How Robust is the Contribution of Morphological Awareness to General Spelling Outcomes?

Which skills underlie French-speaking children's lexical spelling acquisition in elementary school? Insight from a cross-sectional exploratory network study from Grade 1 to Grade 5

Learning to spell in an inconsistent orthographic system is a true challenge for primary school children. Previous empirical studies have highlighted three main skills involved in this learning process: phonological skills, morphological skills, and children's sensitivity to graphotactic regularities. However, the literature shows contradictions in the exact nature of the contribution of each skill at different stages of the learning process. So, the aim of our study was to test the contribution of this set of skills in the acquisition of lexical spelling as a function of children's grade level. For this purpose, we assessed these dimensions in a cross-sectional sample of 1101 French-speaking children from Grade 1 to Grade 5. The analyses were conducted using data-driven exploratory network modeling. The results showed (a) a predominant role of phonological skills at the beginning of learning, which tends to decrease with advancing schooling; (b) an increasing contribution of morphological skills from Grade 1 to Grade 5 with a drop in Grade 4, which is the only contribution that continues to increase in Grade 5; and (c) a contribution of the sensitivity to graphotactic regularities that tends to be stable until Grade 4 before decreasing in Grade 5. Our findings show the importance of all three skills in a dynamic process in learning to spell. The implications of these results are discussed in light of the integration of multiple patterns model of learning to spell.

The Impact of Verb Inflectional Distance on Morphological Awareness in Arabic Diglossia: Insights From a Longitudinal Study (Kindergarten to Grade 3)

PURPOSE

The main aim of the current study was to examine the longitudinal impact of verb inflectional distance on morphological awareness among Arabic-speaking children from kindergarten (K) to third grade. The study also investigated the impact of testing children in two language varieties, Spoken Palestinian dialect (SPD) and Modern Standard Arabic (MSA), on the development of morphological awareness.

METHOD

Sixty-two children were followed longitudinally at three time points: K, Grade 1 (G1), and Grade 3 (G3). Each child completed two parallel orally administered inflectional awareness pseudoverb tasks in the spoken and in the standard variety at each grade. The items were classified by form and function into two main distance levels: low-diglossic and high-diglossic, representing the closest and the farthest distance between SPD and MSA morphemes, respectively.

RESULTS

The findings indicated that morphological awareness was more difficult for high-diglossic morphemes than for low-diglossic ones. Moreover, the findings point to different paths in the developmental trajectory of verb inflectional awareness by distance levels and language variety: In SPD, the difference in children's awareness between low-diglossic morphemes and high-diglossic morphemes decreased across grades and disappeared in G3, whereas, in MSA, this difference significantly increased from K to G1 and G3.

CONCLUSIONS

These findings demonstrate the substantial impact of verb inflectional distance on morphological awareness development before and during the initial process of learning to read. Results are discussed within the context of linguistic distance and the development of metalinguistic processing skills with implications for assessment and intervention.

Derivational Morphology Training in French-Speaking, 9- to 14- Year-Old Children and Adolescents With Developmental Dyslexia: Does it Improve Morphological Awaraness, Reading and Spelling Outcome Measures?

Children with developmental dyslexia (DD) display partially preserved morphology skills which they rely upon for reading and spelling. Therefore, we conducted explicit and intensive training of derivational morphology in individuals with DD, ages 9 to 14 years, in order to assess its effect on: morphological awareness, reading (speed and accuracy), and spelling. Our pre-posttest design included a group trained in derivational morphology and a group of children who continued their business-as-usual rehabilitation program with their speech-language therapist. Results showed effects on morphological awareness and on the spelling of complex words, with a large between-group effect size for trained items and a large to moderate effect size for untrained items. All these gains tended to be maintained over time on the delayed posttest, 2 months later. For reading, the results were more contrasted, with large between-group effect sizes for accuracy and speed for trained items, reducing to a small effect for accuracy on the delayed posttest. For untrained items, small effects were observed on accuracy (at both posttests) but not on speed. These results are very promising and argue in favor of using derivational morphology as a medium to improve literacy skills in French-speaking children and adolescents with DD.

On the role of morphology in early spelling in Hebrew and Arabic

It is well known that learning to spell is a complex and challenging process, especially for young learners, in part because it relies on multiple aspects of linguistic knowledge, such as phonology and morphology. The present longitudinal study investigated the role of morphology in early spelling in two Semitic languages, Hebrew and Arabic, that are structurally similar but differ in the phonological consistency of phoneme to letter mappings ("backward consistency"). Whereas Arabic mappings are mostly one-to-one - allowing children to rely mainly on phonology to spell words correctly, Hebrew has numerous one-to-many phoneme-to-letter mappings that are governed by morphological considerations, thereby precluding a purely phonological spelling strategy. We, therefore, predicted that morphology would make a more substantial contribution to early Hebrew spelling than to Arabic spelling. We tested this prediction in a longitudinal study of two large parallel samples (Arabic, N = 960; Hebrew, N = 680). We assessed general non-verbal ability, morphological awareness (MA), and phonological awareness (PA) in late Kindergarten and spelling in the middle of the first grade with a spelling-to-dictation task. Hierarchical regression analyses revealed that after controlling for age, general intelligence, and phonological awareness, morphological awareness contributed a significant additional 6% variance to Hebrew spelling but only 1% to Arabic word spelling. The results are discussed within the framework of the Functional Opacity Hypothesis (Share, 2008), which we extend to spelling.

Executive Functions and Morphological Awareness Explain the Shared Variance Between Word Reading and Listening Comprehension

Purpose

A large body of literature showed that word reading and listening comprehension-two proximal predictors of reading comprehension according to the simple view of reading-are related. Grounded on the direct and indirect effects model of reading (Kim, 2020a, 2020b, 2023), we examined the extent to which the relation is explained by domain-general cognitions or executive functions (working memory and attentional control) and emergent literacy skills (language and code-related skills including morphological awareness, phonological awareness, orthographic pattern recognition, letter naming fluency, and rapid automatized naming).

Method

Data were from English-speaking children in Grade 1 (N = 372; 52% boys; 60% White children, 26% African American children, 6% multiracial children, 6% Hispanic children, and 2% Asian American children).

Results

Results from structural equation models showed that word reading and listening comprehension were moderately related (.54). When working memory and attentional control were included as predictors, the relation became weaker (.39). When morphological awareness was additionally included, they were no longer related (.05). The other emergent literacy skills did not add explanatory power beyond executive functions and morphological awareness.

Conclusion

These results indicate that executive functions and morphological awareness largely explain the shared variance between word reading and listening comprehension for English-speaking beginning readers.

The Importance of Morphological Knowledge in the Reading Comprehension Difficulties in a Highly Agglutinative Language: Evidence from Poor Comprehenders

This study examined the importance of morphological knowledge in the reading comprehension difficulties of poor comprehenders reading in a highly agglutinative language, Turkish. Participants were 56 students recruited from the second and third grades. In the assessment process, we applied three experimental paradigms addressing the participants' morphological and morpho-syntactical knowledge at the lexical and the supralexical levels. Data were collected in individual sessions and analyzed by running a series of GLM ANOVAs and calculating the Spearman-Brown correlation coefficient. Findings suggest morphological knowledge is an important indicator of reading comprehension difficulties in Turkish, a highly agglutinative language. The acquisition of adequate reading comprehension seems to be modified by particularities of the morphological knowledge.

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

PURPOSE

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.

METHOD

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.

RESULTS

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).

CONCLUSIONS

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.

A promising new tool for literacy instruction: The morphological matrix

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.

Finding the man amongst many: A developmental perspective on mechanisms of morphological decomposition

Skilled reading is characterized by rapid recognition of morphologically complex words. Evidence suggests that adult readers segment complex words into their constituent morphemes during visual word recognition, and that this extends to items that have only a surface morphological structure (e.g., corner), a process termed 'morpho-orthographic segmentation'. It is not yet known how and when this mechanism is established over the course of reading development, although data from English-speaking children suggest that it may be a relatively late-acquired milestone. The purpose of this study was to examine for the first time the mechanisms driving morphological processing across late childhood and adolescence. A cross-sectional sample of 204 children and adolescents from South-East England, ranging in age from 9 to 18 years (M age = 13.74 years, SD = 2.68; 110 female), completed a visual masked prime lexical decision task using three sets of prime-target pairs: morphological (e.g., teacher - TEACH), pseudomorphological (sharing an apparent morphological relationship in the absence of a semantic relationship, e.g., corner - CORN), and form (sharing an orthographic relationship only, e.g., window - WIND). Linear mixed effects models revealed both morphological and pseudomorphological priming in the absence of form priming, with priming magnitude increasing in line with age, and stronger evidence of morpho-orthographic segmentation emerging in line with word reading efficiency. Our findings reveal advances in the reading system during adolescence which may reflect accumulated exposure to regularities in the writing system, facilitating rapid access to meaning from print.

A Multilinguistic Spelling Analysis of Children who are Hard of Hearing

Spelling in writing samples was compared between children who are hard of hearing (HH) (n = 142) and their peers with typical hearing (TH) (n = 72) in second and fourth grade. The same analyses were then conducted comparing groups of children who are HH with different levels of aided audibility. Compared to children with TH, children who are HH produced fewer misspelled words (p = .041, d = .42) at second grade but performed similarly in fourth grade (p = .943, d = .02). Compared to peers with TH, children who are HH demonstrated similar distributions of errors in roots but some differences in the distribution of errors for affixes. Different levels of aided audibility among children who are HH were not associated with significant differences in spelling accuracy at both grades. However, second-grade children with poorer aided audibility produced significantly more phonological omissions (p = .005, r = .32) and orthographic consonant errors for monomorphemic words (p = .001, r = .37), as well as more orthographic consonant errors for and affixes (p = .015, r = .28).

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.

The Importance of Morphological Awareness in Bilingual Language and Literacy Skills: Clinical Implications for Speech-Language Pathologists

Purpose This clinical focus article will highlight the importance and role of morphological awareness (MA) across orthographies, in particular, the role it plays in reading development, specifically with bilingual populations. MA supports reading acquisition and development beyond other predictors of reading, such as phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatic naming to name a few. While MA aids in the development of decoding fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension, explicit morphological instruction does not occur regularly in reading intervention. For English learners (ELs), instruction should focus on improving MA, semantic awareness, and orthographic processing, which in turn would exert a positive influence on reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. This clinical focus article aims to provide speech-language pathologists with applicable tasks to measure MA and strategies to guide explicit morphological instruction. Method The role of MA in reading development will be described with regard to its importance beyond other predictors and the role it plays in theoretical models of reading development. Then, MA will be described across orthographies, with a focus on cross-linguistic influences. Finally, measurement tasks will be described, and clinical implications will be discussed in terms of using different strategies and tools to explicitly address MA. Conclusion Clinical implications of morphological instruction should be further explored and incorporated in current practices. With regard to ELs, it is important that we provide effective and specific instruction to better bridge the academic achievement gaps and increase overall language and literacy skills. Morphological instruction should be explicit and provided in conjunction with other domains of language. Equally important is leveraging families of ELs to promote their children's oral language and literacy in their first language.

Cognitive-Linguistic Skills Underlying Word Reading and Spelling Difficulties in Chinese Adolescents With Dyslexia

The present study investigated the co-occurrence of word reading and spelling difficulties for Chinese first language (L1) and English second language (L2) and the role of morphological awareness in word reading and spelling ability across two languages. A total of 110 Hong Kong Chinese-speaking students in Grade 7, including 55 adolescents with dyslexia (28 males, mean age = 152.11 months) and 55 typically developing adolescents (27 males, mean age = 151.85 months) participated. They were assessed on the cognitive-linguistic measures of morphological awareness, phonological awareness, vocabulary knowledge, rapid naming, word reading, and word spelling in L1 and L2. Multivariate analysis of variance showed that compared with the typical students, adolescents with dyslexia had poorer performance in all L1 and L2 measures except the phonological awareness in Chinese. Hierarchical regression analysis indicated that for both groups of students, morphological awareness contributed uniquely to word reading and spelling in L1 and L2; rapid letter naming contributed uniquely to English word spelling. Findings highlight the importance of co-occurring difficulties in L1 and L2 reading and spelling and that morphological awareness may play a critical role in predicting word reading and spelling across languages for Chinese adolescents with dyslexia and those without difficulty.

Parâmetros Psicométricos da Prova de Consciência Morfológica Derivacional

Resumo A aprendizagem da escrita requer múltiplas habilidades linguístico-cognitivas, entre elas a consciência fonológica e a morfológica. Dada a escassez de instrumentos para avaliar as habilidades morfológicas, o estudo objetivou elaborar e analisar os parâmetros psicométricos de uma prova de consciência morfológica derivacional. Participaram 111 estudantes do 4.º ano do Ensino Fundamental, respondendo provas de consciência morfológica, consciência fonológica e vocabulário. Para a prova de consciência morfológica, foram encontrados índices de fidedignidade adequados em relação à consistência interna (coeficientes alfa de 0,79) e à estabilidade temporal (correlações teste-reteste de 0,81). A evidência de validade foi verificada com bases em variáveis externas, uma vez que foram encontradas correlações moderadas e significativas da prova de consciência morfológica com provas de consciência fonológica e vocabulário. Sugerem-se novos estudos, com participantes diversificados, incluindo comparações com outras variáveis potencialmente relevantes, o que fornecerá outras evidências de validade e precisão da prova de consciência morfológica apresentada.

A Multilinguistic Approach to Evaluating Student Spelling in Writing Samples

Purpose

Spelling is a critical component of literacy and language arts that can negatively influence other aspects of written composition. This clinical focus article describes a spelling error classification system that can be used to identify underlying linguistic deficits that contribute to students' spelling errors. The system is designed to take advantage of the linguistic expertise of speech-language pathologists to efficiently assess student errors in written compositions that are generated as a component of everyday classroom instruction.

Method

A review of the literature was conducted regarding spelling as a component of literacy and language arts, the development of spelling, and the linguistic contributions to spelling. Then, existing criterion-referenced measures of spelling simple and morphologically complex words were reviewed, and a new, manual technique for analyzing spelling in student written compositions was created.

Conclusions

The language expertise of speech-language pathologists enables them to readily evaluate the phonological, orthographic, and morphological errors in student misspellings, in order to identify specific underlying linguistic deficits and plan targeted interventions. The error classification system provides speech-language pathologists with a tool that is both simple and time efficient and, thus, may help increase their confidence and ability in addressing the spelling needs of students.

Preschool Phonological and Morphological Awareness As Longitudinal Predictors of Early Reading and Spelling Development in Greek

Different language skills are considered fundamental for successful reading and spelling acquisition. Extensive evidence has highlighted the central role of phonological awareness in early literacy experiences. However, many orthographic systems also require the contribution of morphological awareness. The goal of this study was to examine the morphological and phonological awareness skills of preschool children as longitudinal predictors of reading and spelling ability by the end of first grade, controlling for the effects of receptive and expressive vocabulary skills. At Time 1 preschool children from kindergartens in the Greek regions of Attika, Crete, Macedonia, and Thessaly were assessed on tasks tapping receptive and expressive vocabulary, phonological awareness (syllable and phoneme), and morphological awareness (inflectional and derivational). Tasks were administered through an Android application for mobile devices (tablets) featuring automatic application of ceiling rules. At Time 2 one year later the same children attending first grade were assessed on measures of word and pseudoword reading, text reading fluency, text reading comprehension, and spelling. Complete data from 104 children are available. Hierarchical linear regression and commonality analyses were conducted for each outcome variable. Reading accuracy for both words and pseudowords was predicted not only by phonological awareness, as expected, but also by morphological awareness, suggesting that understanding the functional role of word parts supports the developing phonology-orthography mappings. However, only phonological awareness predicted text reading fluency at this age. Longitudinal prediction of reading comprehension by both receptive vocabulary and morphological awareness was already evident at this age, as expected. Finally, spelling was predicted by preschool phonological awareness, as expected, as well as by morphological awareness, the contribution of which is expected to increase due to the spelling demands of Greek inflectional and derivational suffixes introduced at later grades.

A Three-Year Longitudinal Study of Reading and Spelling Difficulty in Chinese Developmental Dyslexia: The Matter of Morphological Awareness

In the present study, we used a three-time point longitudinal design to investigate the associations of morphological awareness to word reading and spelling in a small group of those with and without dyslexia taken from a larger sample of 164 Hong Kong Chinese children who remained in a longitudinal study across ages 6, 7 and 8. Among those 164 children, 15 had been diagnosed as having dyslexia by professional psychologists, and 15 other children manifested average reading ability and had been randomly selected from the sample for comparison. All children were administered a battery of tasks including Chinese character recognition, word dictation, morphological awareness, phonological awareness and rapid automatized naming. Multivariate analysis of variance and predictive discriminate analysis were performed to examine whether the dyslexic children showed differences in the cognitive-linguistic tasks in comparison with controls. Results suggested that the dyslexic groups had poorer performance in morphological awareness and RAN across all 3 years. However, phonological awareness was not stable in distinguishing the groups. Findings suggest that morphological awareness is a relatively strong correlate of spelling difficulties in Chinese, but phonological awareness is not. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Morphology and Spelling in French: A Comparison of At-Risk Readers and Typically Developing Children

We present two studies that examine the role of morphology in French spelling. In Study 1, we examined the concurrent and longitudinal relationships between inflectional awareness and derivational awareness and spelling within a sample of 77 children in a French immersion programme in Canada. Children completed a non-verbal reasoning measure and French measures of phonological awareness, word reading, vocabulary, morphological awareness, and spelling. Results showed that inflectional morphological awareness in Grade 3 was a predictor of spelling in the same grade. Inflectional awareness in Grade 2 predicted Grade 3 spelling, controlling for reading-related skills and spelling at Grade 2. These analyses support the role of inflectional morphological awareness in the development of spelling of children of a range of reading and spelling abilities. In contrast, derivational awareness in Grades 2 and 3 did not predict spelling concurrently in both grades respectively. Study 2 contrasted the morphological errors in the spellings of six children at risk for reading difficulties with those of six chronological age-matched and six reading level-matched children. Analyses showed that at-risk children exhibited more difficulties with spelling roots and suffixes in words as compared with their age-matched peers, although they performed similarly to children matched on reading level. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Unpacking Direct and Indirect Relationships of Short-Term Memory to Word Reading: Evidence From Korean-Speaking Children

We examined the relations of short-term memory (STM), metalinguistic awareness (phonological, morphological, and orthographic awareness), and rapid automatized naming (RAN) to word reading in Korean, a language with a relatively transparent orthography. STM, metalinguistic awareness, and RAN have been shown to be important to word reading, but the nature of the relations of STM, metalinguistic awareness, and RAN to word reading has rarely been investigated. Two alternative models were fitted. In the indirect relation model, STM was hypothesized to be indirectly related to word reading via metalinguistic awareness and RAN. In the direct and indirect relations model, STM was hypothesized to be directly and indirectly related to word reading. Results from 207 beginning readers in South Korea showed that STM was directly related to word reading as well as indirectly via metalinguistic awareness and RAN. Although the direct effect of STM was relatively small (.16), the total effect incorporating the indirect effect was substantial (.42). These results suggest that STM is an important, foundational cognitive capacity that underpins metalinguistic awareness and RAN as well as word reading, and further indicate the importance of considering both direct and indirect effects of language and cognitive skills on word reading.

O Impacto do Ensino de Regras Morfológicas na Escrita

<p>Este estudo investiga a contribuição do ensino de regras morfológicas para a escrita de palavras e pseudopalavras. Participaram 111 (cento e onze) alunos do 4º ano fundamental de uma escola pública, separados em três grupos experimentais e um grupo de controle. Os estudantes foram submetidos a pré-teste e pós-teste (imediato e diferido) em medidas de controle e discriminação escrita. A intervenção trabalhou com o ensino explícito de regras abordando os seguintes elementos mórficos: "-esa"/"-eza" (morfologia derivacional), "-am"/"-ão" (morfologia flexional), "-iu"/"-il" (morfologia flexional e derivacional). Os resultados mostraram que a intervenção provocou um impacto específico no aumento de desempenho na escrita de palavras e, principalmente, na escrita de pseudopalavras, cuja grafia não pode ser acessada de informações lexicais. Os resultados corroboram os de outros estudos, confirmando o efeito positivo e duradouro do ensino explícito de regras morfológicas sobre a escrita de palavras complexas.</p>

Dynamic Assessment of Morphological Awareness and Third-Grade Literacy Success

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to examine a dynamic assessment with graduated prompts to assess morphological awareness and determine whether such a task was related to third-grade literacy success.

Method

A dynamic assessment of morphological awareness was adapted and administered to 54 third-grade students in addition to a norm-referenced language and literacy battery.

Results

A dynamic assessment of morphological awareness measured a range of performance including that of emerging morphological awareness abilities and provided rich linguistic insights for how best to scaffold and prompt for such a skill. In addition, the dynamic morphological awareness measure was found to be significantly related to, and to contribute unique variance to, reading comprehension abilities.

Conclusions

These results suggest that morphological awareness is an important factor to consider when addressing students' literacy performance in early elementary school and that dynamic assessment appears to be a clinically valuable tool when examining early morphological awareness abilities.

Using Morphological Awareness Instruction to Improve Written Language Skills

Purpose

Written English is a morphophonemic language. Researchers have documented that a conscious awareness of the morphological structure of English morphology is predictive of students' written language skills and that morphological awareness instruction leads to improvements in morphological awareness and in other written language skills. The purpose of this tutorial is to provide specific information to clinical scientists and other educators for integrating morphological awareness instruction into their written language instruction.

Method

The authors first define morphological awareness and provide an overview of the research on the effects of morphological awareness intervention on improving morphological awareness and written language skills. Measures used to assess morphological awareness ability are then discussed, followed by suggestions for how clinical scientists and other educators can provide morphological awareness instruction to improve the written language skills of the students they serve.

Conclusion

By integrating morphological awareness instruction into the services they provide, clinical scientists and other educators will be providing their students with a strong tool to aid written language skills.

The relation of linguistic awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling for first-grade students participating in response to intervention

PURPOSE

The relations of phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness and vocabulary to word reading and spelling were examined for 304 first-grade children who were receiving differentiated instruction in a Response to Intervention (RtI) model of instruction.

METHOD

First-grade children were assessed on their phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; word reading; and spelling. Year-end word reading and spelling were outcome variables, and phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness; expressive vocabulary; and RtI status (Tiers 1, 2, & 3) were predictor variables.

RESULTS

The 3 linguistic awareness skills were unique predictors of word reading, and phonological and orthographic awareness were unique predictors of spelling. The contributions that these linguistic awareness skills and vocabulary made to word reading and spelling did not differ by children's RtI tier status.

CONCLUSION

These results, in conjunction with previous studies, suggest that even beginning readers and spellers draw on multiple linguistic awareness skills for their word reading and spelling regardless of their level of literacy abilities. Educational implications are discussed.

Linguistic pattern analysis of misspellings of typically developing writers in grades 1-9

PURPOSE

A mixed-methods approach, evaluating triple word-form theory, was used to describe linguistic patterns of misspellings.

METHOD

Spelling errors were taken from narrative and expository writing samples provided by 888 typically developing students in Grades 1-9. Errors were coded by category (phonological, orthographic, and morphological) and specific linguistic feature affected. Grade-level effects were analyzed with trend analysis. Qualitative analyses determined frequent error types and how use of specific linguistic features varied across grades.

RESULTS

Phonological, orthographic, and morphological errors were noted across all grades, but orthographic errors predominated. Linear trends revealed developmental shifts in error proportions for the orthographic and morphological categories between Grades 4 and 5. Similar error types were noted across age groups, but the nature of linguistic feature error changed with age.

CONCLUSIONS

Triple word-form theory was supported. By Grade 1, orthographic errors predominated, and phonological and morphological error patterns were evident. Morphological errors increased in relative frequency in older students, probably due to a combination of word-formation issues and vocabulary growth. These patterns suggest that normal spelling development reflects nonlinear growth and that it takes a long time to develop a robust orthographic lexicon that coordinates phonology, orthography, and morphology and supports word-specific, conventional spelling.