Morphological awareness in reading development

Professor John R. Kirby
Professor of Psychology and Educational Psychology
Queen's University, Canada

Seminar

Morphemes are units of meaning within spoken or written words. As such they represent a type of sublexical analysis distinct from phonological analysis. Morphological awareness (sensitivity to, and the ability to manipulate, morphemes) may contribute to reading development, and may be a useful instructional target. I will review three recent English-language studies in this paper. The first considered morphological awareness as an individual difference, investigated whether it was distinct from other factors (phonological awareness, naming speed, and orthographic processing), and whether it made a distinct contribution to reading development. In the second study we taught morphological awareness to children in grades 4 and 5 (age 9-10) and observed the effects on measures of morphological awareness and reading. In the third study we compared the morphological performance of 9-10 year old children with that of older, untaught high school students (age 15-16). Overall, I conclude that morphological awareness is a distinct factor, that it makes a unique contribution to reading development, and that it can be taught successfully to young children. It is not yet clear whether or how morphological instruction contributes to reading.