Investigating Arabic diglossia in Bedouin society: a case study of high school biology students’ use of adapted primary literature.

The specialised language of biology presents substantial challenges for Arab Bedouin students navigating the gap between spoken Arabic and formal literary Arabic. This diglossic divide can hinder reading comprehension, delay scientific understanding, and weaken student confidence when engaging with scientific texts. This qualitative study investigates the linguistic barriers faced by 12th-grade Bedouin high school students while reading an Adapted Primary Literature article in biology. Using task-based, semi-structured interviews, the research explores how students living in a diglossic context interpret and cope with the linguistic demands of reading scientific texts in Literary Arabic. Participants included thirteen female students from Bedouin villages in the Negev region of Israel. The findings reveal two central linguistic barriers: semantic challenges that disrupted reading comprehension and lexical limitations that affected written expression. Students also reported cognitive overload due to complex vocabulary and sentence structures. A key coping strategy identified was language style-shifting, translating literary Arabic phrases into more familiar spoken Arabic. The study underscores how diglossia impacts scientific literacy and highlights the pedagogical value of adapted scientific articles in supporting comprehension. These findings offer actionable insights for educators aiming to bridge linguistic gaps for Arabic-speaking students in science education, particularly those from marginalised communities.