A meta-analysis of morphological interventions: effects on literacy achievement of children with literacy difficulties

Abstract

This study synthesizes 79 standardized mean-change differences between control and treatment groups from 17 independent studies, investigating the effect of morphological interventions on literacy outcomes for students with literacy difficulties. Average total sample size ranged from 15 to 261 from a wide range of grade levels. Overall, morphological instruction showed a significant improvement on literacy achievement (d = 0.33). Specifically, its effect was significant on several literacy outcomes such as phonological awareness (d = 0.49), morphological awareness (d = 0.40), vocabulary (d = 0.40), reading comprehension (d = 0.24), and spelling (d = 0.20). Morphological instruction was particularly effective for children with reading, learning, or speech and language disabilities, English language learners, and struggling readers, suggesting the possibility that morphological instruction can remediate phonological processing challenges. Other moderators were also explored to explain differences in morphological intervention effects. These findings suggest students with literacy difficulties would benefit from morphological instruction.

The reciprocal relations between morphological processes and reading

“…Our results are consistent with studies demonstrating that strong early morphological abilities, obtained informally or through formal instruction, can improve reading skills (Bowers et al, 2010;Goodwin & Ahn, 2010;Kuo & Anderson, 2006;Nunes et al, 2003). Initial compose ability had a broader range of influence than initial decompose ability, contrary to our expectations of wide-ranging influences of decompose as an earlier acquired and, presumably, more influential ability.…”

Is Morphological Awareness a Relevant Predictor of Reading Fluency and Comprehension? New Evidence From Italian Monolingual and Arabic-Italian Bilingual Children

“…These authors showed that Finnish children in the early stage of reading processed more easily hyphenated compound words than concatenated ones, suggesting that they strongly rely on morphemes when processing compounds (see Colé et al, 2012 for similar evidence from French children). In general, knowledge of the deep morphological structure of a word would allow children to improve their phonological processing difficulties in reading and spelling (Goodwin and Ahn, 2010).…”

Early development and predictors of morphological awareness: Disentangling the impact of decoding skills and phonological awareness

“…Intervention studies involving morphological awareness have provided evidence that training in morphological awareness increases reading skill in English (Bowers et al, 2010;Goodwin & Ahn, 2010). Such evidence has demonstrated the potential value of explicit instruction of morphemes to children.…”