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Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability

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Abstract

We investigated the effects of morphological awareness on five measures of reading in 103 children from Grades 1 to 3. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included a wide range of morphological transformations. Results indicated that the new measure had satisfactory reliability, and that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy and speed, pseudoword reading accuracy, text reading speed, and reading comprehension, after controlling the effects of verbal and nonverbal ability and phonological awareness. Morphological awareness also explained variance in reading comprehension after further controlling word reading. We conclude that morphological awareness has important roles in word reading and reading comprehension, and we suggest that it should be included more frequently in assessments and instruction.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Faculty of Education, Queen’s University, Kingston, ON, K7L 3N6, Canada

    John R. Kirby, Peter N. Bowers, Leah Izenberg & Lesly Wade-Woolley

  2. Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada

    S. Hélène Deacon

  3. University of Alberta, Edmonton, AB, Canada

    Rauno Parrila

Authors
  1. John R. Kirby
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  2. S. Hélène Deacon
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  3. Peter N. Bowers
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  4. Leah Izenberg
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  5. Lesly Wade-Woolley
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  6. Rauno Parrila
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to John R. Kirby.

Appendix: word analogy items

Appendix: word analogy items

See Table 9.

Table 9 Word analogy test items
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Kirby, J.R., Deacon, S.H., Bowers, P.N. et al. Children’s morphological awareness and reading ability. Read Writ 25, 389–410 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-010-9276-5

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