This study examines the effects of morphological awareness and reading ability on the accuracy and speed of reading multi-morphemic words. Test of word reading ability and morphological awareness were given to 134 Grade 5 students. They also completed a test of their ability to read morphologically complex words, in which accuracy and response times were recorded. Two sets of response time scores were calculated – the first taking into account only the accurately pronounced words, and the second taking into account both the accurately and the inaccurately pronounced words. These words varied in surface frequency, base frequency, and transparency. Analysis of variances indicated that multi-morphemic word reading accuracy and speed were positively related to reading ability, morphological awareness, surface and base frequencies, and transparency. Significant interactions showed that (a) high base frequency increased reading accuracy and speed for words with low surface frequency, particularly for the less able students, and (b) the combination of high base frequency and transparency increased reading accuracy and speed for words with low surface frequency. Findings were similar for accuracy and both sets of response time scores. These results imply that morphological knowledge is involved in the reading of multi-morphemic words, suggesting that investigation of instruction that targets the morphological characteristics of words is warranted. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2010-04-19 18:50:46.661

Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are two (among many) components of multi-faceted word knowledge critical for language development and ultimately, academic performance, as they strongly correlate with other essential, literacy-related skills, such as spelling, writing and reading comprehension (Ramirez, Chen, Geva & Kiefer, 2010). Developing these types of knowledge is a non-linear process for school-age children: morphological awareness, in particular, involves long-term learning towards a full mastery beginning in mid-dle childhood and continuing through adolescence. Such learning processes can pose significant challenges especially for children attending a school entirely in a second language (L2) while speaking, as a first language (L1), a language which is ethno-linguistically minority in status in the larger (L2) society. Despite globally growing populations of L2 children in school settings, little is known about the nature of morphological/vocabulary knowledge in one language, relative to the other, especially when children are learning two typologically distant languages with different writing systems. The current study, situated within the theoretical framework of multicompetence (Cook, 2003), set out to investigate specific aspects of vocabulary knowledge and morphological awareness in different groups of English- and Japanese-speaking monolingual and bilingual children, whilst also examining the extent to which English morphological awareness influences/or is influenced by Japanese morphological awareness among the bilingual sample. The purpose of the study is largely three-fold. One was to examine the children’s ability to understand and express a connection between a word and its meaning. The former taps into receptive vocabulary knowledge, whereas the latter expressive vocabulary knowledge. Two vocabulary tests were administered to three groups of children per language: two bilingual groups (24 Japanese learners of English as a Second Language (ESL) and 21 learners of Japanese as a Heritage Language (JHL)) and a group of 25 English Language Monolinguals (ELMs) (English); and ESLs, JHLs and a group of 27 Japanese language Monolinguals (JLMs) (Japanese). The second purpose was to investigate the children’s ability to identify morphemes included in a word and also to produce inflectional and derivational forms of a word, using two morphological tasks per language – a Word Segmentation (WS) task and a Word Analogy (WA) task. Lastly, the current study examined, through statistical analyses, the nature of an association between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, and also whether morphological awareness in one language could act as a significant predictor of morphological awareness in the other, i.e., cross-linguistic influence. Four key findings were obtained. First, the patterns in which each group demonstrated vocabulary knowledge through English tests contrasted with the pattern observed in the Japanese results. In English, the ESL group scored more highly on the receptive test than the expressive test, whereas the reverse pattern was the case for the ELM group. The JHL group yielded comparable scores across tests. In Japanese, in contrast, all three groups (ESL/JHL/JLM) scored more highly on the expressive test than on the receptive test. Second, all groups of children typically demonstrated higher degrees of an awareness of inflectional morphemes than of derivational morphemes in the English morphological tasks (both the WS and WA tasks) and the Japanese WA task. A slightly different pattern was observed in the Japanese WS task, where the performances of ESL and JLM children were not sensitive to morpheme type, whereas the JHL group yielded higher scores on the inflectional morphemes than the root morphemes. As regards the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in each language, in English, it was the ability to produce morphologically complex items, as opposed to recognising morphemes, that was positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all three groups (ESLs, JHLs & ELMs). In Japanese, in contrast, both morpheme recognition and production were positively related to vocabulary knowledge in all Japanese-speaking groups (ESLs, JHLs & JLMs). Lastly, the bilingual data identified a reciprocal nature of morphological transfer (Japanese -> English) only in the ESL group. More specifically, the ESL children’s ability to identify morphemes in Japanese words through segmentation may have a positive influence on the ability to produce English inflectional and derivational items. The latter ability is, in addition, likely to play a positive role in its Japanese equivalent, namely, the ability to produce Japanese inflectional and derivational items. No transfer effects were established in either direction for the JHL group. These within-language and cross-linguistic investigations of the nature of, and the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge are discussed in terms of the existing evidence in the literature (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Ramirez at al.,2010) and are graphically illustrated via the integration continuum based on the notion of multicompetence (Cook, 2003). Several limitations of the current study are reviewed and discussed, fol-lowed by the Conclusion chapter, where the unique contribution of the current study to the literature is revisited, together with a brief remark about its indirect links with the field of educational research in Japan and suggestions for future research.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo principal investigar o desenvolvimento da consciência morfológica e o seu papel na ampliação do vocabulário, das habilidades de leitura e de escrita. Para contemplar este objetivo, foi realizado um programa de intervenção em consciência morfológica baseado na sensibilização em morfemas e em estratégias de formação de palavras. Participaram da pesquisa 44 alunos do 3º ano escolar de uma escola pública da cidade de São Paulo. Era esperado que a intervenção produzisse um efeito na habilidade dos alunos do grupo experimental na resolução das tarefas de consciência morfológica (tarefa de Produção de Neologismo, Analogia de Palavras, Derivação em Contexto), vocabulário (Tarefa de Definição), compreensão na leitura de texto (teste de Cloze), fluência de leitura (tarefa de LUMP) e escrita de palavras (tarefa de Ditado). Além disso, era esperado observar um fortalecimento da relação entre a consciência morfológica e as outras variáveis psicolinguísticas incluídas na pesquisa. Em termos de resultados, verificou-se a ampliação da consciência morfológica derivacional, no trato tanto de prefixos, quanto sufixos ao longo do tempo. Este desenvolvimento foi ainda mais expressivo nas crianças do grupo experimental, comparado ao controle. O impacto positivo e significativo do programa de intervenção em consciência morfológica ocorreu principalmente sobre as variáveis que mediam este conhecimento. Além disso foi investigado o papel da consciência morfológica para a ampliação das habilidades em vocabulário, leitura e escrita sendo atestado apenas para a primeira. Com isso, destaca-se especialmente o valor da intervenção em potencializar o desenvolvimento da consciência morfológica na reflexão e produção de palavras por crianças ao final do ciclo de alfabetização / This research aims to investigate the development of morphological awareness and its role in expanding vocabulary, reading and writing skills. In order to contemplate this objective, a morphological awareness intervention program based on sensitization in morphemes and word formation strategies was carried out. The study included 44 students from the 3rd year of a public school in the city of São Paulo. It was expected that the intervention would have an effect on the ability of students in the experimental group to solve tasks of morphological awareness (task of Neologism Production, Analogy of Words, Derivation in Context), vocabulary (Definition Task), reading comprehension (Cloze test), reading fluency (LUMP task) and word writing (dictation task). In addition, it was expected to observe a strengthening of the relationship between the morphological awareness and the other psycholinguistic variables included in the research. In terms of results, there was an increase in derivational morphological awareness, in the treatment of both prefixes and suffixes over time. This development was even more significant in the children of the experimental group compared to control. The positive and significant impact of the intervention program on morphological awareness occurred mainly on the variables that measure this knowledge. In addition, the role of morphological awareness for the expansion of vocabulary, reading and writing abilities was attested only to the former. Thus, the value of intervention in enhancing the development of morphological awareness in the reflection and production of words by children at the end of the literacy cycle is particularly noteworthy

The present dissertation research had two main purposes. The first one was to compare the development of morphological awareness between English Language Learners (ELLs) who speak Chinese or Spanish as their first language, and between these two groups of ELLs and native English-speaking children. Participants included 78 monolingual English-speaking children, 76 Chinese-speaking ELLs, and 90 Spanish-speaking ELLs from grade four and grade seven. Two aspects of morphological awareness were measured, derivational awareness and compound awareness. The results indicated that ELLs’ morphological awareness is influenced by the characteristics of their first language. While Chinese-speaking ELLs performed more similarly to English native speakers on compound awareness than Spanish-speaking ELLs, Spanish-speaking ELLs outperformed Chinese-speaking ELLs on derivational awareness. The second purpose of this dissertation was to examine the within and across language contributions of morphological awareness to word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking ELLs. Morphological awareness in Spanish and in English was evaluated with two measures of derivational morphology, respectively. The results showed that Spanish morphological awareness contributed unique variance to Spanish word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension after controlling for other reading related variables. English morphological awareness also explained unique variance in English word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness was observed from Spanish morphological awareness to English word reading and vocabulary, but not to reading comprehension. English morphological awareness did not predict performance on any of the three Spanish outcome measures. These results suggest that morphological awareness is important for word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish, which has a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system. They also suggest that morphological awareness developed in children’s first language is associated with word reading in English, their L2. Overall, results indicate that the ability to perform morphological analysis is important for ELLs.

The present dissertation research had two main purposes. The first one was to compare the development of morphological awareness between English Language Learners (ELLs) who speak Chinese or Spanish as their first language, and between these two groups of ELLs and native English-speaking children. Participants included 78 monolingual English-speaking children, 76 Chinese-speaking ELLs, and 90 Spanish-speaking ELLs from grade four and grade seven. Two aspects of morphological awareness were measured, derivational awareness and compound awareness. The results indicated that ELLs’ morphological awareness is influenced by the characteristics of their first language. While Chinese-speaking ELLs performed more similarly to English native speakers on compound awareness than Spanish-speaking ELLs, Spanish-speaking ELLs outperformed Chinese-speaking ELLs on derivational awareness. The second purpose of this dissertation was to examine the within and across language contributions of morphological awareness to word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking ELLs. Morphological awareness in Spanish and in English was evaluated with two measures of derivational morphology, respectively. The results showed that Spanish morphological awareness contributed unique variance to Spanish word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension after controlling for other reading related variables. English morphological awareness also explained unique variance in English word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological awareness was observed from Spanish morphological awareness to English word reading and vocabulary, but not to reading comprehension. English morphological awareness did not predict performance on any of the three Spanish outcome measures. These results suggest that morphological awareness is important for word reading, vocabulary and reading comprehension in Spanish, which has a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system. They also suggest that morphological awareness developed in children’s first language is associated with word reading in English, their L2. Overall, results indicate that the ability to perform morphological analysis is important for ELLs.

Remediation of skills deficient in students with dyslexia typically occurs via withdrawal interventions focusing on phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge. While one-on-one interventions are widely used, little attention has been paid to the alternative teaching approach of integrating multiple linguistic component interventions within the classroom. Accordingly, this study aims to examine the effectiveness of using word study within the classroom on the spelling skills of students with dyslexia. The study was divided into two parts: 1) examining the efficacy of incorporating a small group multiple linguistic intervention within the classroom on the spelling skills of 9-year-old students with dyslexia, and if there were similar effects for reading abilities; and 2) analysing the effects of word study instruction at the whole group level on student spelling. Two case study students (both 9-years of age) with dyslexia underwent small group multiple linguistic intervention, and were monitored for 8 weeks (3 days/week; 20 minutes/session) using baseline, intervention and post-intervention probes. Whole group word study instruction was enacted in a Year 4/5 classroom for 8 weeks (1 day/week; 1 hour/session), and the spelling performance of the 9-year-old students (i.e., n = 7) were compared to same age students from a control classroom (i.e., n = 7) in pre-post assessments. Both small group intervention case study students demonstrated significant improvements in spelling, yet minimal improvement was seen for reading. Whole group comparisons indicated no significant improvement. The findings for this study have implications for: a) research on effective interventions for older children with dyslexia, and b) the practical use of spelling interventions that are designed to co-exist within classroom instruction.

Esta pesquisa tem como objetivo principal investigar o desenvolvimento da consciência morfológica e o seu papel na ampliação do vocabulário, das habilidades de leitura e de escrita. Para contemplar este objetivo, foi realizado um programa de intervenção em consciência morfológica baseado na sensibilização em morfemas e em estratégias de formação de palavras. Participaram da pesquisa 44 alunos do 3º ano escolar de uma escola pública da cidade de São Paulo. Era esperado que a intervenção produzisse um efeito na habilidade dos alunos do grupo experimental na resolução das tarefas de consciência morfológica (tarefa de Produção de Neologismo, Analogia de Palavras, Derivação em Contexto), vocabulário (Tarefa de Definição), compreensão na leitura de texto (teste de Cloze), fluência de leitura (tarefa de LUMP) e escrita de palavras (tarefa de Ditado). Além disso, era esperado observar um fortalecimento da relação entre a consciência morfológica e as outras variáveis psicolinguísticas incluídas na pesquisa. Em termos de resultados, verificou-se a ampliação da consciência morfológica derivacional, no trato tanto de prefixos, quanto sufixos ao longo do tempo. Este desenvolvimento foi ainda mais expressivo nas crianças do grupo experimental, comparado ao controle. O impacto positivo e significativo do programa de intervenção em consciência morfológica ocorreu principalmente sobre as variáveis que mediam este conhecimento. Além disso foi investigado o papel da consciência morfológica para a ampliação das habilidades em vocabulário, leitura e escrita sendo atestado apenas para a primeira. Com isso, destaca-se especialmente o valor da intervenção em potencializar o desenvolvimento da consciência morfológica na reflexão e produção de palavras por crianças ao final do ciclo de alfabetização / This research aims to investigate the development of morphological awareness and its role in expanding vocabulary, reading and writing skills. In order to contemplate this objective, a morphological awareness intervention program based on sensitization in morphemes and word formation strategies was carried out. The study included 44 students from the 3rd year of a public school in the city of São Paulo. It was expected that the intervention would have an effect on the ability of students in the experimental group to solve tasks of morphological awareness (task of Neologism Production, Analogy of Words, Derivation in Context), vocabulary (Definition Task), reading comprehension (Cloze test), reading fluency (LUMP task) and word writing (dictation task). In addition, it was expected to observe a strengthening of the relationship between the morphological awareness and the other psycholinguistic variables included in the research. In terms of results, there was an increase in derivational morphological awareness, in the treatment of both prefixes and suffixes over time. This development was even more significant in the children of the experimental group compared to control. The positive and significant impact of the intervention program on morphological awareness occurred mainly on the variables that measure this knowledge. In addition, the role of morphological awareness for the expansion of vocabulary, reading and writing abilities was attested only to the former. Thus, the value of intervention in enhancing the development of morphological awareness in the reflection and production of words by children at the end of the literacy cycle is particularly noteworthy

The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine the contribution of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness to the prediction of reading and spelling in a Greek bi-dialectal setting. The target group (N=404) consisted of children, aged 6 to 9 years at the start of the project, who learn literacy in Cyprus, where a dialect is spoken in certain contexts but where Standard Modern Greek is also widely used. At present there are few studies with Greek Cypriot children on how phonological, morphological and dialect awareness relates to reading and spelling. Because there are no standardised measures of phonological, morphological and dialect awareness with Greek Cypriot children, measures of these factors were developed during the pilot study and their internal consistency was assessed. With the larger sample the measures were validated by examining their construct validity. The first wave of data collection showed that morphological and dialect awareness make unique contribution to the prediction of reading and spelling in Greek. The second wave of data collection showed that the measures of morphological and dialect awareness predicted performance in reading and spelling eight months later, even partialling out grade level, estimation of verbal intelligence and initial scores in reading and spelling. A model with dialect awareness as a mediator between phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling fitted the data better than a model with phonological or morphological awareness as mediators, and hence, phonological awareness and morphological awareness help children to become aware of the differences between their dialect and the standard variety, and dialect awareness in turn facilitates reading and spelling. Cross-lagged correlations showed that the more experience children have with reading and spelling, the more likely they are to develop morphological and dialect awareness. This study makes theoretical, empirical and practical educational contributions. The established mediational model contributes to the theoretical knowledge of the connection between dialect awareness and phonological and morphological awareness and reading and spelling while the longitudinal study contributes to theory the long term relation of morphological and dialect awareness with reading and spelling in Greek. Empirically, the study established the plausibility of a causal link between morphological and dialect awareness and reading and spelling, which must be tested in further research using intervention methods. In practice, this study contributes valid measures for assessing morphological and dialect awareness in the Greek Cypriot setting.

ABSTRACT THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN LANGUAGE AND READING IN BILINGUAL ENGLISH-ARABIC CHILDREN by Lama K. Farran This dissertation examined the relationship between language and reading in bilingual English-Arabic children. The dissertation followed a two chapter Review and Research Format. Chapter One presents a review of research that examined the relationship between oral language and reading development in bilingual English-Arabic children. Chapter Two describes the study that examined this same relationship. Participants were 83 third-, fourth-, and fifth-grade children who attended a charter school in a large school district in the Southeastern portion of the US. The school taught Arabic as a second language daily in the primary and elementary grades. This cross-sectional quantitative study used norm-referenced assessments and experimental measures. Data were analyzed using simultaneous and hierarchical regression to identify language predictors of reading. Analysis of covariance was used to examine whether the language groups differed in their Arabic reading comprehension scores, while controlling for age. Results indicated that phonological awareness in Arabic was related to phonological awareness in English. However, morphological awareness in Arabic was not related to morphological awareness in English. Results also revealed that phonological awareness predicted word reading, pseudoword decoding, and complex word reading fluency within Arabic and English; morphological awareness predicted complex word reading fluency in Arabic but not in English; and vocabulary predicted reading comprehension within Arabic and English. Further analyses indicated that children with high vocabulary differed from children with low vocabulary in their reading comprehension scores and that this difference was driven by children’s ability to read unvowelized words. Consistent with the extended version of the Triangle Model of Reading (Bishop & Snowling, 2004), the results suggest a division of labor among various language components in the process of word reading and reading comprehension. Implications for research, instruction, and early intervention with bilingual English-Arabic children are discussed.

Studies in alphabetic languages suggest the presence of morphological processing in reading already at the beginning of learning (Casalis et al, 2015). The linguistic characteristics of Arabic, particularly its richness in morphological derivations, could have implications for the acquisition of reading and spelling. In expert readers, studies with priming techniques showed morphological decomposition of Arabic words (Boudelaa and Marslen-Wilson, 2015) but there is almost no research available on beginning readers. In addition, derived words in Arabic (example: kātib) are formed from the combination of a consonantal root (K-T-B) and a vocal pattern (_ā_i_). These two morphemes cannot be isolated either aurally or visually as independent units but are part of an abstract mental representation. This could make their identification difficult for beginning readers. Our thesis aims at evaluating the presence of morphological processes in the recognition of written words, with 139 Lebanese children, from the first to the fourth grade. In a first cross-sectional study, we examined the effect of root and pattern frequency on reading and the contribution of morphological and phonological knowledge to the reading of words and pseudowords and to the comprehension of written words. In the second study, we looked for the presence of this effect in spelling. The third study is longitudinal. The same children carried out, one year after the first evaluation, the tests of the cross-sectional study.The results suggest that the ability to read and spell in Arabic is influenced very early by the awareness of the morphological composition, more specifically the familiarity with the patterns. / Les études sur les langues alphabétiques suggèrent la présence de traitements morphologiques en lecture même en début d’apprentissage (Casalis et al, 2015). Les spécificités linguistiques de l’arabe, plus particulièrement la richesse en dérivations morphologiques, pourraient avoir des implications sur l’acquisition de la lecture et de l’orthographe. Les études par des techniques d’amorçage ont montré une décomposition morphologique des mots en arabe chez le lecteur expert (Boudelaa et Marslen-Wilson, 2015) mais il n’y a presque pas de recherches disponibles sur le début d’apprentissage. Par ailleurs, les mots dérivés en arabe (exemple :kātib) sont formés à partir de la combinaison d’une racine consonantique (k-t-b) et d’un schème vocalique (_ā_i_). Ces deux morphèmes ne peuvent être isolés auditivement ou visuellement en unités indépendantes mais ils font partie d’une représentation mentale abstraite. Ceci pourrait rendre leur identification difficile pour des apprentis lecteurs. Notre thèse vise l’évaluation de la présence de traitements morphologiques dans la reconnaissance des mots écrits, auprès de 139 enfants libanais, de la première à la quatrième année de primaire. Dans une première étude transversale, nous avons examiné l’effet de la fréquence de la racine et du schème sur la lecture ainsi que la contribution des connaissances morphologiques et phonologiques à la lecture de mots et de pseudomots et à la compréhension de mots écrits. Dans la deuxième étude, nous avons recherché la présence de cet effet en orthographe. La troisième étude est longitudinale. Les mêmes enfants ont effectué, un an après la première passation, les tests de l’étude transversale.Les résultats suggèrent que la capacité de lecture et d’orthographe en arabe est influencée très tôt par la prise de conscience de la composition morphologique, plus spécifiquement la familiarité avec les schèmes. / Doctorat en Sciences psychologiques et de l'éducation / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished