How morphology impacts reading and spelling: Advancing the role of morphology in models of literacy development

Abstract

A defining feature of language lies in its capacity to represent meaning across oral and written forms. Morphemes, the smallest units of meaning in a language, are the fundamental building blocks that encode meaning, and morphological skills enable their effective use in oral and written language. Increasing evidence indicates that morphological skills are linked to literacy outcomes, including word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension. Despite this evidence, the precise ways in which morphology influences the development of children’s literacy skills remains largely underspecified in theoretical models of reading and spelling development. In this paper, we draw on the extensive empirical evidence base in English to explicitly detail how morphology might be integrated into models of reading and spelling development. In doing so, we build on the perspective that morphology is multidimensional in its support of literacy development. The culmination of our efforts is the Morphological Pathways Framework—an adapted framework that illuminates precise mechanisms by which morphology impacts word reading, spelling, and reading comprehension. Through this framework, we bring greater clarity and specificity on how the use of morphemes in oral and written language supports the development of children’s literacy skills. We also highlight gaps in the literature, revealing important areas to focus future research to improve theoretical understanding. Furthermore, this paper provides valuable theoretical insight that will guide future empirical inquiries in identifying more precise morphological targets for intervention, which may have widespread implications for informing literacy practices in the classroom and educational policies more broadly.

Mechanisms by which morphological awareness contributes to Chinese and English reading comprehension

“…Our findings further clarify the role of morphological awareness in the reading systems framework (Perfetti et al, 2005). The morphological pathways framework (Levesque et al, 2020), an adaption of the reading systems framework, illustrates more precisely the mechanisms that underlie how morphology impacts literacy, namely, a direct pathway, morphological decoding and morphological analysis pathway. Our findings echo this by advancing the placement of morphology in models of reading development.…”

“…Morphological awareness, defined as the ability to reflect upon and manipulate smallest meaningful units in words (Carlisle, 1995), has been found to be significantly and possibly causally related to children's reading development across languages (e.g., Deacon, Kieffer, & Laroche, 2014; Wu et al, 2009). The reading systems framework (Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005) and morphological pathways framework (Levesque, Breadmore, & Deacon, 2020) both include morphology in models of reading development. Although the importance of morphological awareness has been well established in the literature and in reading models, much less is known about how morphology impacts reading comprehension (Levesque, Kieffer, & Deacon, 2019).…”

Special issue editorial: Advances in understanding the role of morphemes in literacy development

“…Scaffolded on the Reading Systems Framework (Perfetti, Landi, & Oakhill, 2005; Perfetti & Stafura, 2014), the Morphological Pathways Framework is the first testable model to explore specifically how the morphological structure of words impacts literacy at multiple levels of processing. Illustrating the unusual degree of applicability of this model, Levesque et al (2021) describe how this model generalises to both reading and writing, at both single word (reading and spelling) and text levels of processing (reading comprehension and writing composition).…”

“…Finally, knowledge about the morphological structure of individual words is included in lexical representations. Levesque et al (2021) argue that this results in three pathways through which morphological awareness influences literacy. There is a direct pathway from morphological awareness to text comprehension and generation, and two indirect pathways via word identification processes: morphological analysis and morphological decoding.…”

“…This special issue begins with a narrative review by the editorial team – Levesque, Breadmore, and Deacon (2021) – in which we describe the extensive empirical evidence illustrating the importance of knowledge about morphemes and morphological awareness for the development of word reading, spelling and reading comprehension. We confront the gap in the theoretical description of the role of morphology in literacy development by presenting the Morphological Pathways Framework.…”