Abstract
Morpheme-based training programs to improve literacy skills are widely used with older children in the morphologically complex German language. This study investigated whether (1) morphological training is effective early in development (Grade 2) and (2) effects can be attributed to advanced morphological processing. Fifty-two German-speaking second-graders received an eight-week morpheme-based training, while an age-matched control group (n = 41) attended regular language classes. We observed training effects for spelling and reading morphologically complex words, whereas performance on standardized reading tests and a morphological awareness task improved similarly across groups. In a masked priming task assessing implicit word segmentation, response times for lexical decisions decreased more strongly in the intervention than the control group, but there was no clear training impact on the pattern of morphological priming. Thus, while written language processing improved, it is unclear whether these effects can be attributed to morphological processing or unspecific gains in orthographic knowledge.
Highlights
This study aimed to investigate to what extent young German-speaking children can benefit from a morpheme-based spelling intervention
We wanted to examine whether any gains in spelling proficiency could be directly related to improvements in morphological abilities or are due to an increase in orthographic knowledge
Morphological and orthographic stems improved over time, morphological: F(1,84) = 41.98, p < .001, ηp2 = .333; orthographic: F(1,84) = 37.85, p < .001, ηp2 = .311, but a group x time interaction was only observed for morphological stems, F(1,84) = 8.97, p = .004, ηp2 = .096, and not orthographic stems, F(1,84) = 0.41, p = .526, ηp2 =
Summary
This study aimed to investigate to what extent young German-speaking children can benefit from a morpheme-based spelling intervention. We wanted to examine whether any gains in spelling (and reading) proficiency could be directly related to improvements in morphological abilities or are due to an increase in orthographic knowledge. Morpheme-based instruction and intervention were aimed at teaching children how to identify the semantic building blocks within morphologically complex words (morphemes). The verb “played” consists of the stem morpheme (“play”) and a grammatical morpheme marking past tense (“-ed”). There is increasing interest in morpheme-based instruction and intervention in children’s reading acquisition (e.g., Bowers & Bowers, 2018; Bowers & Kirby, 2010), and a number of arguments in favor of such approaches within the Indo-European language context have been proposed
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