Browsing by Author "Muzmmal Haider"

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
  • No Thumbnail Available
    Item
    Role of diacritics in understanding of urdu text and problems children face in reading
    (UMT Lahore, 2019) Muzmmal Haider
    Urdu is a language which follows Nastaliq script and in this script, consonants are easy to be identified and context is easily understood but the vowel sounds are represented by the help of diacritic marks, in short, they represent the vowel sounds, in Urdu language, known as “Zer”, “Zabar” and “Pesh”. Diacritic marks are optional and usually not written. Readers have to guess the meaning from the context and then they pronounce the words on the basis of their background knowledge of the language. They do play an important role in reading words with the same orthography, pronouncing the words accurately and in understanding the meaning as well as the context of the discussion in the text. The text without diacritic marks creates ambiguity for novice learners, children and students with disabilities. It becomes difficult to pronounce words without these marks because of the homographic phenomenon in the script of Urdu language. So, this study is an attempt to see the role of proximal and distal deixis in reading Urdu text or books produced mainly for children and beginners, and to investigate whether students find it difficult to read, pronounce accurately and to understand the meaning of the words without diacritic markers and what kind of problems children face in reading. To explore the effectiveness of the diacritics, an experiment was designed based on two groups, experimental group and closed group. The data collected, from these two groups on the basis of the texts with and without diacritics and errors, are recorded and compared with each other by using Error Analysis Model, to see the role of diacritics, as well as to find the problems that children face in reading homographic words. This study also includes interviews with government teachers to get valid results. This research shows that students find ambiguities wherever homographic words are written without diacritics and also gives a positive indication that students find the text easier to read when it is with diacritics.