Applied Psycholinguistics 34 (2013), 697–725
doi:10.1017/S0142716411000920
Roles of morphological awareness
in the reading comprehension of
Spanish-speaking language minority
learners: Exploring partial mediation
by vocabulary and reading fluency
MICHAEL J. KIEFFER
Teachers College, Columbia University
GINA BIANCAROSA
University of Oregon
JEANNETTE MANCILLA-MARTINEZ
University of Illinois, Chicago
Received: September 11, 2010
Accepted for publication: April 2, 2011
ADDRESS FOR CORRESPONDENCE
Michael J. Kieffer, Teachers College, Columbia University, 525 West 120th Street, Box 66,
New York, NY 10027. E-mail: mk3157@columbia.edu
ABSTRACT
This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis
was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading
comprehension as well as its indirect contributions via three hypothesized mediators for students
in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade (N = 101). Results indicated a significant unique contribution
of morphological awareness, controlling for phonemic decoding, listening comprehension, reading
vocabulary, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. Results further indicated significant
indirect contributions of morphological awareness via reading vocabulary and passage fluency, but not
via word reading fluency. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may play multiple important
roles in second-language reading comprehension.
Reading comprehension is a complex process that draws on a wide array of
linguistic skills and knowledge (RAND Reading Study Group, 2002). Beyond
the well-acknowledged roles of vocabulary knowledge and phonologically based
decoding skills, recent research suggests that reading comprehension is also predicted by morphological awareness, that is, students’ ability to reflect on and
© Cambridge University Press 2012 0142-7164/12 $15.00
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manipulate the smaller meaningful units that form words (e.g., Carlisle, 2000;
Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006). Findings from a handful of studies suggest a similar relationship between morphological awareness
and reading for students from homes in which a language other than the societal language is spoken, a population known as language minority (LM) learners
(Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Ramirez, Chen, Geva, & Kiefer, 2010). However, it is less
clear what mechanisms underlie the observed relationship between morphological
awareness and reading comprehension for this population.
Morphological awareness (MA) may contribute to reading comprehension via
several possible routes (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). One possibility is that MA could
facilitate the development of a broad vocabulary, which in turn promotes successful
reading comprehension. In place of or in addition to this mechanism, MA could
facilitate accurate, rapid reading of words and/or of connected text, thus freeing
attentional resources for comprehension. Furthermore, MA could make a direct
contribution to the reading comprehension process that is independent of these
indirect mechanisms, by facilitating students’ extraction of semantic and syntactic information from morphologically complex words during reading. Although
researchers have acknowledged the possibility that MA may play multiple roles
in reading comprehension, few studies have explicitly investigated the partially
mediated, multivariate relationships by which direct and indirect contributions
would occur.
The current study was designed to investigate the direct and mediated roles of
English derivational MA in English reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking
LM learners in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Using multivariate path analysis,
we examined the unique contribution of MA to reading comprehension, controlling for key confounding language and reading skills, as well as the indirect
contributions of MA via three potential mediators: reading vocabulary, sight word
reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. By focusing on a population that is at
elevated risk for reading comprehension difficulties (August & Shanahan, 2006),
we aimed to clarify the linguistic sources of these difficulties. By examining these
relationships in the middle school years, we seek to shed light on a developmental
period during which the linguistic demands of reading comprehension are particularly pronounced (e.g., Carnegie Council on Adolescent Literacy, 2010; Fang
& Schleppegrell, 2006), while building on and extending prior research that has
concentrated largely on the elementary grades.
MORPHOLOGY AND READING IN NATIVE ENGLISH
SPEAKERS AND LM LEARNERS
A large number of English words are constituted from two or more smaller meaningful units or morphemes, such as prefixes, suffixes, and roots (Anglin, 1993;
Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990; Nagy & Anderson, 1984). These morphologically
complex words appear frequently in written text, more often than in spoken language (Chafe & Danielewicz, 1987), so it is not surprising that MA is implicated
in reading. A review of research conducted with monolingual speakers of several
languages concluded that MA contributes to reading comprehension, and that
this contribution increases across the elementary school years (Kuo & Anderson,
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2006). For monolingual English readers, this conclusion is supported by several
studies that have found significant relationships between MA and reading comprehension, after controlling for students’ phonological abilities and/or vocabulary
(e.g., Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy, Berninger,
Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006).
Among various aspects of MA, the ability to manipulate derivational affixes
(i.e., affixes that change a word’s part of speech or meaning, such as -tion, -able,
and re-) may be particularly important to reading comprehension in middle school.
Although the ability to manipulate inflectional suffixes (e.g., -ing, -ed, -s) is generally mastered in the primary grades, derivational MA continues to develop through
the upper elementary grades and beyond (e.g., Mahony, 1994; Nagy, Diakidoy,
& Anderson, 1993). In a foundational study in this area, Carlisle (2000) found
that derivational MA significantly predicted reading comprehension in fifth grade
after controlling for vocabulary and word reading. Similarly, Nagy and colleagues
(2006) found that a composite MA measure that relied heavily on derivational
skills made a significant unique contribution to reading comprehension in Grades
4 through 9, after controlling for phonological decoding, phonological memory,
and vocabulary.
A growing number of studies suggest similar relationships between MA and
reading for second-language learners, including elective bilingual populations
(Deacon, Wade-Wooley, & Kirby, 2007; Saiegh-Hadadd & Geva, 2008; Schiff &
Calif, 2007; Zhang et al., 2010) and LM learners (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Ramirez
et al., 2010; Wang, Cheng, & Chen, 2006; Wang, Yang, & Cheng, 2009). Although
most of these studies have concentrated on awareness of inflections or compounds
(e.g., mailman) in young children, a few have investigated derivational MA in older
readers. Kieffer and Lesaux (2008) found that awareness of English derivational
morphology predicted English reading comprehension for fifth-grade Spanishspeaking LM learners, after controlling for word reading fluency, oral vocabulary,
and phonological skills. Similarly, Ramirez and colleagues (2010) found that,
for Spanish-speaking LM learners in Grades 4 and 7, English derivational MA
predicted English word reading, after controlling for phonological awareness,
vocabulary knowledge, memory, and nonverbal ability. Although such evidence
suggests that MA plays one or more roles in the process of reading comprehension,
the extent of their direct and indirect contributions remains unclear.
INDIRECT CONTRIBUTIONS OF MA TO READING COMPREHENSION
MA may indirectly contribute to reading comprehension by at least three possible
routes. First, MA may broaden students’ reading vocabularies, which in turn
facilitates subsequent reading comprehension. Developed MA may accelerate the
acquisition of a broad vocabulary because the meaning of most morphologically
complex words in English can be inferred based on the meanings of their parts
(Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Studies conducted with native English speakers have
supported this notion by demonstrating that MA predicts vocabulary size (Anglin,
1993; Carlisle, 2000; McBride-Chang, Wagner, Muse, Chow, & Shu, 2005; Nagy
et al., 2006), a relationship that is likely to be reciprocal (Kieffer & Lesaux, in
press-a; McBride-Chang et al., 2008). For instance, in a comparison of native
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English speakers in first, third, and fifth grade, Anglin (1993) found that a large
majority of the words known by fifth graders, but not third graders, were derived
words. Support for a similar relationship for LM learners comes from Kieffer &
Lesaux (in press-a), who followed a cohort of Spanish-speaking LM learners from
Grades 4 through 7 and found that growth in English MA was closely related to
growth in English vocabulary knowledge.
Given the well-established relationship between vocabulary and reading comprehension (Anderson & Freebody, 1981; RAND Reading Study Group, 2002),
this broadening of vocabulary associated with developed MA should, in turn, yield
improved reading comprehension. One study investigated this hypothesis using
structural equation modeling in a sample of native English speakers in Grades
4 through 9 (Nagy et al., 2006). They found that much, although not all, of the
contribution of MA to reading comprehension was indirect via its effect on reading
vocabulary. By explicitly testing direct and indirect pathways, Nagy et al. (2006)
provided a valuable approach for understanding the mechanisms underlying the
correlations among these skills, but left open the question of whether their findings
generalize to LM learners. Because many LM learners’ reading comprehension
is constrained by limited English vocabulary knowledge (e.g., August, Carlo,
Dressler, & Snow, 2005; Carlo et al., 2004; Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010; Umbel, Pearson, Fernandez, & Oller, 1992), this mechanism may be particularly important for
this population.
A second possibility is that MA facilitates efficient word reading, which in turn
allows for successful reading comprehension. Written English is morphophonemic
in that many words retain morphological information in their spelling even when
such information conflicts with their phonetic pronunciations. For instance, a more
transparently alphabetic spelling of helped, turned, and landed would indicate that
these three words end in different sounds (perhaps with the spellings helpt and
turnd); instead, the ed spelling pattern that is retained across these three words
helps indicate to readers that the three sound patterns all represent the past tense
marker. Similarly, for more phonologically transparent spellings, the letter pattern
used to represent the second vowel in method and methodical would have to
be different, as would those for the third vowel in similar and similarity. This
consistency in the spelling of morphemes, despite shifts in pronunciation, yields
words that are less phonetically decodable, but that carry more information about
their semantic relationships to other words. As a result, MA may facilitate the
automatic recognition of such words.
This possibility is supported by the robust relationship between MA and word
reading abilities found in several studies of native English speakers (Berninger,
Abbott, Billingsley, & Nagy, 2001; Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Stone, 2005; Deacon
& Kirby, 2004; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Nagy et al., 2006). In addition
to these studies that have investigated interindividual differences in word reading
ability and explicit awareness of morphology, experimental studies utilizing priming and frequency effects have demonstrated that rapid word reading in English is
facilitated by the implicit processing of morphological information (e.g., Deacon,
Campbell, Tamminga, & Kirby, 2010; Deacon, Parrila, & Kirby, 2006; Nagy,
Anderson, Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989). Given that skilled word reading
is a prerequisite for reading comprehension (Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Perfetti,
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701
1988), it seems reasonable that these gains from morphologically based word
reading would translate into improved reading comprehension. However, empirical data on this question remain limited, in large part because most studies in this
area view word reading and reading comprehension as two independent outcomes
to be predicted separately by MA. Thus, few, if any, studies have tested explicitly
whether word reading skill mediates MA’s influence on reading comprehension.
A few studies conducted with LM learners (Ramirez et al., 2010) and elective
bilinguals (e.g., Deacon et al., 2007; Saiegh-Haddad & Geva, 2008) demonstrate a
relationship between MA and word reading, but it is unclear whether this pathway
ultimately explains the reading comprehension difficulties common among LM
learners.
A third, related possibility is that MA facilitates efficient reading of connected
text that in turn allows for successful text comprehension. If MA facilitates accurate
and rapid reading of individual words as described above, then these effects may
accumulate as students read connected texts, yielding meaningful gains in fluency
at the passage level. In addition, because MA provides readers with greater insight
into the syntactic structure of clauses and sentences, it may facilitate more rapid
and efficient reading of not only words but also larger units of text. Such facilitation
of automatic reading would thereby free attentional resources for processing the
text base and making the inferences across propositions required to construct a
situation model (Kintsch, 1998, 2004; Kintsch & van Dijk, 1978; Reynolds, 2000).
Substantial research demonstrates the extent to which passage reading fluency
is a robust predictor of, or proxy for, text comprehension (for reviews, see Fuchs,
Fuchs, Hosp, & Jenkins, 2001; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003), and a growing number of studies have investigated the range of linguistic abilities that compose and predict fluent
reading (e.g., Barth, Catts, & Anthony, 2009; Berninger et al., 2010; Katzir et al.,
2006; Klauda & Guthrie, 2008; Levasseur, Macaruso, Palumbo, & Shankweiler,
2006; Mokhtari & Thompson, 2006; Wood, 2009). Despite theoretical reasons
for suspecting that MA may contribute to reading comprehension by accelerating
reading of connected text, very few studies have investigated the relationship between MA and passage reading fluency in either native English or LM populations.
One of the only studies we could locate that investigated this relationship in any
language found that native Hebrew speakers in fifth grade demonstrated a significant relationship between their performance on an inflectional morphological task
and passage reading fluency, controlling for phonological awareness and memory
(Cohen-Mimran, 2009). The lack of research on this question may be because MA
is traditionally thought of as a word-level skill, which would be unlikely to play
a role in reading that extends beyond word-level processes. In light of evidence
that MA continues to predict text comprehension after controlling for word-level
reading skills, there is a need to investigate the extent to which this relationship is
explained by the facilitation of text-level reading fluency by MA.
Each of these three hypothesized routes for the indirect contributions of MA
have some “piece-meal” empirical support from studies showing that MA predicts
intermediate reading skills, combined with separate studies demonstrating the
intermediate skills’ importance to reading comprehension. However, a complete
model of mediated pathways has not been examined to our knowledge. The current study uses path analysis to test whether these three hypothesized mediated
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pathways yield significant contributions to reading comprehension in the growing
population of LM learners.
DIRECT CONTRIBUTIONS OF MA TO READING COMPREHENSION
Although indirect routes likely explain much of the correlation between MA
and reading comprehension, MA may make a unique contribution to reading
comprehension above and beyond these mediated relationships. Nagy (2007) has
argued that MA, as a facet of general metalinguistic ability, plays a role in constructing sentence-level meaning during the reading comprehension process that
is independent of any role it may also play in vocabulary acquisition. In particular,
derivational MA may help students decipher the meaning of novel words during
a reading event, in what Nagy calls “on-the-spot vocabulary learning” (p. 64).
For instance, readers with well-developed MA who first encounter words such as
similarity, methodological, or characterization in text may be better able to extract
the meaning of these words by recognizing their relationship with the meanings of
more common morphologically similar words like similar, method, and character.
This process may be valuable to real-time comprehension regardless of whether it
facilitates any long-term broadening of vocabulary.
In addition, MA may enable readers to use syntactic clues that are encoded in
suffixes to comprehend complex sentence structures (Nagy, 2007). Readers who
recognize the syntactic differences between character, characterization, characterize, and characterized may be better equipped to extract meaning from written
texts; for instance, they may understand more readily that a character is a person,
a characterization is a constructed abstraction, to characterize is an action that
a named agent takes, and to be characterized in some way is describing that
which is characterized by an unnamed agent. Such insights may be particularly
important for proposition-level comprehension (Kintsch, 1998; Kintsch & van
Dijk, 1978) and thus may be valuable in comprehension processing, independent
of any use of syntactic information to facilitate rapid reading. This role of MA
may be increasingly important as students move through the middle grades and
encounter academic texts with increasingly sophisticated syntax (e.g., increased
use of passive voice as in to be characterized and nominalized agents as in characterization; Fang & Schleppegrell, 2006). Given evidence that bilingual readers with
higher levels of metalinguistic ability are more successful with second-language
reading comprehension (e.g., Jiménez, Garcı́a, & Pearson, 1996; Nagy, Garcı́a,
Durgunoğlu, & Hancin-Bhatt, 1993), there is reason to believe that Nagy’s metalinguistic hypothesis may be particularly relevant for understanding the English
reading comprehension performance of LM learners.
Researchers studying this topic have typically sought to isolate the unique
contribution of MA by controlling for known reading-related skills in multiple
regression models. In light of the theoretical and empirical evidence for viewing
MA as related to other aspects of oral language development (Kuo & Anderson,
2006), such an approach is reasonable. In particular, MA’s contributions need to
be isolated from the confounding contributions of phonologically based decoding
skills, given the powerful role of the latter in reading development (e.g., Deacon &
Kirby, 2004; Nagy et al., 2006). However, researchers have also often controlled for
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intermediate reading skills, such as reading vocabulary and reading fluency, which
may be better characterized as proximal outcomes for MA that partially mediate
its contribution to the distal outcome of reading comprehension. By including
main effects of vocabulary and fluency as controls in multiple regression models,
researchers inadvertently partial out indirect effects of MA that occur via these
intermediate skills, and thus may underestimate MA’s importance. In the current
study, we employ an alternate approach, multivariate path analysis, to model
partially mediating relationships explicitly and account for the possibility that MA
makes indirect contributions to reading comprehension via reading vocabulary and
reading fluency.
CURRENT STUDY
The current study was designed to investigate the direct and indirect contributions
of English derivational MA to English reading comprehension in Spanish-speaking
LM learners in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade. Consistent with prior research,
we first evaluated the unique contributions of MA to reading comprehension, after
controlling for the known relationships with other reading skills and readingrelated language skills. Next, we extended prior approaches by using multivariate
path analysis to evaluate the simultaneous indirect contributions of MA to reading
comprehension via reading vocabulary, sight word reading fluency, and passage
reading fluency, as well as its direct contribution controlling for these indirect
effects. This study was guided by the following research questions:
1. Does MA make a unique contribution to reading comprehension, controlling
for phonemic decoding, sight word reading, passage reading fluency, reading
vocabulary, and listening comprehension, among Spanish-speaking LM learners
in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade?
2. Does MA make indirect contributions to reading comprehension via reading
vocabulary, sight word reading fluency, and/or passage fluency, controlling
for listening comprehension, and phonemic decoding, among Spanish-speaking
LM learners in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade? Does the direct contribution
of MA to reading comprehension remain after accounting for these indirect
contributions?
METHOD
Sample
Participating students were recruited from English-language arts classes in an
urban kindergarten to Grade 8 school in Massachusetts. The school was one
of several Strategic Education Research Partnership (SERP) sites participating
in a study of early adolescent students’ strengths and weaknesses in literacy.
SERP develops long-term partnerships between researchers and districts, with the
overarching goals of solving urgent problems of practice while at the same time
contributing to useable research knowledge. At the time of data collection, the
school was participating solely in assessment of its students and their literacy
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strengths and weaknesses, but not in any SERP instructional interventions. The
school serves a student population that is 91% Latino and 79% LM, with 46%
designated as limited English proficient (LEP). Ninety-one percent of the student
population came from low-income backgrounds, as indicated by receiving free or
reduced lunch. According to school officials, the percent of students designated
as LEP was much smaller in the middle grades, and thus no self-contained or
pull-out English as a second language classes were offered for LEP students in
Grades 6, 7, or 8. The six participating classes thus represented the entire regular
education student population at these grades. Consistent with educational policy
throughout Massachusetts, reading instruction at the school was delivered only in
English throughout the elementary and middle school grades.
The sample consisted of 101 students who self-reported a home language of
Spanish on a researcher-administered survey. Participants included 41 students
in Grade 6, 35 students in Grade 7, and 25 students in Grade 8. The sample
was 55.4% female. Median ages were 11 years for sixth graders, 12 years for
seventh graders, and 13 years for eighth graders. Fifty percent of students reported
feeling equally comfortable speaking in Spanish and in English, 7% declined to
respond to this question, and the remaining students were evenly split between
those who felt more comfortable in Spanish and those who were more comfortable
in English. This variation in self-reported language use is typical of populations
that are considered “language minority,” a term that includes English-dominant
students from Spanish-speaking homes as well as their Spanish-dominant counterparts (August & Shanahan, 2006). Nonetheless, to investigate the possibility that
there are actually multiple populations in the sample for whom differing relationships exist, additional subgroup analyses were conducted, separating the Spanishdominant subgroup from those reporting equal or greater comfort in English (see
below).
Measures
Reading comprehension. Students’ reading comprehension was assessed using
the Group Reading Assessment and Diagnostic Evaluation (GRADE; Williams,
2001), an untimed, norm-referenced multiple-choice reading test. The GRADE
reading comprehension section includes sentence comprehension and passage
comprehension items, which together form a reading comprehension composite
score. Sentence comprehension items measure students’ comprehension of a sentence as a whole thought or unit. Students silently read short sentences in which
one of the words is missing and then select the appropriate word to complete the
sentence from a list of four to five choices. Passage comprehension items measure students’ comprehension skills with an extended grade-level passage. After
silently reading a passage with one or more paragraphs, students answer three to
five multiple-choice questions about the passage. Students completed Form A of
the test appropriate for their grade level (i.e., Level 6 for students in Grade 6 and
Level M for students in Grades 7 and 8). The publisher reports evidence of good
reliability across grade levels for both the passage comprehension (Cronbach α =
0.86–0.92) and sentence comprehension items (Cronbach α = 0.84–0.87) as well
as evidence of concurrent validity (Williams, 2001).
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MA. Students’ MA was assessed using a derivational decomposition task, created
based on a paradigm originally designed by Carlisle (2000), which has been used in
several studies conducted with LM learners (Carlo et al., 2004; Kieffer & Lesaux,
2008; Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller, & Kelley, 2010). The version of this task used in
the current study was a 30-item untimed task, in which test administrators provide
students with a word with a derivational suffix (e.g., complexity) and ask the
children to extract the base word (e.g., complex) to complete a sentence (e.g., The
problem is ___________). Test administrators read the word and sentence aloud,
while students read along, and students responded with a written answer. The first
author scored written answers to the task dichotomously using a detailed scoring
guide that included a rubric along with sample correct and incorrect responses.
Responses were scored as correct if they provided the correctly spelled form of
the base word or a phonetically justifiable version of the base word form, such as
posess for possess or durible for durable. Responses were scored as incorrect if
they were morphologically unrelated words such as have for possess or hard for
durable, when they were incorrectly decomposed responses such as poss or dur, or
when they were ambiguous responses such as possese and durabil.1 The estimated
internal consistency reliability in the current sample was adequate (Cronbach α
= 0.81). Interrater agreement between the first author and a trained research
assistant was very high, when estimated based on duplicate coding of 100 tasks
from sixth-grade LM learners in a separate sample (agreement = 98%; Cohen κ
= 0.96). Several prior studies attest to the validity of tasks using this paradigm for
this population, including evidence of convergent and divergent validity in LM
populations (Carlo et al., 2004; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008) and evidence of construct
validity based on the fitting of confirmatory factor analytic models (Kieffer &
Lesaux, in press-c).
Reading vocabulary. Students’ reading vocabulary was assessed using the
GRADE reading vocabulary subtest, an untimed, multiple-choice measure of
students’ breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Students silently read a short sentence in which a target word is printed in bold type and they select an appropriate
synonym for the word from a list of four to five choices. The publisher reports
good reliability across grades (Cronbach α = 0.80–0.89) as well as evidence of
concurrent validity (Williams, 2001).
Sight word reading fluency. Students’ fluency at reading frequent sight words
was assessed individually using the sight word efficiency subtest of the Test of
Word Reading Efficiency (TOWRE; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1999). In this
test, students read aloud a list of sight words of increasing complexity in 45 s, with
their score representing the number of words read correctly. The publisher reports
reliability estimates above 0.90 as well as substantial evidence of validity.
Passage reading fluency. Students’ fluency with connected text was assessed
individually using passages from the oral reading fluency subtest of the Dynamic
Indicators of Basic Early Literacy Skills (Good & Kaminski, 2002). In this task,
students read a passage aloud in 1 min, while a test administrator notes words read
correctly and errors. Each student read four passages drawn from the materials
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available for fifth and sixth grade (one narrative and one expository passage from
each grade level). The totals for words read correctly on the four passages were
averaged to form a simple composite.2 In the current sample, this composite
had very high internal consistency reliability (0.98). As evidence of concurrent
validity, this measure also demonstrated strong correlations with the other reading
measures and a much lower correlation with the listening comprehension measure
in the current sample (see Table 1). The publishers report reliability and validity
evidence for this subtest through third grade, although not for the grade levels used
in the current study (Good, Wallin, Simmons, Kame’enui, & Kaminski, 2002).
Listening comprehension. Students’ comprehension of oral language was as-
sessed using the GRADE listening comprehension subtest, a multiple-choice
measure of students’ ability to comprehend complex statements without printed
cues. Students listen to a sentence or pair of sentences that are read aloud by
the test administrator, and they select one of four pictures that best matches the
sentence or pair of sentences. The publisher reports internal consistency reliability
estimates across grades that are moderate (0.66–0.81), although consistent with
other measures of this construct.3
Phonemic decoding efficiency. Students’ efficiency of phonemic decoding was
assessed individually using the phonemic decoding efficiency subtest of the
TOWRE (Torgesen et al., 1999). In this test, students read aloud a list of phonetically regular nonwords of increasing complexity in 45 s, with their score representing the number of nonwords read correctly. The publisher reports reliability
estimates above 0.90 as well as substantial evidence of validity.
Data analyses
Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate multiple simultaneous relationships among the variables of interest, while estimating both direct and indirect
(partially mediating) effects of MA on reading comprehension. Path analysis can
be thought of as a subtype of structural equation modeling in which all constructs
in the structural model are represented by variables that have a single, observed
indicator (e.g., Bollen, 1989; Bozionelos, 2003). Path analysis has several advantages over the ordinary least squares (OLS) multiple regression approaches that
have been used almost exclusively in prior research in this area, three of which
are particularly relevant to this study. First, whereas OLS regression models only
allow independent predictors for a single dependent outcome, path analysis allows
researchers to specify that one or more variables are simultaneously dependent
variables in one relationship and independent variables in another (i.e., that they
are serving as a mediating variable to a full or partial extent). In the current study,
the most linguistically basic variables (i.e., MA, listening comprehension, and
phonemic decoding efficiency) were specified as independent variables, whereas
intermediate reading skills hypothesized to act as mediators (i.e., reading vocabulary, sight word fluency, passage reading fluency) were specified as proximal
outcomes for the independent variables as well as predictors of the distal outcome
of reading comprehension. Second, unlike OLS regression, path analysis allows
Table 1. Correlations, means, and standard deviations for language and literacy measures, estimated using full-information
maximum likelihood (n = 101)
1. Reading comprehension (standard score)
2. Reading vocabulary (standard score)
3. Listening comprehension (stanine)
4. Sight word reading efficiency (standard score)
5. Phonemic decoding efficiency (standard score)
6. Passage reading fluency (average words correct per minute)
7. Morphological awareness (raw score out of 30)
Mean
Standard deviation
**p < .01. ***p < .001.
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
—
.64***
.39***
.32***
.38***
.47***
.46***
95.53
9.51
—
.44***
.29**
.36***
.42***
.44***
98.34
10.24
—
−.02
.11
.09
−.02
3.71
1.15
—
.78***
.67***
.47***
97.70
9.29
—
.68***
.46***
102.39
12.97
—
.47***
145.09
31.81
—
24.57
3.98
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708
Morphological
Awareness
Reading
Vocabulary
Listening
Comprehension
Reading
Comprehension
Phonemic
Decoding
Efficiency
Passage Reading
Fluency
Sight Word
Reading Fluency
Grade
Figure 1. A path diagram representing the hypothesized path analysis model to address the
first research question, with observed variables represented as rectangles, the effect of interest
represented as a black arrow, and effects of controls represented as gray arrows.
researchers to estimate the magnitude and test the significance of indirect effects.
Third, path analysis can utilize full-information maximum likelihood estimation
to account for missing data appropriately; in the present study, this prevented the
exclusion of 10 cases with missing data on one or two measures.
The first research question was addressed by fitting the hypothesized path model
displayed in the path diagram in Figure 1. Variables are represented with labeled
rectangles while hypothesized regression paths are represented as single-headed
arrows, with the central path of interest in black and control effects in gray.
The second research question was addressed by fitting the hypothesized model
displayed in Figure 2. As shown, MA and the control variables of phonemic
decoding efficiency and listening comprehension each predicted the mediating
variables of reading vocabulary, sight word fluency, and passage reading fluency,
each of which in turn predicted the distal outcome of reading comprehension.
The direct effect of MA on reading comprehension is depicted as a black singleline arrow, whereas the partially mediated paths of interest are depicted as black
double-line arrows. The statistical significance of each of these paths of interest was evaluated, using the corresponding z statistic (which is analogous to a
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Morphological
Awareness
709
Reading
Vocabulary
Sight Word
Reading Fluency
Reading
Comprehension
Listening
Comprehension
Phonemic
Decoding
Efficiency
Passage Reading
Fluency
Grade
Figure 2. A path diagram representing the hypothesized path analysis model to address the
second research question, with observed variables represented as rectangles, direct effect of
interest represented as a black single-line arrow, moderated effects of interest represented as
black double-line arrows, and effects of controls represented as gray arrows.
t statistic in OLS regression) for each direct effect and using 95% confidence
intervals (CIs) based on bootstrapped standard errors for each indirect effect.
To determine whether a partially mediated model was appropriate, the overall
goodness of fit for the hypothesized model represented in Figure 2 was compared
to that of the model represented in Figure 1 (i.e., a direct effects-only model)
and to a model in which only indirect effects were included (i.e., a fully mediated model). In addition, multiple-group path analysis models, in which group
was specified by students’ grade level, were estimated to investigate whether the
relationships of interest differed by grade level. Multiple-group models were also
fitted to investigate whether students who were Spanish dominant demonstrated
different relationships from those LM learners who spoke English and Spanish
equally comfortably or spoke English more comfortably. Finally, to investigate
whether findings were sensitive to the effects of the hierarchical nesting of students
within classrooms, additional models that included fixed effects of classes were
fitted.
RESULTS
Descriptive statistics
Table 1 presents descriptive statistics for the sample, including means, standard
deviations, and correlations for the English language and literacy measures used.
The students were performing in the average range based on national norms (i.e.,
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within five standard score points of the mean of 100) for reading comprehension, reading vocabulary, sight word fluency, and phonemic decoding efficiency,
but in the low-average range for listening comprehension (i.e., 1.3 stanines or
approximately two-thirds of a standard deviation below the national average of
5). Although this weakness is specific to a single measure, there is some reason
to believe that it indicates a meaningful limitation in these LM learners’ oral
English development. A prior study we conducted (Mancilla-Martinez, Kieffer,
Biancarosa, Christodoulou, & Snow, 2011) found that this measure did predict
the elevation of students’ growth trajectories in reading comprehension between
fifth and seventh grade, correlations in the current sample support the convergent
and divergent validity of this measures, and a content analysis of this measure
found that it draws on semantic and syntactic knowledge that are likely to be
important for reading with understanding (Mancilla-Martinez & Spencer, 2007).
At the same time, it is worth noting that this may be due to the moderate reliability
of the listening comprehension measures, which is consistent with other measures
of this construct (see above).
The correlations indicated that MA was moderately related to reading comprehension as well as moderately related to each of the other reading measures.
There was no evidence of a correlation between MA and listening comprehension.
In addition, the moderate to strong correlations between reading comprehension
and all of the other language and literacy measures suggest the importance of
controlling for these variables to identify the unique contribution of MA.
Unique contribution of MA
To address the first research question, reading comprehension was regressed on
MA as well as phonemic decoding efficiency, sight word reading, passage reading
fluency, reading vocabulary, listening comprehension, and the main effects of
grade level (see Figure 1). Results indicated that MA had a statistically significant
relationship to reading comprehension, after controlling for the main effects of
the other variables (standardized β̂ = 0.24; z statistic = 3.01; p = .0026), and
that a model including the path between MA and reading comprehension had a
much better fit than a model without this path (!χ2 = 56.33). The second and
third column in Table 2 display this fitted model for the direct contributions of
MA and the control variables on reading comprehension. To be consistent with
prior studies, the same model was fitted using OLS regression to the data from the
90% of cases with complete data, as shown in the fourth and fifth column in Table
2. Results were essentially the same, with MA making a statistically significant
unique contribution to reading comprehension, after controlling for the other main
effects (standardized β̂ = 0.251; t = 2.92; p = .0046; !R2 = .04). These results
were robust to the inclusion of fixed effects to account for the hierarchical nesting
of students within classes.
Multiple-group path analyses indicated that the unique contribution of MA did
not differ significantly by grade. This finding was the same in a more parsimonious
model in which the effects of all other variables were fixed to be the same across
grades (for the effect of MA: !χ2 = 4.16; !df = 2; p = .1252) and in a more
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Table 2. Direct effects of morphological awareness and control variables on
reading comprehension, based on path analysis and multiple regression models
Path Analysis
(n = 101)
Multiple Regression
(n = 91)
Variable
Stand. β̂
z
Stand. β̂
t
Morphological awareness
Reading vocabulary
Listening comprehension
Sight word reading fluency
Phonemic decoding efficiency
Passage reading fluency
Grade 7
Grade 8
0.24
0.35
0.14
0.01
−0.21
0.47
−0.37
−0.30
3.01**
3.81***
1.77
0.09
−1.81
4.03***
−4.81***
−3.55***
0.25
0.32
0.17
0.04
−0.20
0.45
−0.38
−0.28
2.92**
3.36**
1.99*
0.97
−1.59
3.66***
−4.39***
−2.98**
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
conservative model in which the effects of all other variables were allowed to vary
by grade (for the effect of MA: !χ2 = 3.58; !df = 2; p = .1672). Although
the differences by grade were not statistically significant in the multiple-group
models, the point estimates for the standardized regression coefficients suggested
a trend in which effects for the sixth graders (0.35–0.36, varying by model) were
larger than those of the seventh graders (0.19–0.22), which in turn were larger than
those for the eighth graders (0.03–0.15). These results were further confirmed by
OLS regression; interactions between grade level and MA did not significantly
predict reading comprehension, when accounting for the main effects of grade
level and MA. These regression results were also robust to the inclusion of fixed
effects for classes.
Indirect contributions of MA
To address the second research question, we fitted a multivariate path analysis
model (see Figure 2) to evaluate the indirect contributions of MA via reading
vocabulary, sight word fluency, and passage reading fluency, as shown in Table
3. Because z statistics for indirect effects can be biased by deviations from distributional assumptions, bootstrapped standard errors were estimated for these
parameters and used to construct 95% CIs to determine whether they were statistically significant, as displayed in the fifth column in Table 3.
Results indicated that, in addition to a significant direct contribution, MA made
significant indirect contributions to reading comprehension via reading vocabulary
(β̂ = 0.32; 95% CI = 0.13–0.63; standardized β̂ = 0.13) and via passage reading
fluency (β̂ = 0.19; 95% CI = 0.04–0.48; standardized β̂ = .08). However, MA
did not make a significant indirect contribution via sight word reading fluency
(β̂ = 0.003; 95% CI = −0.07–0.13; standardized β̂ = .001). Multiple-group
path analyses indicated that none of these indirect contributions differed by grade,
Table 3. Direct and indirect effects of morphological awareness on reading
comprehension
Path
β̂
Stand. β̂
z
CI β̂a
Direct Effects on Reading Comprehension
Morphological awareness
Reading vocabulary
Listening comprehension
Sight word reading fluency
Phonemic decoding efficiency
Passage reading fluency
Grade 7
Grade 8
0.58
0.32
1.18
0.01
−0.16
0.14
−7.44
−6.54
0.24
0.35
0.14
0.01
−0.21
0.47
−0.37
−0.30
2.77**
3.71***
1.45
0.07
−1.55
3.27**
−4.69***
−3.16**
Indirect Effects on Reading Comprehension
Morphological awareness
via reading vocabulary
Morphological awareness
via sight word reading fluency
Morphological awareness
via passage fluency
0.32
.13
2.54*
0.003
.001
0.05
−0.07 to 0.13
0.19
.08
1.78
0.04 to 0.48
Direct Effects on Moderators
Morphological awareness
→ reading vocabulary
Listening comprehension
→ reading vocabulary
Phonemic decoding efficiency
→ reading vocabulary
Grade 7 → reading vocabulary
Grade 8 → reading vocabulary
Morphological awareness
→ sight word reading fluency
Phonemic decoding efficiency
→ sight word reading fluency
Listening comprehension
→ sight word reading fluency
Grade 7 → sight word reading
Grade 8 → sight word reading
Morphological awareness
→ passage fluency
Listening comprehension
→ passage fluency
Phonemic decoding efficiency
→ passage fluency
Grade 7 → passage reading fluency
Grade 8 → passage reading fluency
0.98
0.38
3.68***
3.86
0.43
4.67***
0.11
1.31
−0.05
0.14
0.06
−0.002
1.52
0.65
1.81
0.25
0.11
1.34
0.52
0.73
−0.65
2.44
−0.08
−0.08
0.13
−0.004
−1.14
1.95
−0.04
1.37
0.17
1.85
2.65
0.09
1.27
1.56
16.87
28.57
0.61
0.24
0.38
8.05***
3.71***
4.46***
Note: From the path analysis model in Figure 2 (n = 101).
Bootstrappcd 95% confidence interval (CI).
*p < .05. **p < .01. ***p < .001.
a
11.15***
0.13 to 0.63
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713
including the indirect effect via reading vocabulary (!χ2 = 0.53; !df = 4; p =
.9701), the indirect effect via passage reading fluency (!χ2 = 5.64; !df = 4;
p = .2281), and the indirect effect via sight word fluency (χ2 = 7.37; !df = 4;
p = .1176). Similar to the results for the direct effect of MA, the point estimate
for the indirect effect via passage reading fluency was notably larger for the sixth
graders, compared to the seventh and eighth graders. The point estimates for the
other two indirect effects had similar magnitudes across the three grades.
Robustness checks
Findings were robust to a variety of different specifications and superior to several theoretically grounded alternative hypotheses. In particular, the findings of
significant indirect contributions via reading vocabulary and via passage reading
fluency, but nonsignificant indirect contributions via sight word reading fluency
were consistent across a variety of alternative model specifications. For instance,
we considered the possibility that including both sight word reading fluency and
passage reading fluency as mediators may have induced multicollinearity, and
thus fitted two additional, separate models: one that excluded sight word reading
fluency and one that excluded passage reading fluency as mediators. Results were
entirely consistent with the more complicated model including both mediators
simultaneously. Results also remained the same regardless of whether we accounted for marginal covariances among the independent variables and among
the error variances for the dependent variables. Similarly, each of the results
reported above were robust to the inclusion of fixed effects of classes on reading
comprehension.4
To investigate whether the indirect effects fully mediated rather than partially
mediated the effect of MA, we compared the model in Figure 2 to a model that
included all three indirect effects but no direct effect of MA on reading comprehension. The direct and indirect effects model had significantly better goodness
of fit than an indirect effects only model (!χ2 = 8.68; !df = 1; p = .0032),
indicating that MA is partially mediated by other skills, and confirming that the
direct effect of MA is significant after accounting for indirect effects. In addition,
to shed light on whether the three mediated paths collectively improved model
fit, we compared the overall goodness of fit of the mediated model represented
in Figure 2 with that of the direct effects-only model represented in Figure 1,
and found that the mediated model had superior fit (!χ2 = 18.59; !df = 3;
p = .0003). As with the findings above, these results were robust to a variety of
alternate model specifications.
Finally, to investigate the possibility that the sample actually represented two
distinct populations, one that included Spanish-dominant LM learners and one
that included students who were dominant or equally fluent in English, additional
multiple-group analyses were conducted. A dichotomous language dominance
group variable represented whether students were Spanish dominant (i.e., those
who reported speaking Spanish better than English) or balanced/English dominant
(i.e., those who reported speaking both languages equally comfortably or who
reported being more comfortable in English). This variable was not significantly
correlated with any of the measures (all ps > .10). In addition, models for research
question 1 (i.e., Figure 1) and research question 2 (i.e., Figure 2) were refitted
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in multiple-group path models with group specified by this language dominance
variable. Given the relatively small subgroup sample sizes, the effects of grade
level were not included in these additional models. Neither model indicated two
populations with differing relationships. The fitted relationships did not differ
significantly by language dominance group for the model with only direct effects
(!χ2 = 11.14; !df = 6; p = .0842) nor for the mediated model displayed in
Figure 2 (!χ2 = 18.78; !df = 15; p = .2534. Overall, the findings reported above
are robust for LM learners from Spanish-speaking home regardless of variation
in the language in which they report being most comfortable speaking. Further
details on each of these robustness checks are available from the first author.
DISCUSSION
This study builds on and extends prior research establishing a relationship between
MA and reading comprehension by providing explicit tests of direct and indirect
pathways that explain this relationship for Spanish-speaking LM learners in Grades
6, 7, and 8. A model that included direct and partially mediated effects of MA
on reading comprehension yielded superior fit to the data, compared to a fully
mediated model and to a model with only direct effects. This conclusion was
consistent for Spanish-dominant LM learners as well as balanced bilingual and
English-dominant LM learners and was found to be robust across grades and
model specifications.
The findings from this study have three main implications for understanding
the reading development of LM learners. First, our results converge with prior
studies in highlighting the important role of MA in the reading development of
Spanish-speaking LM learners (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Ramirez et al., 2010),
while demonstrating that the unique contribution of MA to reading comprehension
remains significant after controlling for language and reading skills that have not
been taken into account previously (i.e., listening comprehension and passage
reading fluency). Second, our results converge with prior research conducted with
native English speakers in identifying reading vocabulary as a powerful mediator
of the relationship between MA and reading comprehension (Nagy et al., 2006)
and extend this finding to the population of Spanish-speaking LM learners. Both
of these findings are also consistent with those from a recent study conducted by
Kieffer and Lesaux (in press-b), which used similar measures and analyses with
a large linguistically diverse sample of sixth graders. Third, our results suggest
that the effects of MA may also be mediated by reading fluency at the passage
level, a rarely examined indirect path. Together, these findings contribute to a
more complete view of the multiple direct and indirect roles that MA may play in
English reading comprehension for LM learners.
MA as a robust unique predictor of reading comprehension
Our results indicated that the unique contribution of English MA to English
reading comprehension remained significant, not only after accounting for the
effects of commonly used controls such as phonological decoding and vocabulary
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knowledge, but also after controlling for listening comprehension and reading
fluency at both the word and passage level. Further, we found that the unique,
direct effect of MA remains significant after accounting for three of the most
likely indirect pathways. In other words, MA is an important predictor of reading
comprehension, even after we account for its role in predicting other components of
skilled reading including vocabulary, word recognition, and oral reading fluency.
This finding adds to a small, but growing body of research that has identified
MA as a robust predictor of reading outcomes for not only monolingual speakers
of various languages (Kuo & Anderson, 2006), but also students from varying
backgrounds learning English as a second language (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008;
Ramirez et al., 2010; Schiff & Calif, 2007; Wang et al., 2006; Wang, Ko, &
Choi, 2009; Zhang et al., 2010). In particular, we extend previous findings on the
importance of derivational MA to reading comprehension during the elementary
grades (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008) by finding that the predictive
power of derivational MA continues into the middle school grades for LM learners.
There are multiple interpretations for this finding. One possibility is that MA,
particularly as assessed on a sentence completion measure, may draw on syntactic skills that are in turn involved in sentence and text comprehension. Despite
the numerous controls and mediators investigated in the current study, syntactic
awareness was not among them, raising an important question for future research.
A second possibility is that MA may provide insights into semantic information at
the word and sentence level during real-time reading comprehension, regardless
of any effects on long-term vocabulary acquisition (Nagy, 2007). When students
with well-developed MA encounter novel morphologically complex words while
reading, they may not always succeed in acquiring these words into their vocabularies, but may nonetheless gain meaning that is helpful to getting the gist of a
sentence or passage.
This finding also supports Nagy’s (2007) metalinguistic hypothesis, which theorizes that MA, as one aspect of metalinguistic awareness, contributes to the reading
comprehension process beyond its role in vocabulary acquisition. Specifically, the
current finding supports the notion that LM learners who do better with English
reading comprehension do not merely know more words, but they also know
more about words, including how words are structured, how they relate semantically to other words, and how their constituent parts contribute to their syntactic
features. Conversely, LM learners who struggle with comprehension may have
underdeveloped metalinguistic awareness that is not readily apparent from their
vocabulary and listening comprehension. This latter hypothesis contrasts with the
frequently considered idea that metalinguistic abilities are an area of strength for
bilingual readers (e.g., Cummins, 1978, 1993; Jiménez et al., 1995) that they can
use to compensate for limited linguistic knowledge (e.g., knowledge of specific
word meanings in the second language). Although some LM learners certainly
demonstrate sophisticated metalinguistic skills in English, our findings suggest
that other LM learners have underdeveloped metalinguistic skills that are insufficient for comprehending sophisticated English text. Future research is needed
to investigate these hypotheses, by directly comparing native English speakers
and LM learners on these dimensions, and exploring the extent to which LM
learners’ development of these metalinguistic abilities is related to their levels
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of bilingualism (e.g., Bialystok, 1988) as well as opportunities to develop these
abilities in school.
Supporting a partially mediating role for vocabulary
Findings from the current study converge with previous empirical findings (e.g.,
Nagy et al., 2006) as well as a common theoretical argument (e.g., Kuo &
Anderson, 2006; Stahl & Nagy, 2006) in suggesting that an important role for
MA involves the broadening of students’ reading vocabulary, which in turn yields
a broader repertoire of word meanings for extracting meaning from text. The indirect contribution of MA to comprehension via reading vocabulary was found to be
statistically significant and larger in magnitude than any of the other indirect paths.
This path was significant after controlling for English listening comprehension,
suggesting differences in overall English language development do not explain
this effect.
For the large numbers of LM learners in the middle grades who demonstrate
relatively limited levels of English vocabulary and consequently low reading comprehension (e.g., August et al., 2005; Lesaux & Kieffer, 2010; Mancilla-Martinez
& Lesaux, 2010), this finding suggests that MA may be a promising point of
leverage for intervention. A growing body of experimental and quasiexperimental
research suggests that instruction in morphology may be able to improve vocabulary and reading comprehension outcomes in monolingual students (for a
review, see Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010), and a few studies conducted with
LM learners have suggested similar results (Carlo et al., 2004; Lesaux et al.,
2010). Recent research syntheses have also provided some guidelines for what
such instruction should entail (e.g., Bowers et al., 2010; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2007,
2010; Stahl & Nagy, 2006). The nonexperimental, observational design of the
current study prevents us from making any claims about the utility of instruction
in MA for students with limited English vocabulary knowledge. Nonetheless, our
findings, combined with those of others, suggest that this may be a valuable area
for intervention studies to pursue.
The intriguing partially mediating role of passage reading fluency
Perhaps the most surprising findings from the current study was that reading
fluency at the passage level, but not the word level, was a significant mediator
of MA. Although MA, along with more implicit morphological processing, has
often been implicated in accurate and efficient word reading (Carlisle & Stone,
2005; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Deacon et al., 2006; Mahony et al., 2000; Nagy
et al., 1989, 2006), it has rarely been investigated as a predictor of passage reading
fluency. There are multiple possible explanations for this finding, each of which
raises important questions for future research.
One explanation is that this effect is not specific to passage reading fluency, per
se, but is rather due to the accumulation of effects on word reading. That is, perhaps
morphological processing simply speeds up students’ reading of individual words,
consistent with prior findings (e.g., Berninger et al., 2001; Deacon et al., 2010),
enough so that it thereby increases the speed with which a whole passage is read.
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Although this explanation is compelling, the indirect effect of MA on reading
comprehension via passage reading fluency remained significant in a model that
controlled for partial mediation via sight word reading fluency, suggesting that this
pathway may be independent of any cumulative effect on individual word reading
fluency.
A second explanation of this finding relates to features of the sight word fluency
and/or passage reading fluency measures used. Although the TOWRE sight word
efficiency (Torgesen et al., 1999) and Dynamic Indicators of Basic Early Literacy
Skills oral reading fluency (Good & Kaminski, 2002) measures are both widely
used in practice and research, they have been used less frequently in studies investigating MA, in part because they were not specifically designed to be sensitive
to the effects of MA. It is possible that using a word reading fluency measure
that targeted morphologically complex words, similar to the timed word reading
measure used by Berninger et al. (2001), in place of the TOWRE would have led to
a larger and significant moderating effect for word reading; if so, the moderating
effect of word reading fluency might have lessened the moderation by passage
reading fluency. Then again, because studies that have incorporated word reading
measures that target morphological complex words have not also incorporated
passage reading fluency, this remains an open question.
A more interesting explanation for the finding is that MA truly plays a role
in facilitating passage-level fluency and thereby facilitating reading comprehension. LM learners with more developed awareness of derivational morphology
may be better equipped not only to read individual words rapidly, but indeed
to parse the syntactic structures of connected text rapidly, yielding more efficient oral reading of phrases, clauses, and sentences. This finding thus suggests
that morphology should be integrated into multidimensional models of reading
fluency.
Although reading research and theory have historically treated morphology with
“benign neglect” (Durgunoğlu, 2006, p. 438; see also Goswami & Ziegler, 2006),
recent theoretical models of reading fluency have recognized the contributions of
multiple language systems, including morphology. For instance, Berninger and
colleagues (2001) proposed a systems model for learning to read single words in
which a morphological layer is interconnected with the well-established orthographic and phonological layers of word learning, each of which are thought to be
managed by a lexical and sublexical processor. Berninger and colleagues (2001)
provided empirical support for the importance of this morphological layer to
single-word reading fluency by reporting data that demonstrated that MA predicts
single-word reading rate, after controlling for phonological decoding, in second
and fourth graders who are at risk for reading difficulties. More interesting in
light of our findings, the authors proposed that this morphological layer is also
interconnected with a syntactic layer, which in turn connects individual words
with the discourse processor for larger units of text. Combined with their reminder
that fluency at the word, sentence, and text levels may operate differently (and that
readers who are dysfluent at each level may have different underlying processing
difficulties), this systems model suggests that fluent reading of connected text
may draw on MA in ways that are distinct from those involved in fluent reading
of individual words (see also Wolf & Katzir-Cohen, 2001).
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Despite this theoretical support for a role for MA in fluent reading of connected
text, the empirical studies to date have focused almost exclusively on the role of
morphological processes in fluency at the sublexical and lexical levels. Subject to
replication with other populations, measures, and research designs, our findings
suggest that this emphasis may neglect important processes: students’ extraction
of morphosyntactic information (i.e., syntactic information from affixes) from
individual words may facilitate more efficient reading at the phrase, clause, and/or
sentence level. This morphosyntactic role may be particularly important for LM
learners who are likely to have less developed understanding of syntax in their
second language, which may constrain the efficiency with which they can read
connected text, even in the presence of accurate and fast word recognition. This
latter hypothesis would be consistent with findings that second-language oral
proficiency more broadly plays a unique role in word and passage reading fluency
for second-language learners (e.g., Geva & Zadeh, 2006) and is worthy of future
research comparing these relationships in LM learners with those of native English
speakers.
It is also possible that MA’s effects on passage reading fluency are the result,
rather than the cause, of MA’s effects on reading comprehension. Although fluency
is often treated as the prerequisite for successful higher order comprehension
processing, researchers have also acknowledged that successful comprehension
processing facilitates more rapid reading of connected texts (e.g., Dowhower,
1987; Kuhn & Stahl, 2003; Slocum, Street, & Gilberts, 1995). For instance, if
MA allows readers to utilize semantic and syntactic information to draw more
successful inferences that yield a more robust representation of the text base from
the first few sentences of a passage, this may then support more rapid and efficient
reading of subsequent sentences. Although the current data did not allow us to
investigate this explanation, future experimental studies that carefully manipulate
morphological features of sentences or passages may shed some light on the
directionality of these relationships.
This finding also raises the practical question of whether instruction in morphology could particularly benefit those LM learners who struggle with passage fluency
when reading in English, whether or not they also demonstrate limited English
vocabulary knowledge. Some evidence suggests that substantial numbers of LM
learners with reading comprehension difficulties also demonstrate slow passage
reading; for instance, Lesaux and Kieffer (2010) found that approximately 60%
of LM learners in sixth grade who struggled with reading comprehension demonstrated slow, but accurate reading, albeit combined with limited English vocabulary
knowledge. Although morphology is more often taught in the context of vocabulary interventions, a few interventions have involved integrating morphology into
spelling and reading instruction for struggling decoders (e.g., Abbott & Berninger,
1999; Kirk & Gillon, 2009), and at least one multicomponent intervention that
incorporates morphology has targeted slow, but accurate readers (Wolf, Miller,
& Donnelly, 2000). Despite the promise of these approaches, the unique effects
of morphology instruction, isolated from other instructional components, remains
unclear. Thus, there is limited evidence for its effectiveness, especially for LM
learners who struggle with fluency, again highlighting the need for greater attention
to these hypotheses by researchers. Ultimately, experimental manipulation of MA
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719
through instruction will allow us to determine which of the explanations for the
current findings is best.
Limitations
This study has three limitations to be noted in the design of future studies. First,
although path analysis provides a valuable tool for simultaneously investigating
multiple direct and indirect relationships, it cannot establish causal relations from
observational data. Similarly, path analysis of cross-sectional data did not allow
us to model the bidirectional longitudinal relationships that may exist among MA,
vocabulary, and reading (e.g., Kieffer & Lesaux, in press-a; Kuo & Anderson,
2006; McBride-Chang et al., 2008). Future research utilizing experimental and
longitudinal data is needed to investigate such reciprocal or recursive developmental processes.
Second, the findings from the current study may not generalize to other language
and reading measures. In particular, the published measures of sight word reading
efficiency, reading vocabulary, and passage reading fluency used may not be the
most sensitive to the roles of MA, as noted earlier. Our findings thus speak to
the relationships of MA to these broad domains (i.e., the universes of grade-level
vocabulary, of frequent sight words, and of commonly used reading passages),
but cannot shed light on the presumably stronger relationships with the reading of
morphologically complex words and passages in which such words predominate.
In addition, the morphological decomposition task was selected because of its
frequent use in studies conducted with LM learners, but it may draw on syntactic
aspects of MA to a different extent than do analogy measures (e.g., Deacon
& Kirby, 2004). As a written task, it might also have yielded different results
than would an oral version of the measure. Future studies should consider using
multiple written and oral formats for measuring MA, as well as measures in LM
learners’ first languages, given recent evidence for cross-linguistic relationships
in MA (Deacon et al., 2007; Ramirez et al., 2010). Finally, the present study used
measures of listening and reading comprehension that came from the same battery; an independent measure of English language proficiency may have provided
additional insight into the nature of the sample.
Third, our null finding concerning the indirect effect of MA on reading comprehension via sight word reading fluency should be interpreted with caution, because
the moderate size of the current sample yields relatively limited statistical power
to detect small effects.5 Similarly, larger sample sizes within each grade would
have provided greater power to detect differences related to grade level, and larger
sample sizes within each language dominance group would have provided greater
power to determine whether the relations of interest differed by the language use
of students within the heterogeneous population of LM learners.
CONCLUSION
This study sheds light on the predictors of English reading comprehension for
Spanish-speaking LM learners in middle school by investigating the direct and
moderated roles of English MA. Findings contribute to the small but growing body
Applied Psycholinguistics 34:4
Kieffer et al.: Roles of morphological awareness
720
of evidence supporting the importance of MA in reading development across diverse language backgrounds, while also suggesting that the relationship between
MA and reading comprehension is moderated by reading vocabulary and passage
reading fluency in this population. Rather than seeking to partial out these moderating effects, researchers should consider the multiple important roles that MA
may play in the reading comprehension process for LM learners.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
Collection of data was supported by SERP, which receives support from the Spencer
Foundation, the Carnegie Corporation of New York, and the William and Flora Hewlett
Foundation. We thank Catherine E. Snow, who originated and supervised the larger research
project in the context of which these data were collected. We also thank the participating
administrators, teachers, and students who made this work possible.
NOTES
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
The dichotomous scoring scheme for this task was designed to improve upon the
multiple-category, partial-credit scoring scheme used by Carlo et al. (2004); in particular, dichotomous scores of these responses are likely to be less influenced by baseword spelling skills than the partial-credit scheme used previously (Nagy, personal
communication). In this way, we protected in part against the confounding of variation
in students’ ability to spell the base word with true variation in MA. That said, it is
worth noting that individually administering an oral version of the task (as done by
Carlisle, 2000) would have been ideal, but was not feasible in the present study due to
the size of the sample and concerns about the disruption to instructional time.
Recent research indicates that averaging oral reading fluency rates is essentially as
accurate and reliable as using a median rate to predict reading comprehension (Petscher
& Kim, 2011).
The moderate reliability on this subtest may be due to the difficulty of measuring
this construct with early adolescents, as opposed to younger children. Test publishers
guidelines for reliability appear to be more liberal for listening comprehension tests,
with alpha estimates often dipping well below 0.80. For instance, while the Woodcock
Language Proficiency Battery—Revised (Woodcock, 1995) listening comprehension
subtest has a median α of 0.81, the α is 0.66 for 13-year-olds. Even an assessment like
the Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals (Semel, Wiig, & Secord, 2003),
which is focused specifically on oral language development, can have only moderate
internal consistency. The Clinical Evaluation of Language Fundamentals subtests most
similar to the GRADE listening comprehension subtest show similar levels of internal
consistency; the α ranges from 0.64 to 0.76 for the sentence structure subtest and from
0.54 to 0.81 for the understanding spoken paragraphs subtest.
The models that incorporated fixed effects of classes on reading comprehension also
differ from the model presented in Figure 2 in that they do not include effects of grade
on the moderating variables.
It is worth noting that the current sample size is somewhat smaller than suggested
by some “rules of thumb” for minimum sample sizes in structural equation modeling.
Applied Psycholinguistics 34:4
Kieffer et al.: Roles of morphological awareness
721
However, as demonstrated by the reviews of research in quantitative methods conducted
by MacCallum, Widaman, Zhang, and Hong (1999) and by Velicer and Fava (1998),
such simple rules of thumb are invalid, because they do not account for the fact that
adequate sample size will always depend on the characteristics of the variables and the
study design. A moderate sample size does not, necessarily, lead to less trustworthy
findings when path analysis is used, as opposed than any other statistical technique.
Nonetheless, as with results from OLS regression, null results from path analyses using
relatively smaller samples should be interpreted with more caution than null results
from analyses with larger samples.
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