No abstract

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.

Initiating effective feedback processes is a major goal in university teaching. However, systematic investigations of structural feedback elements making instructor feedback economic, concise, motivating and beneficial for learning are still scarce. In our study, we compare two feedback modes with respect to learning gains and changes in self-efficacy in a quasi-experimental pre-post design. Participants ( N = 75 first-year students) received either scoresheet or textual instructor feedback on four individual assignments during a seminar. Outcome variables were knowledge gain, change in self-efficacy and changes in metacognitive monitoring. After the semester, we observed substantial knowledge gains for both feedback groups with only small advantages for scoresheet feedback. In contrast, self-efficacy was relatively stable across the semester and was not influenced by feedback mode. Achievement motivation measures normative ability and challenge-mastery goal orientation did not moderate the observed relationships but influenced knowledge gain and change in self-efficacy directly. Changes in metacognitive monitoring did not depend on feedback mode. Taken together, our data suggest that scoresheet and textual feedback conveying identical feedback content have comparable effects on achievement and self-evaluation measures. For university settings, scoresheets can be recommended as parsimonious feedback tools.