Morphology in Bilingual Word Learning: A Longitudinal Structural Equation Modeling Study

• In Event: Roundtable Session 27
  In Roundtable Session: Research on Literacy Development for Linguistically Diverse Students

Abstract

This longitudinal study examined the contribution of morphological awareness to bilingual word learning of Malay-English bilingual children in Singapore. Participants took morphological awareness and lexical inference tasks in both English and Malay twice, the first time at the end of Grade 3 (Time 1) and the second time at the end of the first semester of Grade 4 (Time 2). Structural Equation Modeling (SEM) analyses revealed that within both languages, morphological awareness significantly predicted lexical inference at Time 1 and Time 2. Cross-linguistic SEM analyses showed that at both times, English morphological awareness only had an indirect effect on Malay lexical inference. An indirect effect of Time 1 English morphological awareness on Time 2 Malay lexical inference also surfaced.

Author

• Dongbo Zhang, Michigan State University