A promising new tool for literacy instruction: The morphological matrix.

Melvin M R Ng,Peter N Bowers,Jeffrey S Bowers

doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0262260

Melvin M R Ng, Peter N Bowers + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0262260

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Journal: PloS one	Publication Date: Jan 19, 2022
Citations: 4	License type: CC BY 4.0

Affiliation: Chinese University of Hong Kong, University of Bristol

Abstract

There is growing interest in the role that morphological knowledge plays in literacy acquisition, but there is no research directly comparing the efficacy of different forms of morphological instruction. Here we compare two methods of teaching English morphology in the context of a memory experiment when words were organized by affix during study (e.g., a list of words was presented that all share an affix, such as <doing>, <going>, <talking>, <walking>, etc.) or by base during study (e.g., a list of words was presented that all share a base, such as <doing>, <done>, <redo>, <undo>). We show that memory for morphologically complex words is better in both conditions compared to a control condition that does not highlight the morphological composition of words, and most importantly, show that studying words in a base-centric format improves memory further still. We argue that the morphological matrix that organizes words around a common base may provide an important new tool for literacy instruction.

Highlights

Morphemes constitute the smallest units of meaning in an oral or written language, and in the case of English, include bases (e.g., ) that carry the main kernel of meaning in a word, and affixes that modify the meaning of the base (e.g., )
There is growing interest in the role that morphological knowledge plays in literacy acquisition in English
English is a morphophonemic language with an orthographic system that evolved to represent both phonology and morphology

Summary

Introduction

Morphemes constitute the smallest units of meaning in an oral or written language, and in the case of English, include bases (e.g., ) that carry the main kernel of meaning in a word, and affixes (e.g. the prefix or the suffix ) that modify the meaning of the base (e.g., ). The linguistic analysis of the English writing system shows why morphology (and morphological matrices) might be relevant to literacy instruction, and memory research provides some theoretical motivation for emphasizing the meaningful organization of words.

Results

Conclusion