The Contribution of Morphological Awareness to Reading Beyond Decoding, Vocabulary, and Processing Artifacts

• In Event: Fostering Student Awareness of Literacy Strategies and Processes

Abstract

Research on morphological awareness has shown that it contributes to literacy outcomes. However, because of the way morphological awareness is traditionally measured, there is speculation that tasks may reflect cognitive flexibility, or some other type of executive processing, versus awareness of morphology. This study examines the contribution of morphological awareness over and above task demands to literacy skills in a sample of 274 grade 5 and 8 students. It was hypothesized that measures of morphological awareness and processing skills would make unique contributions to literacy outcomes. Results show that traditional morphological awareness tasks are tapping more than vocabulary and processing skills as the morphological awareness task made unique contributions to both word reading and comprehension.

Authors

• Teixeira Clark, University of Washington

• Deborah E. Mccutchen, University of Washington