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The effects of learning to spell on children’s awareness of morphology

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Abstract

Because the spelling of many words in the English language (and in many other languages as well) depends on their morphemic structure, children have to have some knowledge about morphemes in order to learn to read and write. This raises the possibility that children gain much of their explicit knowledge about morphemes as a direct result of learning to read and to spell. We report two large-scale longitudinal studies that support the idea of this kind of causal connection. In the first study children’s success in spelling the inflexion at the end of regular past verbs predicted their performance in two morphological awareness tasks a year later. In the second study the children’s consistency in spelling morphemes predicted their ability to define new words on the basis of their morphemic structure. We conclude that the experience of learning to read and write does affect people’s knowledge of morphemes, and we argue that the causal relationship between morphemic knowledge and reading and writing is probably a two-way one.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Gipsy Lane, Headington, Oxford, OX3 0BP, UK

    Terezinha Nunes, P. Bryant & Miriam Bindman

Authors
  1. Terezinha Nunes
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  2. P. Bryant
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  3. Miriam Bindman
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to P. Bryant.

Appendices

Appendix 1: The Spelling tasks in Studies 1 and 2

The words dictated in Sessions A (Study 1) and C (Study 2)

Past verbs and non-verbs with /d/ or /t/ endings

  • /d/ ending

  • opened, covered, filled, killed, called

  • found, heard, held, sold, told

  • bird, ground, field, cold, gold

  • /t/ ending

  • dressed, kissed, laughed, learned, stopped

  • lost, left, sent, slept, felt

  • next, belt, soft, paint, except

Consistency across words – Session C

  • sweat-sweaty

  • naughty-naughtiness

  • magic-magician

  • heart-hearts

  • meat-meaty

  • treasure-treasures

  • know-knowledge

  • strong-strength

  • long-length

  • special-specialness

Consistency with pseudowords (dinosaur words) – Session C

  • boat-boatosaurus

  • build-buildosaurus

  • comb-combosaurus

  • half-halfosaurus

  • iron-ironosaurus

  • knot-knotosaurus

  • sword-swordosaurus

  • talk-talkosaurus

  • teach-teachosaurus

  • worm-wormosaurus

Appendix 2: Items in the morphological awareness tasks (Studies 1 and 2)

The Sentence Analogy Task: (Sessions A and B – Study 1 and Session C – Study 2)

  1. 1.

    Tom helps Mary : Tom helped Mary :: Tom sees Mary : ____________

  2. 2.

    Jane threw the ball : Jane throws the ball :: Jane kicked the ball : ____________

  3. 3.

    The cow woke up : The cow wakes up :: The cow ran away : ____________

  4. 4.

    The dog is scratching the chair : The dog scratched the chair :: The dog is chasing the cat : ____________

  5. 5.

    I felt happy : I feel happy:: I was ill : ____________

  6. 6.

    Bob is turning the TV on : Bob turned the TV on :: Bob is plugging the kettle in: ____________

  7. 7.

    She kept her toys in a box : She keeps her toys in a box :: She hung her washing on a line : ____________

  8. 8.

    Bob gives the ball to Ann : Bob gave the ball to Ann :: Bob sings a song to Ann: ____________

The Word Analogy Task: (Sessions A and B – Study1 and Session C – Study 2)

  1. 1.

    anger : angry :: strength : ____

  2. 2.

    teacher : taught :: writer : ____

  3. 3.

    walk : walked :: shake ____

  4. 4.

    see : saw :: dance ____

  5. 5.

    cried : cry :: drew ____

  6. 6.

    work : worker :: write : ____

  7. 7.

    sing : song :: live ____

  8. 8.

    happy: happiness :: high : ____

Defining pseudo-words (Session E – Study 2)

  1. 1.

    The boys decided to unwork on Tuesday.

  2. 2.

    Mary wants to ungo on holiday this year.

  3. 3.

    She was surprised by the beautiness of the mountains.

  4. 4.

    He was full of afraidness of the sea.

  5. 5.

    After washing her clothes she rewet them.

  6. 6.

    He was still tired and wanted to resleep.

  7. 7.

    In Sarah’s class some of the children are bookers and some are not.

  8. 8.

    He works as a chickener.

  9. 9.

    He wanted his carpet cleaned and telephoned a foamer.

  10. 10.

    In Mary’s class everyone is a shouter.

  11. 11.

    He wants to unclimb the hill as quickly as possible.

  12. 12.

    John looked in the mirror before leaving and thought that he should uncomb his hair.

  13. 13.

    Mary told us a story about a bi-headed monster.

  14. 14.

    I read about another country where they are so rich that everyone is bi-carred.

Note: Half of the pseudo-words were presented in sentences to one group and without the sentence to the other group of children. The␣order of these conditions (in context, out of context) was also counterbalanced.

Appendix 3

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Nunes, T., Bryant, P. & Bindman, M. The effects of learning to spell on children’s awareness of morphology. Read Writ 19, 767–787 (2006). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-006-9025-y

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