.,2004)
and Awaad test (Awaad, 1995) were constructed to assess
the reading abilities in children ranged from 9-10 years and
10-12 years respectively. Even the EGRA test assesses the
children in grade 1, 2 and 3.
So, the idea to design an ARST to be objective
screening tool that can be used to give information about
the reading abilities of the Egyptian children between 5 to 9
year old. Arabic Reading Screening Test (ARST) consists of 2
subscales.
1.Scale “1”: which is concerned with reading only
without comprehension which includes; isolated, connected grapheme with/without short vowels
recognition, logographic reading, decoding words,
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sentences, pseudowords (nonsense words). The first
scale is composed of 10 items (variables) which are
distributed at different age groups.
2. Scale “2”: which is concerned with reading
comprehension which includes; word, verb, sentence
comprehension, semantics at word level and
semantics at sentence level. As for semantics at word
level includes; visual closure, synonyms, antonyms,
hyponyms. As for semantics at sentence level, it
includes; sentence formulation, sequencing,
completion, repair task and story reading and
comprehension.
240 children participated in the Arabic reading screening
test (ARST) and the related reliability and validity studies.
Children who enrolled in primary schools in Masr el
gedida and Nasr City districts. Within each school, students
are allocated by systematic random method. The children
are classified according to their age into 4 age groups, 60
subjects in each.
The pilot study was performed on 40 normal
children. The sample of pilot study included children of
average mentality, with normal language development
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(subjectively). This sample was taken to check the
materials used in the test whether they were clear or not &
suitable or not, in order to check the pattern of presentation
of the test items themselves, and their order of presentation.
The time of administration of the ARST is 15-45 minutes.
In this study, the Results indicate that there is high positive
correlation between child performance in the ARST and
chronological age of children (p=0.000). This means that,
child performance increases when the child’s age increases.
There is a negative correlation between the time taken to
achieve the tasks and the chronological age of the children
(p= 0.000) which indicates that, the time taken to achieve
the task decreases when the child’s age increases.
Reliability of ARST was proved to be high by test-re
test using Alpha Cronbach’s method (r=0.9578). All
methods prove that the ARST is highly reliable.
Validity of the ARST was proved by developmental
changes validity, internal consistency validity (r=0.948-
0.768) and constructed group validity. These methods
proved that ARST is valid scale to evaluate child’s reading
ability