Examining the independent contribution of prosodic sensitivity to word reading and spelling in early readers

This study was designed to examine the independent contribution of prosodic sensitivity—the rhythmic patterning of speech—to word reading and spelling in a sample of early readers. Ninety-three English-speaking children aged 5–6 years old (M = 69.28 months, SD = 3.67) were assessed for their prosodic sensitivity, vocabulary knowledge, phonological, and morphological awareness (predictor variables) along with their word reading and spelling (criterion variables). Bivariate (zero-order) correlation analyses revealed that prosodic sensitivity was significantly associated with all other variables in this study. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for individual differences in vocabulary, phonological, and morphological awareness, prosodic sensitivity was still able to explain unique variance in word reading, but was unable to make an independent contribution to spelling. The findings suggest that prosodic sensitivity gives added value to our understanding of children’s reading development.     

The role of morpheme recognition and morphological awareness in dyslexia

This paper begins by presenting theoretical arguments and empirical evidence to support the idea that morpheme analysis strategies play a part in word recognition in reading, and in dyslexia in particular. The results of two studies are presented which indicate that dyslexic adolescents use recognition of root morphemes as a compensatory strategy in reading of both single words and coherent text. Furthermore, the evidence is reviewed that the use of morpheme recognition as a strategy in reading to some extent depends on the linguistic awareness of morphemes in spoken language. Finally, results from a pilot study of the effects of morphological awareness training of dyslexic students are presented which suggest that it may be possible to improve the awareness of morphology independently of phoneme awareness, and that such a training may have positive effects on reading of coherent text and on the accurate spelling of morphologically complex words.     

The Effects of Morphological Awareness Training on the Reading and Spelling Skills of Young Dyslexics

This article reports data from a training study of morphological awareness involving 33 dyslexic students in grades 4 - 5. The dyslexic students received 36 lessons of morphological awareness training each of about a quarter of an hour. The training was oral and focused on semantic aspects of morphemes. During the training period, the experimental group gained significantly more than a similar group of untrained controls (n = 27) on one of three measures of morphological awareness. Both groups, however, made equal gains on measures of phonological awareness, phoneme discimination and picture naming. The experimental group progressed significantly more than the controls in reading comprehension and in spelling of morphologically complex words. The results of the study suggest that it is possible to develop dyslexic students' morphological awareness. Furthermore, awareness of morphemes, the smallest meaningful units of language, may support the development of meaning - oriented decoding strategies in reading and spelling.     

Exploring the Role of Bases and Suffixes When Reading Familiar and Unfamiliar Words: Evidence From French Young Readers

We examined whether French third- and fifth-grade children rely on morphemes when recognizing words and whether this reliance depends on word familiarity. We manipulated the presence of bases and suffixes in words and pseudowords to compare their contribution in a lexical decision task. Both bases and suffixes facilitated word reading accuracy and speed across all grades, even though the co-occurrence of a base and a suffix reduced the benefit associated to the presence of morphemes in third-grade children. Speed of pseudoword (i.e., unfamiliar word) reading was also influenced by base and suffix, and the combination of these units leaded to a high rate of false alarms. These results bring new evidence of morphological analysis in the reading of French familiar and unfamiliar words.     

Predicting early spelling: the contribution of children’s early literacy,private speech during spelling,behavioral regulation,and parental spelling support

The present study aimed to extend understanding of preschoolers’ early spelling using the Vygotskian (Mind in society: the development of higher psychological processes, Cambridge, Harvard University Press, 1978) paradigm of child development. We assessed the contribution of maternal spelling support in predicting children’s word spelling level beyond the contribution of three internal child measures: early literacy (phonological awareness and letter naming), private speech while spelling (self-directed talk), and behavioral regulation. Children’s private speech during spelling—their tool to regulate thinking—has not yet been studied in the early literacy context. Fifty Israeli preschoolers (M = 68.66 months) of middle-high SES were videotaped while spelling words with their mothers and while spelling these words independently. Children’s phonological awareness, letter naming, and behavioral regulation were assessed individually. Results showed that children’s internal measures (early literacy, private speech while spelling, and behavioral regulation) predicted children’s early spelling (63 % of the variance), and the external measure of maternal spelling support added uniquely (12 %), together explaining 75 % of the variance in children’s spelling level. Findings suggested that mothers adjust their spelling support to meet young children’s existing literacy skills but also coach children to strive toward higher spelling performance. Furthermore, the study illuminates the role of a new measure in the context of children’s early literacy—private speech during spelling.     

Unraveling Vocabulary Learning: Reader and Item-Level Predictors of Vocabulary Learning Within Comprehension Instruction for Fifth and Sixth Graders

This study explores reader, word, and learning activity characteristics related to vocabulary learning for 202 fifth and sixth graders (N = 118 and 84, respectively) learning 16 words. Three measures of word knowledge were used: multiple-choice definition knowledge, self-report of meaning knowledge, and production of morphologically related words. Results indicate that significant vocabulary learning occurred on each measure and that certain words were easier to learn for certain types of readers. Controlling for other predictors in the model, reader characteristics like morphological awareness, reading comprehension, and language background were significant predictors of vocabulary learning, but not word reading fluency. Also, word characteristics like morphological family size and opaqueness were significant predictors of word difficulty but not number of morphemes or frequency of the word or root-word or affix. Controlling for other predictors in the model, morphological learning activities supported vocabulary learning for all 3 aspects of word knowledge. Implications for theory and instruction are discussed.     

Morphological Processing Before and During Children’s Spelling

ABSTRACT

Our understanding of spelling development has largely been gleaned from analysis of children’s accuracy at spelling words under varying conditions and the nature of their errors. Here, we consider whether handwriting durations can inform us about the time course with which children use morphological information to produce accurate spellings of root morphemes. Six- to 7-year-old (n = 23) and 8- to 11-year-old (n = 25) children produced 28 target spellings in a spelling-to-dictation task. Target words were matched quadruplets of base, control, inflected, and derived words beginning with the same letters (e.g., rock, rocket, rocking, rocky). Both groups of children showed evidence of morphological processing as they prepared their spelling; writing onset latencies were shorter for two-morpheme words than control words. The findings are consistent with statistical learning theories of spelling development and theories of lexical quality that include a role of morphology.     

The Roles of Phonological and Syntactic Awareness in the Use of Plural Morphemes Among Children in French Immersion

English-speaking children in French immersion were tested to compare the spelling of the plural in English and French and to explore the factors involved in this development. Spelling of plural morphemes in French was more difficult than in English, suggesting that articulated features of a word are easier to spell than unarticulated ones. Very few French immersion children spelled correctly any of the French irregular plural form -aux. Hierarchical regression analyses showed that auditory analysis, but not syntactic awareness, shared significant portions of variance with measures of spelling. Overall, these findings suggest that phonological factors affect the spelling of morphemes and that skills in phonological awareness are uniquely associated with the development of the spelling of plural morphemes.     

The effects of learning to spell on children’s awareness of morphology

Because the spelling of many words in the English language (and in many other languages as well) depends on their morphemic structure, children have to have some knowledge about morphemes in order to learn to read and write. This raises the possibility that children gain much of their explicit knowledge about morphemes as a direct result of learning to read and to spell. We report two large-scale longitudinal studies that support the idea of this kind of causal connection. In the first study children’s success in spelling the inflexion at the end of regular past verbs predicted their performance in two morphological awareness tasks a year later. In the second study the children’s consistency in spelling morphemes predicted their ability to define new words on the basis of their morphemic structure. We conclude that the experience of learning to read and write does affect people’s knowledge of morphemes, and we argue that the causal relationship between morphemic knowledge and reading and writing is probably a two-way one.     

The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes

The English orthography represents both phonemes and morphemes, implying that sensitivity to each of these units could play a role in the acquisition of decoding skills. This study offers some new evidence about sensitivity to morphemes and the decoding skills of American children in grades three to six. It focuses on knowledge of derivational suffixes, which is examined with sentence completion and sentence acceptability tasks that manipulate the suffixes in real words (e.g., electric, electricity) and nonsense derived forms (e.g., froodly, froodness). Both written and spoken materials are considered over the course of two experiments in which the children also received various reading tests, as well as tests of phonological awareness, vocabulary and intelligence. The results indicate that knowledge of derivational suffixes increases with grade level, along with decoding ability and phoneme awareness. Path analyses further reveal that, although there is a consistent correlation between performance on the derivational suffix materials and phoneme awareness and decoding ability, performance on the derivational suffix materials makes an independent and increasing contribution to decoding ability throughout the higher elementary grades.     

Correlates of Chinese kindergarteners’ word reading and writing: the unique role of copying skills?

Ninety-four Mainland Chinese children in the second and third years of kindergarten (mean age = 65 months, SD = 6.94) were tested on Pinyin letter-name knowledge, invented Pinyin spelling, general copying skills of unfamiliar print (in Korean, Hebrew and Vietnamese, ultimately combined to create a pure copying factor), delayed copying of characters, nonverbal reasoning, vocabulary knowledge, speeded number-naming, syllable deletion, and morphological awareness in order to examine unique correlates of beginning Chinese word reading and writing, which were also tested. With age, kindergarten level, and nonverbal reasoning statistically controlled, morphological awareness, speeded naming, and Pinyin letter-name knowledge uniquely explained Chinese word reading, whereas both the pure copying factor and delayed copying independently explained 11 and 5 % variance in Chinese word writing, respectively. Findings suggest a somewhat independent trajectory of developing word reading and writing skills in very young Chinese children and highlight the potential importance of both print-dependent and print-independent copying skills for the development of early word writing skill in Chinese.     

The relation between morphological awareness and reading and spelling in Greek: a longitudinal study

The aim of this longitudinal study is to examine the contribution of morphological awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The target group (N = 404) consisted of children, aged 6–9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus. Because there are no standardized measures of morphological awareness for Greek Cypriot children, morphological awareness measures were developed and validated. A concurrent analysis of the first wave of data collection showed that morphological awareness made a unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The longitudinal analyses showed that morphological awareness predicted performance in reading eight months later, even after partialling out grade level, verbal intelligence, phonological awareness and initial scores in reading and spelling. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. It shows the long term and specific relation of morphological awareness with reading in Greek and establishes the plausibility of a causal link between morphological awareness and reading, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological awareness in Greek as well as a new measure of spelling skill.     

Unpacking the relation between morphological awareness and Chinese word reading: Levels of morphological awareness and vocabulary

The nature of the relations among morphological awareness, vocabulary and word reading in Chinese children remains relatively unclear. The present study aimed to distinguish between sublexical morphological awareness, referring to the ability to use the meaning cues of semantic radicals embedded in a compound character, and lexical level morphological awareness, defined as the ability to understand and manipulate single characters (i.e., morphemes) comprising Chinese compound words, on word reading. We also examined the role of vocabulary knowledge on the relation between morphological awareness and word reading at both the sublexical and lexical levels. A group of 172 Chinese second graders were administered measures of sublexical and lexical level morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, nonverbal ability, and word reading. Both sublexical and lexical levels of morphological awareness were moderately correlated with word reading. Vocabulary knowledge appeared to partially mediate the effect of sublexical morphological awareness on word reading, but it fully mediated the effect of lexical level morphological awareness on word reading. These results suggest that sublexical and lexical level morphological awareness play distinct roles in Chinese word reading; vocabulary knowledge is an important factor influencing the relation between morphological awareness and word reading in Chinese.     

Children’s spelling of base, inflected, and derived words: Links with morphological awareness

Two studies examined whether young children use their knowledge of the spelling of base words to spell inflected and derived forms. In Study 1, 5- to 9-year-olds wrote the correct letter (s or z) more often to represent the medial /z/ sound of words derived from base forms (e.g., noisy, from noise) than to represent the medial /z/ sound of one-morpheme control words (e.g., busy). In Study 2, 7- to 9-year-olds preserved the spelling of /z/ in pseudoword base forms when writing ostensibly related inflected and derived forms (e.g., kaise-kaisy). In both studies, the children’s tendency to preserve the spelling of /z/ between base and inflected/derived words was related to their performance on analogy tasks of morphological awareness. These findings add to the growing body of evidence that children recognise and represent links of meaning between words from relatively early in their writing experience, and that morphological awareness facilitates the spelling of morphologically complex words.     

Morphology and spelling in French students with dyslexia: the case of silent final letters

Spelling is a challenge for individuals with dyslexia. Phoneme-to-grapheme correspondence rules are highly inconsistent in French, which make them very difficult to master, in particular for dyslexics. One recurrent manifestation of this inconsistency is the presence of silent letters at the end of words. Many of these silent letters perform a morphological function. The current study examined whether students with dyslexia (aged between 10 and 15 years) benefit from the morphological status of silent final letters when spelling. We compared, their ability to spell words with silent final letters that are either morphologically justified (e.g., tricot, “knit,” where the final “t” is pronounced in morphologically related words such as tricoter, “to knit” and tricoteur “knitter”) or not morphologically justified (e.g., effort, “effort”) to that of a group of younger children matched for reading and spelling level. Results indicated that the dyslexic students’ spelling of silent final letters was impaired in comparison to the control group. Interestingly, morphological status helped the dyslexics improve the accuracy of their choice of final letters, contrary to the control group. This finding provides new evidence of morphological processing in dyslexia during spelling.     

Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading

Many new words middle school children encounter in books they read are relatively transparent derived forms whose meanings might be figured out through analysis of the word parts. Of importance is whether students can not only read and recognize the structure of morphologically complex words but also determine their meanings. This issue was addressed by investigating the relationship of third and fifth graders' awareness of the structure and meanings of derived words and the relationship of these forms of morphological awareness to word reading and reading comprehension. The results showed that awareness of structure was significantly related to the ability to define morphologically complex words; some aspects were also significantly related to the reading of derived words. The three morphology tasks accounted for significant variance in reading comprehension at both grade levels, but the contribution was stronger for the fifth than the third grade. It may be educationally noteworthy that morphological analysis contributed significantly to reading comprehension for the third graders because they are presumably just beginning to learn to read and understand morphologically complex words.     

Introduction to This Special Issue: The Role of Morphology in Learning to Read

Reading involves the decoding of written forms into language forms that represent phonological, morphological, and word level units. Thus, orthographies convey not only phonological but also morphological information-the word roots, syntactic inflections, and derivational relations that constitute the minimal semantic and grammatical units of a language. There are many psycholinguistic issues brought to light by the facts about morphology. However, the central one has focused on decomposition-whether and how language users, including readers, decompose morphologically complex words into their constituent morphemes.     

Reading and spelling difficulties in high school students: Causes and consequences

Basic skills in reading and spelling and supporting metalinguistic abilities were assessed in ninth and tenth grade students in two school settings. Students attending a private high school for the learning disabled comprised one group and the other comprised low to middle range students from a public high school. Both the LD students and the regular high school students displayed deficiencies in spelling and in decoding, a factor in reading difficulty that is commonly supposed to dwindle in importance after the elementary school years. Treating the overlapping groups as a single sample, multiple regression analysis was used to investigate the contribution of nonword decoding skill and phonological and morphological awareness to spelling ability. The analysis revealed that decoding was the major component, predicting about half of the variance in spelling. The effect of phonological awareness was largely hidden by its high correlation with decoding, but was a significant predictor of spelling in its own right. Morphological awareness predicted spelling skill when the words to be spelled were morphologically complex. An additional study showed that differences in decoding and spelling ability were associated with differences in comprehension after controlling for reading experience and vocabulary. Even among experienced readers individual differences in comprehension of text reflect efficiency of phonological processing at the word level.     

Examining Word Factors and Child Factors for Acquisition of Conditional Sound-Spelling Consistencies: A Longitudinal Study

It has been suggested that children acquire spelling by picking up conditional sound-spelling consistencies. To examine this hypothesis, we investigated how variation in word characteristics (words that vary systematically in terms of phoneme-grapheme correspondences) and child factors (individual differences in the ability to extract phonological, morphological, and orthographic information) simultaneously relates to spelling accuracy. A total of 143 Korean-speaking children were assessed on spelling 4 times from prekindergarten to kindergarten. Words in the spelling task systematically varied in orthographic transparency stemming from phonological shifts. At Time 1 they were also assessed on emergent literacy or linguistic awareness skills (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness, letter-name knowledge). Explanatory item response model revealed that (a) growth trajectories of spelling differed as a function of orthographic transparency, and (b) the effect of emergent literacy skills on words of varying transparency differed as a function of children’s emergent literacy skill levels and time.