Journal of Multilingual and Multicultural Development
Editor and Book Reviews Editor: John Edwards (St Francis Xavier University, Canada)
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Volume: 17 Number: 6 Page: 415–426
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Druze Minority Students Learning Hebrew in Israel: The Relationship of Attitudes, Cultural Background, and Interest of Material to Reading Com prehension in a Second Language
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Salim Abu-Rabia
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This study investigated Israeli-Druze students reading comprehension in Hebrew a second language as related to their attitudes and cultural background and the interest of the material. The Druze are unique
in Israel in being a cultural and linguistic Arab minority, but they are highly identified with the Israeli-Jewish destiny. Seventy-six Druze students participated in the study. They were administered attitude
questionnaires, individual interest questionnaires, Arab and Jewish cultural stories and ten multiple-choice comprehension questions about each story. The results indicated strong positive attitudes towards
learning Hebrew and towards Israeli society. However, the subjects revealed higher positive interest in reading the culturally Arab stories than the culturally Jewish stories, and their reading comprehension
scores accorded with their preference. The conclusion is that cultural familiarity with text and readers individual interest in text are related and essential variables in second-language learning. Thus,
interest in reading is text-based, a fact that should be considered minority education. In the case of the Druze minority in Israel, measures beyond self-reported questionnaires are needed to validate the
contradictions between their feelings and attitudes and their reading and interest scores.
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