Predictors of reading and spelling skills in German: the role of morphological awareness

Abstract

Background: The role of morphological awareness for literacy development is noncontroversial, but it is likely to depend on the characteristics of a specific orthography. Previous studies analysing the role of morphological awareness are mainly based on English samples; thus, it is unclear how generalisable these results are. In the current study, we evaluated the predictive pattern of morphological awareness on reading and spelling in German, which is characterised by high consistency between morphology and orthography. While many words cannot be spelled correctly by relying on phoneme-grapheme mappings, morphological awareness can be reliably used to infer the correct spelling for many words. In contrast, morphological awareness seems less important for reading in German given the high consistency of grapheme-phoneme mappings. Therefore, we hypothesised that the predictive pattern of morphological awareness for spelling is higher than for reading due to the structure of German orthography. In addition, we examined whether the association between morphological awareness and spelling reflects specific awareness about morphemic units or rather general knowledge about frequent and permissible letter sequences in words. Method: We developed web-based tasks that allowed us to assess morphological awareness using pseudowords. Based on the data of 3,122 third and fourth graders, we analysed the predictive pattern of morphological awareness on reading and spelling after controlling for non-verbal cognitive abilities, age/grade, phoneme awareness and sublexical orthographic sensitivity. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs License, which permits use and distribution in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited, the use is non-commercial and no modifications or adaptations are made.

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

“…In spelling, phoneme-grapheme is less consistent, and instead, morphemes provide consistency. In line with this asymmetry, Görgen et al (2021) found that morphological awareness was a particularly strong predictor of spelling ability. Using novel internet-based techniques for data collection enabled the authors to reach a large sample of 3,122 children (9 to 10 years old).…”

“…One of the goals of this special issue was to bring together empirical evidence from different languages and contexts to inform these questions. To this end, this special issue includes studies in Chinese (Cantonese; Qiao et al, 2021), French (Rassel et al, 2021), German (Fleischhauer et al, 2021;Görgen, De Simone, Schulte-Körne, & Moll, 2021) and Norwegian (Lyster et al, 2021) and studies in English that draw upon the varied educational contexts of the United Kingdom (Dawson et al, 2021;James et al, 2021), the United States (Goodwin et al, 2021) and Canada (Georgiou et al, 2021;Ginestet et al, 2021). Qiao et al (2021) explored the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in both Chinese and English with Chinese-English bilingual children in Hong Kong (8 to 10 years old).…”

“…Two studies in this special issue examine morphological processes in German and demonstrate that the structure of the language influences when morphological processes are observed (Fleischhauer et al, 2021;Görgen et al, 2021). German has a rich morpho-orthographic structure but is asymmetrical in terms of transparency.…”

“…Further research is needed to develop diagnostic batteries to distinguish between different types of deficits. Such batteries should apply some of the novel methods in this special issue, which suggest that digital applications (Goodwin et al, 2021) and internet-based remote testing (Görgen et al, 2021) can be used effectively without the need to enter a classroom setting. These developments preceded the current COVID-19 pandemic but have become essential to conduct ongoing research in this context.…”

Meilensteine im Erwerb der deutschen Orthografie

“…Dagegen ist bei Rechtschreibfehlern, die eine fehlende Einsicht in die Systematik der deutschen Orthografie erkennen lassen (siehe 2c), anzunehmen, dass diese über die Förderung der morphematischen Bewusstheit überwunden werden können (vgl. Galuschka et al, 2020;Görgen, De Simone, Schulte-Körne & Moll, 2021;Volkmer, Schulte-Körne & Galuschka, 2019;Kirby et al, 2012). Dieser Zusammenhang ist damit zu begründen, dass die Morphologie im Gegensatz zu phonologisch und / oder morphosyntaktisch geprägten Bereichen (Phonem-und Deklinationssystem) der Rechtschreibnorm im größeren Maße unabhängig vom frü-hen Spracherwerb durch sprachanalytische und schriftsystematische Operationen erlernt werden kann (siehe Abbildung 1).…”