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International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics

2015; 1(2): 42-48


Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

Arabic ESL Orthographic Errors in English:


Production Difficulty in Comparison to Korean
ESL Performance
Robert J. Deacon
University of Florida English Language Institute, Gainesville, U.S.A
Email: rdeacon.joel@gmail.com, yoreveritas@ufl.edu
Abstract Arabic speakers from Saudi Arabia appear to
produce more errors with English orthography than other
ESL students who also use non-Romanized scripts (Dunlap
2012). This study not only confirmed this but showed that
this difference continues across proficiency levels by
comparing the number of errors made by Arabic and
Korean students of both high and low proficiency groups. It
shows that Arabic students statistically make more errors
than the Korean group and that high level Arabic students
did not perform significantly better than low level Arabic
students. These results in conjunction with other studies
suggest that Arabic students continue to struggle with
orthographic lexical competence, affecting both reading and
writing. A possible explanation for this is that the short
vowels in Arabic are generally not present in writing and
that this affects L2 orthographic processing (Ryan & Meara
1991; Hayes-Harb 2006; Saigh & Schmitt 2012). It is,
however, suggested here that this problem results from
more general educational deficiencies in reading and writing
in the L1, but future research is needed to confirm this.

regarding second language acquisition difficulties


specific to reading and writing unanswered.
It is known, however, that orthographic competence is
directly associated with reading time, comprehension,
and writing accuracy (cf. Fender, 2008; Saigh & Schmitt,
2012). Nassaji (2003) found that better readers utilize
orthographic cues (spellings/orthographic shape) over
phonological decoding processes. This and other research
(Perfetti, 1992; 1997; Perfetti & Hart, 2001) suggest that
a single orthographic lexicon serves both English word
recognition and spelling production (Fender, 2008: p.
22). If this is true, it means that orthographic
representation deficiencies should cause problems for
both written comprehension and production, two issues
often observed with Arabic ESL students.
It has been discussed (Thompson-Panos & ThomasRuzic, 1983) and found (Ryan & Meara, 1991; HayesHarb, 2006; Dunlap, 2012 among others) that Arabic
English Language Learners (AESLs) often perform more
poorly than other ESL groups on various orthographic
tasks. The most common type of spelling error made by
AESLs are vowel segment errors (cf. Dunlap, 2012). To
explain this, Thompson-Panos and Thomas-Ruzic (1983)
suggest a link between the standard omission of vowels
in Arabic writing and the omission of vowels by AESLs
when spelling words in English. Hayes-Harb also
concludes that Arabic speakers transfer visual word
processing strategies concerning the allotment of
attention to vowel and consonant letters from Arabic to
reading English (2006: p. 335). Saigh & Schmitt refer to
the effect as vowel blindness (2012: p. 24). In essence,
they attribute Arabic spelling difficulties to this specific
orthographic transfer effect. However, before the proper
cause(s) can be confirmed and or further described, it is
still unclear from these other studies if AESLs produce
more orthographic errors than a comparable ESL group
on academic writing tasks where word choice is relatively
free. In other words, does the cause(s) of AESL difficulty
(an orthographic transfer effect or something else),
clearly affect production in addition to recognition as
would be expected under the single orthographic
lexicon hypothesis? If so, do other writing skills
positively correlate with better spelling abilities and thus

Index Terms Orthography, Acquisition, Transfer effects,


Spelling errors, Arabic, Korean

I. INTRODUCTION
How multiple orthographic systems are negotiated in
multilingual individuals is not well enough understood
(cf. Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2010). It is known, however,
that the acquisition of a languages phonemic system,
vocabulary, and phrase structure does not directly
correlate with reading and writing competence in that
same language (Fender, 2008). The cause and effect
relationship between proficient listening and speaking
abilities and reading and writing abilities and how
multiple language systems interact on reading and writing
tasks is still largely unclear, leaving many questions
Received April 11, 2015;

Accepted May 13, 2015.

2015 Khate Sefid Press

35

International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

suggest that this orthographic difficulty is similar to other


AESL writing problems?

While the spelling test showed that AESLs overall


performed significantly worse than the non-Arabic group,
the TOEFL test scores revealed that listening
comprehension between the two groups was equal (the
AESLs performed better but this difference was not
significant) while reading comprehension was not,
significantly lower for the AESLs. The non-Arabic ESL
group performed significantly better with the withinword, syllable juncture, and derivational spellings. The
AESLs had most difficulty with derivational and syllable
juncture error types.
Dunlaps (2012) research also tested if AESLs make
more errors than other ESL groups as well as the effects
of intervention methods on solving Arabic orthographic
issues (not discussed here). She used (88) ESL
participants: (23) intermediate, (34) intermediateadvanced, (31) advanced. The L1 backgrounds were
Arabic, Chinese, Korean, and Spanish. These students
recorded an oral response to a computer prompted
question. The students were then asked to provide a
transcription for their recordings. This was the source for
orthographic errors. While Arabic students showed
improvement from intermediate to advanced, comparably
they performed more poorly than all the other groups on
this task.

II. LITERATURE REVIEW


Ryan & Meara (1991) and Hayes-Harb (2006) tested if
the omission of vowels in Arabic had a transfer effect on
AESL English spelling performance by contrasting their
results with non-AESL ESL groups and native English
speakers. In Ryan and Meara (1991) participants formed
three groups: Arabic speakers (10), non-Arabic speakers
(10), and native English speakers (10). Participants saw a
relatively frequent English word (20 per million) flash on
a screen for 1 second, followed by a 2 second blank
screen and then the same word again. This word may
have contained a missing vowel or have been spelled
correctly. The participants judged if two words were the
same by pressing a yes or no button. The study found that
AESLs performed worse than native English speakers
and other ESL groups at detecting missing vowels.
In Hayes-Harb (2006) participants were instructed to
complete a task nearly identical to that described in Ryan
and Meara except that this task contained a deleted
consonant condition and the words used had a greater
frequency rate (above 100 per million). The findings
show that response times for the Arabic group were
significantly slower than the other two groups, but the
response time between deleted consonants and vowels
was very similar. As for accuracy rates, among the three
groups (AESLs, non-AESLS and native English
speakers) and two conditions, a null effect was mainly
found. The Arabic groups performance was only
significantly worse than the native English group.
In another study, Fender (2008) aimed to find the
relationship between AESL spelling knowledge of word
types and reading and listening comprehension skills in
contrast to a group of other ESL participants. The study
used (37) ESL participants: (16) intermediate Arabic and
(21) non-Arabic, intermediate ESL students from China,
Japan and Korea. The participants took the listening and
reading subsections of the paper based TOEFL test to rate
their listening and reading level. Spelling tests were then
created to evaluate the accuracy between the AESL group
and the non-Arabic ESL group across three word
conditions: within word, syllable-juncture, and
derivational spelling stages. The within word condition
(22 items) consisted of single syllable words containing
long and short vowels. The syllable juncture condition
(18 items) consisted of polysyllabic words with geminate
consonants, long vowels with open syllables, and short
vowels with closed syllables. The derivational condition
(18 items) used polysyllabic words with derivational
affixes. The words selected for the test were deemed to
be common words and familiar to the participants. The
results of the spelling tests were then compared with
TOEFL listening and reading scores.

A. Remaining Questions
The studies performed by Ryan & Meara (1991) and
Hayes-Harb (2006) only tested recognition. On the other
hand, while Fender (2008) and Dunlap (2012) recorded
written errors by AESLs in contrast to non-AESL ESL
groups, their experiments directly controlled which words
the participants had to spell. While the words selected for
the test in Fender (2008) were deemed to be common
words and familiar to the participants, the participants
were not producing words under normal writing
conditions. Participants were instructed to write down
each word after hearing it spoken in isolation and in the
context of a sentence by the experimenter. Dunlaps
(2012) study allowed participants to choose which words
would be spelled, but in that study, the participants were
led to believe that the task was oral, meaning words were
not necessarily chosen with a written form in mind. In
the experiment, AESL participants had to write sentences
they had previously recorded. In this way they were
forced to spell words regardless if they thought they
knew how to spell them.
Additionally Ryan & Meara (1991), Hayes-Harb
(2006), and Fender (2008), compared AESLs to a nonAESL group consisting of ESL learners from a variety of
other languages, many of which use some form of the
Roman alphabet to write their L1, likely giving those
students an advantage.
Dunlap (2012) also compared AESLs with a variety of
other ESL learners, but these groups were kept separate,
avoiding this potential problem. While the findings show
43

International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

that AESLs make significantly more spelling errors than


other groups coming from non-Roman alphabetic
languages (Korean and Chinese groups)1 the participants,
as previously discussed, were forced to write what they
had spoken earlier. Dunlap suggests one possible reason
Arabic students made more spelling errors is that they
were attempting more difficult vocabulary during the
recorded speaking activities (2012: p. 35). These results,
thus, also do not clearly demonstrate how AESLs
compare with another non-Roman alphabetic group under
more normal academic writing circumstances where word
choice may be filtered differently.
It is also unclear from other studies how AESL
spelling errors compare with another homogenous L1
group across proficiency levels. That is, AESLs were not
categorized and compared to other ESL groups of the
same writing proficiency level in the aforementioned
cited studies. No proficiency level is given for the nonAESL group in Ryan & Meara (1991). Hayes-Harb
(2006) and Fender (2008) both report that their AESL
groups and non-AESL groups were at the intermediate
level, but this level was not specifically determined by
writing skill. In Hayes-Harb (2006) proficiency was
determined by enrollment in a U.S public university ESL
class. Likewise in Fender (2008) proficiency was
determined by enrollment in the same EAP program. In
Dunlaps (2012) study proficiency levels were
determined by the Michigan Test of English Language
Placement which tests skills in grammar, vocabulary,
reading, listening, and writing, meaning other skills could
have skewed the results. Also none of the previous cited
studies considered motivation as a factor. This led to the
following research questions:
1.

2.
3.

if AESLs at a higher proficiency improve in order to


answer the three research questions given in the previous
section.
It was unknown if the results would change if AESLs
freely spelled words on a natural ESL task where
performing well was clearly advantageous for them. This
study used ESL student compositions, so all target forms
were chosen by the student on a task where spelling was
important (a poor writing performance meant failure to
proceed to the next level at their institution). This type of
task
also
eliminated
much
of
the
word
frequency/familiarity problems discussed in previous
studies. The only potential influencing factor was the
writing prompts that students had to choose from.
Forty handwritten level assessment compositions from
the English Language Institute at the University of
Florida were examined. Twenty compositions were
written by adult (18 years or older) native Korean
speakers from South Korea (10 male, 10 female) and
twenty by adult native Arabic speakers from Saudi
Arabia (15 male, 5 female).
These compositions were used independently of this
study for student level placement for the following term.
Students were assumed to be motivated to perform well
to avoid failure, to stay with peers and to not pay for the
same class twice. Students were given 45 minutes to
write about a given a prompt. Based upon structural (e.g.
student uses a variety of sentence types with correct
punctuation), grammatical (subject verb agreement etc),
and fluency (e.g. vocabulary usage: student is able to
discuss/address the topic thoroughly) factors, each
assessment was rated separately by two instructors from
the English Language Institute and given one of six
possible levels 10, 20, 30, 40, 50 and 60. If there was a
disagreement on the rating, an additional rater was called
to do another independent evaluation until a consensus
was reached. These results are in Tables I and II.

Do AESLs produce more errors than another


homogenous ESL group who also does not use a
Roman alphabet to write the L1 on an important
writing task?
Does proficiency level influence the comparison
between ESL groups?
Do high level AESLs perform significantly better
than low level AESLs?

TABLE 1. ARABIC ESL RATINGS


Rating Level
60
50
40
30
20
10

III. PRESENT STUDY


This study specifically investigates spelling production
by AESLs from only Saudi Arabia in contrast to a control
group consisting of Korean ESL students (KESLs) from
South Korea. It also places participants into proficiency
levels to see if production and proficiency influence the
expected result (i.e. AESLs make more errors) and to see

Number
0
6
2
10
2
0

TABLE 2. KOREAN ESL RATINGS


Rating Level
60
50
40
30
20
10

The use of pinyan could favor the Chinese group over the Arabic one
with regards to Roman script familiarity. However, this detail is not
crucial to the discussion here given that the Korean group also did
better.

44

Number
1
8
3
6
2
0

International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

Compositions for this study were categorized


according to the level of their original assessment as
given in Tables I and II. All compositions had been rated
before orthographic errors were tallied. These assessment
ratings were then used to divide the groups into two
levels: Levels 20 and 30 composed the low Level group
and 40, 50, and 60 the high level group.2 This was done
simply because levels 40-60 formed the upper half of the
rating system while 10-30 formed the lower half. 3 The
KESLs had 12 high level assessments while the AESLs
had 8 high level assessments and the AESLs had 12 low
Level assessments while the KESLs had 8.

AESLs. In the case of homophones, producing the wrong


orthographic form could be attributed to a gap in lexical
knowledge or the activation of the wrong orthographic
form via the same phonological trigger, which would not
necessarily indicate that the student lacked the correct
orthographic representation. Both lexical and function
words were counted. No investigation of the frequency of
lexical versus functional word errors was examined.
Repeated errors of the same form were counted. Despite
there being many repeated errors of the same form, often
assessments showed several error types of the same target
along with correct attempts (i.e. 1st attempt: atracted, 2nd
attempt: attracted; 1st attempt: people, 2nd attempt:
peopl).

Violations were counted in two ways: words form


errors where each word was either correct or incorrect
over the first 150 words of each assessment and
segmental type violations where each incorrect letter was
counted over the entire assessment. Since the data was
organized categorically, a Chi-square test of
independence was used to compare the total word form
errors of both groups (AESLs to KESLs) and the total
word form errors by level (Arabic low level to Korean
low level, Arabic high level to Korean high level, Arabic
low level to Arabic high level, and Korean low level to
Korean high level).
In the first condition, a 150 word benchmark was
chosen because it provided enough data per assessment to
see if AESLs freely produced more errors than KESLs
(the number of words written between assessments
naturally varied). This number allowed enough
assessments to be used (some assessments not reported in
this study were not used because they contained less than
150 words). Also by viewing words as either correct or
incorrect, this analysis reduced the possibility that a
difference resulted from one group choosing longer, more
advanced words and producing several violations per
word, overly skewing the count.
In both conditions errors were only counted if the
target word was misspelled. Novel derivations using real
and correctly spelled morphemes were not considered
errors (insanitiness). Cases where homophony likely
interfered were not considered errors (there vs. their).
Also in cases where it could be seen that the writer did
not possess the grammatical knowledge to differentiate
between two forms, the wrong word was not counted as
an error (me instead of my or vice-versa). The goal of this
study was not to examine grammatical or vocabulary
deficits/differences but rather to examine lexical
orthographic representations and spelling production with

IV. RESULTS
The results of this study show that both low and high
level AESLs in comparison to low and high KESLs make
significantly more orthographic errors in English on a
meaningful, academic writing task.
Individual Arabic scores for segment violations (total
errors), word errors (only first 150 words) and
corresponding proficiency levels are shown in Fig. 1.

Figure 1. Arabic scores all levels

AESLs averaged (8.55) errors on the word form


condition, SD (4.89), and (20) errors on the segment
condition, SD (13.38). Comparably, individual Korean
scores for segment violations, word errors and
corresponding proficiency levels are shown in Fig. 2.

There were no compositions rated at level 10.


Those rated as low AESLs wrote on average 259.166 words while the
low KESLs average was 259.25, nearly identical. Those rated as high
AESLs wrote on average 328.125 words while the high KESLs average
was 332.667, also very close. This suggests the high and low group
distinction made here captures a quantifiable performance difference
that is independent from the original rating parameters. The original
raters did not count words.
3

45

International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

After comparing groups by level, there was a


significant relationship between the low level AESLs and
KESLs and correctly spelled words, X2 (1, n=3000)=
45.63, p<.05, and high level AESLs and KESLs, X2 (1,
n=3000)= 33.63, p<.05. Both low and high level AESLs
were associated with more incorrectly spelled words and
fewer correctly spelled words.
B. Intra-Group Comparisons
In this analysis, low level AESLs were compared to
high level AESLs and low level KESLs to high level
KESLs to see if level significantly contributed to
correct/incorrect spelling production. Results are shown
in Table 5.

Figure 2. Korean scores all levels

KESLs averaged (2) errors on word form, SD (1.62),


and (4.25) on segment condition. Comparing Figures (1)
and (2), one can see that the AESLS made many more
errors than KESLs, and to show this difference
statistically word form errors (only first 150 words) were
compared with a Chi-square test, Table III.

TABLE 5. TOTAL WORD ERRORS WHOLE GROUP


Correct
Incorrect
Total

TABLE 3. TOTAL WORD ERRORS WHOLE GROUP


Correct
Incorrect
Total

Arabic
2829
171
3000

Korean
2960
40
3000

Total
5789
211
6000

Correct
Incorrect
Total

Low Arabic
1691
109
1800
Low Korean
1187
13
1200

High Arabic
1138
62
1200
High Korean
1773
27
1800

Total
2829
171
3000
Total
2960
40
3000

The results show that high level AESLs made fewer


errors than low level AESLs, but the difference was not
significant enough to reject the null hypothesis, X2 (1,
n=3000)= 1.06, p=.3036. Interestingly, high level KESLs
performed worse than the low level KESLs, but this
difference was also not significant, X2 (1, n=3000)= .95,
p=.33.

The results show that there was a significant


relationship between group and correctly spelled words,
X2 (1, n=6000)= 84.3, p<.05. The AESLs were associated
with more incorrectly spelled words and subsequently
fewer correctly spelled words.
A. Level Comparisons Between ESL Groups

V. DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION


High level AESLs averaged (7.75) errors on word
form, SD (4.2), and (16.75) on the segment condition, SD
(8.73). Low AESLS averaged (9) errors on word form,
SD (5.4), and (18.33) on the segment condition, SD
(11.91). High level KESLs averaged (2.25) errors on
word form, SD (1.65), and (4.92) on the segment
condition, SD (3.09). Low KESLS averaged (1.63) errors
on word form, SD (1.6), and (2.25) on the segment
condition, SD (1.83). To show this difference
statistically, word form errors by proficiency were
compared with a Chi-square test, Table IV.

The results from this study show that AESLs produce


significantly more word form errors than KESLs within
the same amount of time on a task that ought to be
important for them. Regardless of how the two groups
were compared: AESLs performed worse with spelling
production. In conjunction with previous studies, it is
now clearer that AESLs perform worse than other tested
ESL groups on both production and recognition spelling
tasks. Given the idea that a single orthographic lexicon
serves both comprehension and production, these results
align with the findings of Fender (2008) that AESLs
perform more poorly on reading and writing tasks in
comparison to other ESL students of equal listening and
speaking skills. AESLs did not, however, show
significant improvement in spelling from low to high
levels, suggesting better English writing skills and more
exposure to English do not alone necessitate better
spelling skills. This also suggests that the acquisition of
the English orthographic system is more problematic than

TABLE 4. TOTAL WORD ERRORS WHOLE GROUP


Correct
Incorrect
Total
Correct
Incorrect
Total

Low Arabic
1691
109
1800
High Arabic
1138
62
1200

Low Korean
1187
13
1200
High Korean
1773
27
1800

Total
2878
122
3000
Total
2911
89
3000

46

International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

the acquisition of other writing skills.4 It is also perhaps


surprising how well the KESLs performed and despite the
insignificant difference, that the low level KESLs
performed better than high level KESLs. This difference,
though, could simply be due to risk taking differences
with regards to word choice. The same could be thought
for the high AESLs, but given the large number of errors
made by low level AESLs and the fact every word within
the 150 word range could only account for one error, it
seems unlikely that using more advanced vocabulary
alone resulted in the high level AESLs not performing
better. As for the cause or causes of AESL orthographic
difficulty, it will be left to future research whether vowel
omissions in Arabic fully account for the range of
disparity seen in this study and others. It is, however,
suggested along the lines of Fender (2008) that
differences regarding L1 literacy experience (AESLs on
average receive less reading and writing instruction in
their L1) may be an overarching reason for this disparity.
Handwriting problems (Thompson-Panos & ThomasRuzic, 1983) and problems with consonant letters (as
seen in this study) suggest that a larger problem exists.
This may be in lieu or in conjunction with vowel
orthographic transfer problems.

beneficial (see Dunlap 2012). Of course there are AESLs


that do not have spelling difficulties. This also suggests
that the problem has less to do about any one feature of
the L1 and more to do with how much ESL students read
and write in the target language and perhaps also in their
L1 as suggested in Fender (2008).

A. Limitations
The exact ages of the participants in this study are
unknown as well as their individual educational
background (schools attended), including knowledge of
other languages. Also if sex has an effect, the AESLs
were not balanced. Motivation differences amongst
students could have also existed as paying for repeated
levels would have posed a greater problem for some
individuals. Anecdotally speaking, a vast majority of
students want to be placed in higher levels (including
AESLs), visiting office hours to question why they are
not in a higher level. Controlling these factors, however,
might be considered with future research.
B. Conclusion
This study shows that AESLs from Saudi Arabia make
more written spelling errors than KESLs from South
Korea as a whole group and by proficiency levels and
that a higher writing level did not significantly correlate
with fewer errors. This suggests that spelling abilities are
independent of other writing skills. The cause of this
difference is left for further research, but it is suggested
that cultural/educational aspects may play a large role in
establishing habits with regards to seemingly
inconsequential things like spelling. Curriculum and
activities that encourage spelling awareness and force
AESLs to confront common error patterns seem
4

Another reason for this could be that AESLs overall view spelling as
less important.

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International Journal of Language and Applied Linguistics


2015; 1(2): 42-48
Published online June 15, 2015 (http://www.ijlal.ir)
ISSN: 2383-0514 (Online)
2015 Khate Sefid Press

vowels: Arabic speakers reading English words. Reading in a


foreign language, 7, 531-531.
Thompson-Panos, K., & M. Thomas-Ruzic. (1983). The
least you should know about Arabic: Implications for the ESL
writing instructor. TESOL Quarterly, 17, 609623.

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Saiegh-Haddad, E. & E. Geva. (2010). Acquiring reading
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Saigh, K., & N. Schmitt. (2012). Difficulties with
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AUTHOR
Robert J. Deacon was born and raised in Florida. He received a
BA in English with a minor in psychology from the University
of North Florida, Jacksonville Florida in 2005. He received a
MA in linguistics in 2011 and a Ph.D. in linguistics in 2014
from the University of Florida, Gainesville Florida. He teaches
English at the English language Institute at the University of
Florida and has taught Language and Human Perspective (LIN
2000) and Introduction to Linguistics (LIN 3010) for the UF
Linguistics Department. His research interests include MorphoSyntax, Syntax, TESL, orthography and Language Acquisition,
Germanic Linguistics, and East Asian Linguistics. Within
Morpho-syntax, he is particularly interested in specifying the
basic features of spatial concepts and describing how these
features are organized into complex spatial concepts. Dr.
Deacon is a founding member of the Florida Linguistics
Association, 2010-Present, and has been a member of several
other linguistic organizations: American Council on Teaching
Foreign Languages, 2013-2014, Linguistics Society of America,
2012-2013, Teaching English as a Second Official Language
International Association. 2012-2013.

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