Morphological Awareness Skills of English Language Learners and Children With Dyslexia

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine the relation of morphological awareness to reading and spelling skills of children with dyslexia, children who are typical readers, and children who are English language learners (ELLs). Morphological awareness was defined by sensitivity to derivational morphemes, for example, ness, signifying a noun, ize, signifying a verb. The participants were 1,238 students in Grade 6, including 309 ELL students and 929 students who had English as a first language (L1). Morphological awareness was significantly related to reading and spelling over and above the contribution of phonological awareness and oral language skills. Individuals with dyslexia had significantly lower scores than normally achieving readers on the morphological awareness tasks. No differences were reported between the ELL and the English L1 students. All students were less sensitive to derivational morphology when they were required to recognize the appropriate endings on pseudowords, which required a higher level of morphological awareness than real words. Lack of morphological awareness may be a significant contributor to the deficits in reading and spelling characteristic of dyslexic readers and spellers. These results suggest that morphological awareness assessment and training should be administered in children with reading difficulties.

Within- and cross-language contributions of morphological awareness to word reading development in Chinese–English bilingual children

“…According to previous studies, lexical compounding was the easiest morphological structure in Chinese, and was acquired Another important finding in the current study was that English morphological awareness contributed to English word reading across the three grades of ChineseEnglish bilingual readers. This has extended previous studies relating morphological awareness and English word reading in native English children (e.g., Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Deacon & Kirby, 2004;Siegel, 2008). Specifically, we tested a whole set of English morphological skills, and showed that English morphological awareness was important not only for native English children, but also for English learning children in Hong Kong across elementary to early secondary grades.…”

“…According to Nagy, Carlisle, and Goodwin (2014), morphological awareness contributed to reading acquisition through a set of reading subskills such as decoding, spelling, word identification and lexical inferencing. For example, the segmentation of morphologically complex words into fine-grained morphemic constituents could facilitate inferences of the meaning of new words encountered (e.g., reddish) based on known morphemes (e.g., red); and inferences of its part of speech by attending to the suffix (e.g., -ish corresponds to adjectives formed from nouns).Although the role of morphological awareness in English word reading has been well established, little is known in the context of second language learners of English, in particular Chinese-English bilingual readers (e.g., Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Deacon & Kirby, 2004;McCutchen et al, 2009;Siegel, 2008 One prominent feature of cross language transfer is directionality, which has been mostly tested from L1 to L2 (e.g., Choi, Tong, & Cain, 2016;Choi, Tong, & Singh, 2017). In contrast, very few studies have tested the L2 to L1 transfer in terms of the relation between morphological awareness and word reading (e.g., Deacon, et al., 2007;Wang et al, 2006).…”

Effects of Orthographic, Morphological and Semantic Overlap on Short-Term Memory for Words in Typical and Atypical Development

“…Children with dyslexia have been shown to perform below chronological-age-(CA-) matched peers on morphological awareness measures in many languages (Berthiaume & Daigle, 2014;Carlisle, 1987;Casalis et al, 2004;Duranovic, Tinjak, & Turbic-Hadzagic, 2014;Egan & Pring, 2004;Egan & Tainturier, 2011;Joanisse, Manis, Keating, & Seidenberg, 2000;Leong, 1999;McBride-Chang et al, 2008;McBride-Chang, Liu, Wong, Wong, & Shu, 2012;Shu, McBride-Chang, Wu, & Liu, 2006;Siegel, 2008;Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006;Vogel, 1977). They have also been shown to use morphological processes (in reading and spelling) less than age-matched peers Carlisle, Stone, & Katz, 2001;Fisher, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1985;Hauerwas & Walker, 2003;Leong, 1989).…”

Η Μορφολογική Και Συντακτική Επίγνωση Ως Δείκτες Πρόβλεψης Των Αναγνωστικών Δυσκολιών Σε Παιδιά Πρώτης Σχολικής Ηλικίας

“…Αντίθετα, ο Champion (1997) (Egan et al, 2004) 80 Η μορφολογική και συντακτική επίγνωση ως δείκτες πρόβλεψης αναγνωστικών δυσκολιών σε παιδιά πρώτης σχολικής ηλικίας Οι περιορισμένες δεξιότητες ΜΕ στα δυσλεκτικά παιδιά έχουν επιβεβαιωθεί και πρόσφατα από τη Siegel (2008), όπου παιδιά της ΣΤ΄ τάξης που ήταν κανονικοί αναγνώστες είχαν καλύτερη επίδοση από τους δυσλεκτικούς συμμαθητές τους, ενώ δε διέφεραν στην επίδοσή τους σε δοκιμασίες ΜΕΠ που είχαν ψευδολέξεις, όπου και οι δύο ομάδες είχαν χαμηλότερη επίδοση σε σχέση με τις πραγματικές λέξεις.…”

“…Σύγκριση των δεξιοτήτων ΜΕ και ΣΕ ανάμεσα σε καλούς αναγνώστες και σε μαθητές με ΜΔ και με φτωχή ανάγνωση Η ανάλυση των αποτελεσμάτων αποκάλυψε πως οι μαθητές της Γ΄ τάξης με διαγνωσμένες ΜΔ ανάγνωσης έχουν περιορισμένες δεξιότητες ΜΕΣδιαχ, ΜΕΣσχημ, ΜΕΚ και ΣΕ σε σχέση με τους συνομήλικους καλούς αναγνώστες, επιβεβαιώνοντας τη διεθνή έρευνα (Casalis et al, 2004, Siegel, 2008. Επίσης και οι φτωχοί αναγνώστες των Α΄ και Β΄ τάξεων διαφέρουν από τους συνομηλίκους τους στις παραπάνω μορφοσυντακτικές δεξιότητες.…”