The longitudinal effect of morphological awareness on higher-order literacy skills among college L2 learners

Abstract

The utilities of morphological awareness in first language (L1) literacy acquisition have been well documented. College second language (L2) learners with the need to enhance higher-level language and literacy competencies are of particular interest to literacy research. Therefore, this study reports on a longitudinal study that examines the multilayered relationship between morphological awareness and higher-order literacy skills (reading comprehension and written composition) among college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) learners. One hundred and twenty-one freshman students participated in this study. They finished reading vocabulary and four morphological awareness measurements including morpheme-form knowledge, morpheme-meaning knowledge, morpheme recognition ability and morpheme discrimination ability at the beginning of their college study. Moreover, they were required to complete reading and writing assessments at two additional time points over one academic year. Drawing upon multivariate analyses, the results showed that initial morphological awareness predicted later reading comprehension ability over the course of one academic year after controlling for reading vocabulary knowledge and the autoregressive effect. Although morphological awareness did not have a significant longitudinal effect on written composition after reading vocabulary knowledge and the autoregressive effect were accounted for, the results did exhibit the increasing robustness of the relationship between morphological awareness and written composition across time. In addition, the results verified the significant and longitudinal effect of explicit morphological knowledge (morpheme-form and morpheme-meaning knowledge) on higher-order literacy skills. The current study substantiated that morphological awareness had positive longitudinal relationships with higher-order literacy skills among EFL students. Implications centered on the utilities of morphological awareness components in higher-order literacy acquisition, the operationalization of written composition, and the uniqueness of second/foreign language literacy acquisition.