Morphological Awareness Skills Research Articles

Clinical Considerations From Researcher-Created Morphological Awareness Assessments.

Morphological awareness develops throughout formal schooling and is positively related to later reading abilities. However, there are limited standardized measures available for speech-language pathologists (SLPs) to use when assessing morphological awareness in clinical practice. The purpose of this tutorial is to guide clinicians in choosing between researcher-created measures of morphological awareness to use with their school-aged students. We first summarize previous morphological awareness assessment research and outline important clinical considerations when choosing a morphological awareness assessment for students in early elementary grades and beyond. Second, we highlight item characteristics regarding morpheme type, frequency, shift transparency, and imageability for students in early elementary versus later grades. Third, we discuss the type of tasks (i.e., production, decomposition, and judgment) and administration modes (i.e., oral or written and static or dynamic) available to clinicians assessing the morphological awareness skills of school-aged students. Throughout the tutorial, we reference a hypothetical case study to illustrate how SLPs might apply these suggestions and link morphological awareness assessment to treatment recommendations. This tutorial highlights the importance of including morphological awareness assessments in clinical practice to support oral and written language development. We provide practical guidelines to help SLPs evaluate and choose appropriate morphological awareness assessments for their school-aged students as part of their comprehensive language evaluations and to support intervention planning. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.24545470.

Meta-linguistic awareness skills in Chinese-speaking children with hyperlexia: A single-case study.

The aim of the study is to examine the meta-linguistic awareness skills contributing to reading aloud in a Chinese-speaking child with hyperlexia. Case study approach was used with one case of hyperlexia (TYH) and two control groups: typically developing (TD) children matched for chronological age (CA) and TD children matched for mental ability (MA). A battery of phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness skill tests were administered. Results from the modified t-test found that the hyperlexic child did not demonstrate advanced meta-linguistic awareness skills in comparison with the two control groups. On the contrary, TYH's morphological awareness skills were even lower than the CA control group. Also, in the orthographic awareness test, TYH demonstrated weaker knowledge of character structure and components than the two control groups although his ability in the recognition of real words is intact. In addition, the predictability of orthographic awareness skill was comparable to the CA group with predicted score showed no difference to his obtained score, while TYH achieved a significantly higher reading score than what his morphological awareness skills should predict with reference to TD children of similar age; as well as what his phonological awareness skill predict with reference to the MA group. The findings suggest that TYH can achieve advanced reading ability with comparable phonological and orthographic awareness skill, despite his weakness in morphological awareness. It is concluded that the hyperlexic reading in Chinese might be achieved through the direct mapping between the whole character and the sound.

Effects of Affix Type and Base Word Transparency on Students' Performance on Different Morphological Awareness Measures

We examined whether affix type and base word transparency explained variation in third- through sixth-grade students' performance on a number of morphological awareness tasks. Third- through sixth-grade students (n > 500 at each grade) completed morphological awareness tasks from the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling, which represent the ways individuals may use their morphological awareness to support reading and spelling. Explanatory item response models were used to understand the role of affix type and base word transparency on students' performance on six morphological awareness tasks. For all grades, 73%-83% of variance in students' performance was due to differences across individual items. Furthermore, when task effects, affix type, and base word transparency were included simultaneously in the model, affix type was not a significant predictor; there was a significant effect of base word transparency and task. Specifically, the probability of a correct response was greater on task items in which inflected or derived words were transparent with their base word (e.g., friend > friendly) compared to items in which there was a shift in both the phonological and orthographic aspects of the base word (e.g., attend > attention). These findings emphasize the importance of considering base word transparency when assessing students' morphological awareness skills with less emphasis on affix type, at least for third- through sixth-grade students. Our results also point to the importance of administering a variety of morphological awareness tasks to fully capture an individual's morphological awareness skills. Collectively, researchers and practitioners should ensure assessment items on multiple measures of morphological awareness vary in their base word transparency to potentially capture a range of student performances.

Morphological awareness in developmental dyslexia: Playing with nonwords in a morphologically rich language.

Although phonological deficits are unanimously recognized as one of the key manifestations of developmental dyslexia, a growing body of research has reported impairments in morphological abilities. Our study aimed at casting further light on this domain by investigating the morphological awareness skills of 21 children with dyslexia (mean age 9.10 years old) and 24 children with typical development (mean age 10.3 years old). All children were monolingual speakers of Italian, which is a morphologically rich language characterized by complex inflectional and derivational paradigms. We developed an experimental protocol inspired by Berko's Wug test and composed of 11 tasks addressing inflectional and derivational processes. Participants were asked to manipulate nonwords of various lexical categories, modeled after the phonotactic structure of Italian, and manipulation involved both word formation and base retrieval. Conditions of the experiments were based on verb conjugation classes differing in frequency, productivity, regularity, and formal transparency. Results confirmed that morphological skills are impaired in dyslexic children, who performed significantly more poorly than their age-matched peers in all tasks. Children with dyslexia were especially challenged by tasks and conditions requiring advanced morphological awareness skills, such as the retrieval of infinitives of infrequent and irregular conjugation classes. The educational and clinical implications of these findings are discussed.

Online Assessment of Morphological Awareness in Grades 2–4: Its Development and Relation to Reading Comprehension

The aims of the study are to construct an online instrument to assess different aspects of morphological awareness and to examine its development and its relation to reading comprehension in grades 2–4 in Hungarian children. Altogether, 4134 students were tested. The online test evaluated inflectional, derivational, and compound morphological skills with five subtests. The instrument proved to be reliable. CFA examinations revealed that the five subtests were empirically distinguishable dimensions. Inflectional, derivational, and compound morphology as the three main dimensions of morphological awareness were also empirically supported by our data. Morphological awareness skills improved significantly and developed in parallel with reading skills throughout grades 2–4. The increase in the development of morphological awareness from grade 2 to grade 3 tends to be faster than the growth between grade 3 and 4. Positive moderate correlations were found between morphological skills and reading comprehension and the relationships seem to be stable throughout the three grades. The most significant predictor of reading comprehension is the Affix Identification for Nonwords subtest. Our study showed that morphological awareness could be assessed efficiently through online media and drew attention to the importance of morphological awareness in the development of reading comprehension and linguistic intelligence.

English Morphological Awareness of EFL University Students during Blended Learning Implementation

This study is aimed to investigate the English morphological awareness of EFL university students during blended learning due to the covid-19 pandemic. A mixed-method was employed and 17 students were willing to be participants. This study applied an online test to obtain quantitative data and an online open-ended questionnaire to gain qualitative data. The results demonstrated that (1) 10 students (58.8%) were categorized as moderate in English morphological awareness skills, 5 students (29.4%) were perceived high criteria and only 2 students (11.8%) were ranked low category. (2) 17 students expressed their opinion on the English learning experience during blended learning implementation due to the covid-19 pandemic which has a connection to morphological awareness. Their views are generally summarized as follows; they admitted that they actively self-studied at home, preferred offline learning to online learning, frequently practiced English at home, seldom read English books and most of them made extensive use of social media and the internet to access English learning content. The results of this study can be concluded that the English learning environment and recent technologies such as social media and the internet, could have a significant impact on building and improving students’ English morphological awareness.

Associations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in German primary school children: the roles of grade level, phonological processing and vocabulary

Studies investigating relations between morphological awareness and literacy in German, a language with a rather transparent but asymmetric orthography, are sparse. Little is known about the role of grade level for these relationships and of their relative strength compared to those between other language-related variables and literacy skills. This cross-sectional study was conducted with German-speaking second-, third- and fourth-graders (n of final sample ≥ 85 per grade). Morphological awareness tasks required the production of inflections, derivations and compounds. Additionally, phonological processing, vocabulary, reading fluency, reading comprehension and spelling were measured. Factor analyses revealed two facets of morphological awareness: morphological fluency and morphological awareness for pseudowords. These were correlated with both reading and spelling skills in all grades. More literacy variables were related to morphological fluency in Grade 4 than in Grades 2 and 3. In regression analyses, variance in literacy skills was predominantly explained by phonological awareness. Morphological awareness did not explain additional variance. The results reveal that different facets of morphological awareness are related to literacy skills in German primary school children. Despite the asymmetry of German orthography, no evidence was found for differences in the association of morphological awareness with spelling versus reading. Phonological processing shows stronger relations with literacy than morphological awareness does. This might indicate that in the transparent German orthography, alphabetic reading and spelling strategies are particularly relevant until the end of Grade 4. Yet, morphological fluency might start to unfold its relevance for reading and spelling near the end of fourth grade in German.

The Role of Play-Based Learning in Enhancing Morphological Awareness Skills among UNRWA/EFL Jordanian Sixth Grade Students

The Role of Play-Based Learning in Enhancing Morphological Awareness Skills among UNRWA/EFL Jordanian Sixth Grade Students

The effect of dialogic reading paired with multisensory learning of Chinese characters and morphological awareness skills for L2 Chinese young learners at Hong Kong kindergartens

AbstractThis study examined how a dialogic reading (DR) program with a component of multisensory learning (MS) of Chinese characters improved early Chinese reading and writing skills in L2 Chinese‐speaking kindergarteners in Hong Kong. The DR + MS program was compared to the same DR program but focusing on morphological awareness (MA) training. A total of 118 3‐ to 4‐year‐old L2 Chinese‐speaking kindergartners were recruited for the study. These children were randomly assigned to one of three separate training groups: DR + MS, DR + MA, and DR alone as a control group: Before and after a 12‐week training session, all participating children were tested on a range of Chinese words reading and writing‐related skills. The DR + MS group demonstrated the strongest growth in Chinese word reading and writing skills. The DR + MA group showed a trend toward greater improvement in Chinese vocabulary knowledge. These results demonstrated enjoyable ways to develop Chinese early literacy skills.

A Case Study on the Effect of Vocabulary Intervention Program Based on Morphological Awareness of Children with Language Learning Disability

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of morphological awareness-based vocabulary interventions on vocabulary in children with language learning disabilities. The participants were three children with language learning disabilities, the evaluation procedure was pre-tested before intervention and post-tested after intervention. Two weeks after post-testing, a maintenance test was conducted. The task was used to find out the change in quantitative and qualitative vocabulary, morphological awareness, and multimorphemic words definition ability. The intervention program was produced by based on prior research and consisted of five stages: listening, sorting, morpheme detaching and adding, using strategies based on the meaning of the target words in the context, and making vocabulary dictionaries. The morphological awareness-based vocabulary intervention program had a positive effect on the quantitative and qualitative vocabulary and morphological awareness skills of children with language learning disabilities. The morphological awareness-based vocabulary intervention program, is an effective teaching strategy for children with language learning disabilities.

Oral Language and Story Retelling During Preschool and Primary School Years: Developmental Patterns and Interrelationships.

Oral language and narrative skills constitute very critical factors for children's academic performance and social competence. The aim of the present study was to investigate the developmental patterns of story retelling, as well as the relationship between oral language and story retelling in preschool and primary school children. Two hundred and thirty-seven Greek-speaking children (4-5, 5-6 and 6-7years old) participated in the study. Vocabulary knowledge, phonological awareness, morphological awareness skills and pragmatics were examined through a standardized psychometric test. Story retelling was measured by inviting the children to listen to a story and then retell it. Children's narratives were evaluated according to microstructure (use of conjunctions and lexical cohesion) and macrostructure (story grammar and temporal sequencing) criteria. The results showed that children performed better as they got older across all the oral language and story retelling tasks. Structural equation modeling revealed that vocabulary skills stand out as a stable predictor across all the three age groups. A new finding was also demonstrated, highlighting that morphological awareness, phonological awareness skills and pragmatics work together with vocabulary skills in diverse patterns at different points of a child's development, in order to support his/her ability to retell a story.

Longitudinal effects of different aspects of morphological awareness skills on early spelling development

The purpose of this 3-year longitudinal study was to examine the role of three morphological awareness (MA) aspects (inflectional, derivational, and lexical compounding) in the spelling of specific morphemes. Two hundred and fifteen Greek children were followed from kindergarten (K) to grade 2 (G2). In K and grade 1 (G1) they were tested on measures of morphological awareness, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid automatized naming, and general cognitive ability. At the end of G1 and G2, they were also tested on spelling of (a) inflectional suffixes in words and pseudowords, (b) familiar stems in simple words, and (c) familiar simple stems in low frequency derived words and in pseudowords with existing derived morphemes. The results of hierarchical regression analyses showed that the derivational aspect of MA in K and the lexical compounding aspect of MA in G1 predicted uniquely the spelling of inflectional suffixes in both words and pseudowords in G1 and G2 respectively. In addition, the lexical compounding aspect of MA in K and G1 predicted the spelling of familiar stems in simple words and the spelling of familiar simple stems in low frequency derived words in G1 and G2 respectively. Inflectional aspect of MA did not predict later performance in any spelling measure. These findings speak to the importance of early MA skills in spelling of specific morphemes and provide supportive evidence to those who suggest that morphological knowledge is part of children’s repertoire of strategies employed in spelling, even at the first stages of learning to spell.

Word reading in English and Arabic in children who are Syrian refugees

AbstractWord reading is a fundamental skill in reading and one of the building blocks of reading comprehension. Theories have posited that for second language (L2) learners, word reading skills are related if the children have sufficient experience in the L2 and are literate in the first language (L1). The L1 and L2 reading, phonological awareness skills, and morphological awareness skills of Syrian refugee children who speak Arabic and English were measured. These children were recent immigrants with limited L2 skills and varying levels of L1 education that was often not commensurate with their ages. Within- and across-language skills were examined in 96 children, ages 6 to 13 years. Results showed that phonological awareness and morphological awareness were strong within-language variables related to reading. Additionally, Arabic phonological awareness and morphological processing were strongly related to English word reading. Commonality analyses for variables within constructs (e.g., phonological awareness, morphological awareness) but across languages (Arabic and English) in relation to English word reading showed that in addition to unique variance contributed by the variables, there was a high degree of overlapping variance.

Morphological Awareness Skills of Second- and Third-Grade Students With and Without Speech Sound Disorders.

Purpose Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the main purpose of this study. Method Thirty second- and third-grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks and measures of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling. Results Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to strongly related to the students' literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children's real-word reading and spelling skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading. Conclusions Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD are discussed.

Structured Literacy Intervention for Students With Dyslexia: Focus on Growing Morphological Skills

Purpose Structured literacy (SL) is an umbrella term used by the International Dyslexia Association that refers to evidence-based instructional approaches that incorporate all aspects of spoken language into the teaching of reading, spelling, and writing (International Dyslexia Association, 2016). SL has gained prominence in the field of reading but is less familiar to speech-language pathologists. This tutorial seeks to describe SL with specific attention to the morphological component. Using current research literature combined with descriptions of specific therapeutic practices, this tutorial offers research-informed, clinical strategies for facilitating the development of morphological skills in students with spoken and written language impairments including dyslexia. Method In this tutorial, the authors focus on the research literature and clinical applications related to the topics of (a) spoken and written language impairments, including dyslexia; (b) SL intervention; (c) intervention in the areas of morphological awareness and analysis; and (d) the promotion of academic success in students who struggle with language and literacy. Conclusions SL is a term used to unify and describe evidence-based principles and components that should be included in all effective reading and writing instructions. Among other linguistic skills, morphology holds a prominent place in SL. It is critical that speech-language pathologists become familiar with SL and the evidence-based practices for growing these students' morphological awareness skills in order to promote language and literacy success.

The Comparison of the Morphological and Syntactic Awareness Skills of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Students Regarding Agreement and Tense Categories that Exist in Verbs in Reading Activities with those of Students Without Hearing Disabilities

The difficulties in learning skills that deaf and hard of hearing students encounter stem from morphology and syntactic morphology (morpho-syntax) and it is clear that there are limited studies related to these. In this study, it is aimed at examining hearing and deaf and hard of hearing students' morpho-syntactic actions which are compatible with the Turkish Sign Language and the awareness skills of these actions in the time categories. In total 122 students; 57 deaf and hard of hearing students from secondary and high school and 65 hearing students have participated this study. The data is gathered through DMASTR and SuperLab 5 software programs where data is collected by a process with a "word reading method" and "an inclusion of agreement and tense categories in actions". In the outcome of the study it is identified that students hard of hearing had an underachievement in the agreement and tense categories compared to hearing students. At the agreement category, in terms of reading duration it is seen that deaf students' verbs with disagreement compared with verbs with agreement, they read faster. In the tense category, it is clear that deaf and hard of hearing students' accuracy rate of reading words have got similarities in the categories of past and future tenses whereas they have got inadequacies in the present tense, when the data is observed in terms of the speed of reaction and reading duration, it is seen that they are more successful in the past tense. In accordance with these findings, it is indicated that hard of hearing students have shared the same reading skills with their hearing peers whereas they had plenty of difficulties related to reading skills some of them which are from the fields of morphology and syntactic morphology, in the steps of formal education.

Speech-Language Pathologist–Guided Morphological Awareness Instruction in the General Education Classroom

PurposeResearch has shown that instruction in morphological awareness improves students' understanding and use of affixes. However, morphological awareness instruction, typically, is not provided in the general education classroom, and there are few documented collaborations between teachers and speech-language pathologists (SLPs), the latter of whom have a unique expertise in language. Thus, the purpose of this article was to determine the feasibility of an SLP-guided morphological awareness instructional program in a general education classroom.MethodAfter completing a webinar training in morphological awareness, 2 general education teachers implemented morphological awareness lessons in their classrooms over an 8-week period. The teachers and collaborating SLP met weekly to discuss the lessons. Following implementation of the lessons, the teachers completed a questionnaire surveying their opinions on the collaboration. They, along with their students, also completed pre- and postmeasures of their morphological awareness.ResultsResults indicated that the teachers' morphological awareness, as assessed by the morphological awareness measure, did not improve as a result of implementing the lessons; however, the teachers reported that they valued the collaboration and the importance of morphological awareness instruction. Most importantly, the students' morphological awareness skills increased significantly following receipt of the morphological awareness lessons. The effects of these gains were moderate to large.ConclusionsFindings suggest that teachers with limited morphological awareness can successfully implement scripted morphological awareness lessons that result in meaningful gains in their students' morphological awareness. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the collaboration between SLPs and teachers are discussed.

Exploring Inflectional Morphological Awareness Skills in Greek-speaking Children with Poor Reading Comprehension

ABSTRACT The study explored the inflectional morphological awareness of Greek-speaking poor comprehenders identified in grade 3. The sample consisted of 13 poor comprehenders and 27 good comprehenders. The poor comprehenders were selected from 126 children attended 19 primary schools in metropolitan area of Athens using a cut-off-based approach. All the participants completed two oral experimental tasks of inflectional morphological awareness (i.e. verb inflections and noun–adjective inflections). Noun–adjective inflection task assessed children’s ability to produce the plural of articles, adjectives and nouns in the context of a sentence. Verb inflection task required children to change the tense of the verb in a sentence. Furthermore, phonological awareness, oral receptive vocabulary, word reading and reading comprehension were measured with standardised tasks. It was revealed that the two reading groups differed in verb inflections and oral receptive vocabulary. However, poor comprehenders had well-developed noun–adjective inflections and intact phonological skills. Overall our findings lead us to suggest that in an alphabetic language with shallow orthographic system and rich morphology poor comprehenders appear to have impaired inflectional morphological awareness and impaired vocabulary. Moreover, these results suggest the significance of teaching morphological skills in improving reading comprehension. However, further research is needed to substantiate these findings.

Inflectional and derivational morphological awareness in Arabic-speaking High versus Low EFL literacy students

Abstract This paper investigates morphological awareness for inflected and derived words among high versus low literacy students of English as a foreign language in the 5th, 7th and 9th grades. The study experimented with Arabic L1 students and tested inflectional morphological awareness (IMA) and derivational morphological awareness (DMA) separately using the Word Analogy task. Results demonstrate generally less developed morphological awareness skills in low as against high EFL literacy students. Moreover, significant differences between IMA and DMA in favor on IMA were observed in both groups of students and across all grades. This appears to reflect the distributional and linguistic properties of the two morphological systems. Moreover, though morphological awareness emerged rather early in EFL learning, differences between the two morphological systems decreased, though remained significant, as grade level increased. The theoretical and practical implications of these findings, as well as the potential role of Arabic as L1, are discussed.

Examining the Morphological Awareness of Deaf Turkish Readers

The purpose of this study was to comparatively examine the morphological awareness skills of Turkish deaf and normal hearing readers. The study group consisted of 112 students (53 were deaf students and 59 were students with normal hearing) who were enrolled in high schools in Ankara. Two different fill-in the blank tasks were developed in order to assess students’ morphological awareness skills in this study. For both of the tasks the students were asked to fill-in the blanks in the sentences by adding appropriate suffixes to the target words. The tasks were carried out in a predetermined place in students’ schools during one-to-one sessions and lasted about 10 to 15 minutes in average. MANOVA was used to analyze the data collected from the tasks. The results of the analyses showed that deaf students had significant limitations in morphological awareness skills compared to their hearing counterparts. This finding is discussed in terms of language skills and its impacts on reading acquisition of deaf students.