Morphology and Literacy: Getting (and Keeping) Our Heads in the Game

Abstract

M y hope is that you as the forum reader have learned a little more about morphology and its contribution to literacy and that you will be in a good position to add this component to your language “game plan” when necessary. Specifically, after reading this clinical forum, we know a little more developmentally, linguistically, and clinically about morphological awareness and its relationship to literacy. What does that look like for our language intervention “playbook?” From a developmental perspective, we now realize that children demonstrate derivational morphological skills as early as first grade and use these skills to their advantage when spelling. These findings have great potential for us as we work with our students in this early literacy stage. For example, in collaborating with firstand second-grade teachers and working with their students, we can include simple derivations in both language and spelling instruction, encouraging morphological strategies early in the game. From a linguistic perspective, we now have evidence that morphophonological patterns affect how easily a child can produce a derived word. Thus, we can modify our choice of assessment and treatment targets accordingly and address syllabification and prosody as necessary. When working with older students who are dealing with more advanced morphological constructions, this knowledge will allow us to factor in syllable and stress awareness when teaching derivational word study strategies. In addition, we have seen that students who are speakers of African American English do not have different morphological awareness skills as a result of their dialect. Given that many of these students struggle with literacy for other reasons, perhaps we can use morphological instruction to their advantage in reading and spelling instruction. With older elementary students, we could be in a position to either address these treatment targets in the classroom or help teachers appreciate the importance of specific morphological instruction in the context of reading and spelling activities. From a clinical perspective, we have seen two intervention programs with strong morphological components that have led to changes in the literacy skills of students of different ages and with varying language/ learning difficulties. The two treatment studies addressed very different areas of morphology (e.g., spelling rules accompanying the addition of inflectional morphological endings and derivational word study in reading contexts), illustrating its diverse application in the intervention arena. We are fortunate to have these contributions to our evidence base as we look for new and better techniques to serve our students with language and learning disabilities. In sum, the forum authors have provided us with excellent current theory and research regarding morphology. As speechlanguage pathologists, inherent in our work with school-age children is the idea of building language skills and strategies to increase academic success. We know that our students are extremely challenged to learn these new skills and rule systems, so we need to spend our time wisely. Now we not only have philosophical support for the inclusion of morphology, but we also have more research support that this skill can make a difference across several literacy domains. Thinking ahead, more intervention studies will be important as any recommendation for new treatment practices is stronger when it is supported by evidence from successful clinical and classroom treatment research. These studies might include students with varying language difficulties or differences (e.g., those with language/ learning disabilities, those using dialectal variations) and could be conducted in a variety of settings (e.g., classroom, private practice).