Language Awareness
ISSN: 0965-8416 (Print) 1747-7565 (Online) Journal homepage: https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rmla20
Developing morphological awareness across
languages: translanguaging pedagogies in third
language acquisition
Oihana Leonet, Jasone Cenoz & Durk Gorter
To cite this article: Oihana Leonet, Jasone Cenoz & Durk Gorter (2019): Developing
morphological awareness across languages: translanguaging pedagogies in third language
acquisition, Language Awareness, DOI: 10.1080/09658416.2019.1688338
To link to this article: https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2019.1688338
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Language awareness
https://doi.org/10.1080/09658416.2019.1688338
Developing morphological awareness across languages:
translanguaging pedagogies in third language acquisition
Oihana Leoneta,
Jasone Cenozb
and Durk Gorterc,d
a
Department of research Methods in education, Faculty of education, Philosophy and anthropology,
university of the Basque Country, uPV/eHu, Donostia-san sebastian, spain; bDepartment of research Methods
in education, Faculty of education, Philosophy and anthropology, university of the Basque Country, uPV/eHu,
Donostia-san sebastian, spain; cDepartment of Theory and History of education, Faculty of education,
Philosophy and anthropology, university of the Basque Country, uPV/eHu, Donostia-san sebastian, spain;
d
Ikerbasque, Basque Foundation for science, Bilbao, spain
ABSTRACT
ARTICLE HISTORY
This article focuses on the development of morphological awareness
in English as a third language. It analyses how the activation of
previous linguistic knowledge can influence morphological awareness.
Participants were 104 primary school students who were learning
English as a third language and were already fluent in two other languages, Basque and Spanish. Participants in the experimental group
took part in a pedagogical intervention aiming at the development of
morphological awareness by using translanguaging pedagogies. The
aim of the intervention was to enable participants to use their linguistic
repertoire across languages and benefit from their multilingual resources.
Results indicate that participants in the experimental group obtained
higher scores in morphological awareness than the control group from
the same school. In addition, participants in the experimental group
perceived that the use of translanguaging strategies was useful for their
learning and also enjoyable as a teaching approach.
Received 18 September
2018
Accepted 24 October 2019
KEYWORDS
Morphological awareness;
translanguaging;
multilingual education;
multilingualism;
multilingual repertoire
Introduction
Morphemes are the smallest units that embody semantic and syntactic information and
morphological awareness has been defined as “the ability to reflect upon and manipulate
morphemes and employ word formation rules” (Kuo & Anderson, 2006, p. 161). It can be
considered, along with phonological, syntactic and pragmatic awareness, as part of metalinguistic awareness. Morphological awareness has been related to literacy skills in educational contexts. Nowadays, many schools can be considered, to a certain extent, multilingual
because they have several languages in the curriculum and/or because of the diversity of
students’ home languages. Multilinguals can potentially use more linguistic resources than
monolinguals and can compare the morphology of the languages in their linguistic repertoire if their knowledge is used across languages. However, it is common to find school
policies that follow a strict separation of languages and focus on one language at a time.
CONTACT Jasone Cenoz
jasone.cenoz@ehu.eus
© 2019 The author(s). Published by Informa uK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis group.
This is an Open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons attribution-nonCommercial-noDerivatives License
(http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0/), which permits non-commercial re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium,
provided the original work is properly cited, and is not altered, transformed, or built upon in any way.
2
O. LEONET ET AL.
This article focuses on the development of morphological awareness and pays special
attention to the way students use their linguistic resources when learning additional languages. The structure of the article is as follows: First, we look at morphological awareness
and literacy skills. Then, we relate morphological awareness to translanguaging pedagogies
before ending the section by formulating the research questions. Afterwards, the methodology and characteristics of the pedagogical intervention are described and the results are
reported. The final section discusses the results and teaching implications.
Morphological awareness and literacy skills
Morphological awareness includes the ability to reflect about inflection, derivation and compounding. In order to create new words, Basque, Spanish and English use derivational morphology, which includes affixes (prefixes and suffixes) and compounding. In the three
languages, prefixes and suffixes are added to the base morpheme in order to build a word
with a different meaning or belonging to a different category. An example of a prefix could
be ‘un-’ when added to a word such as happy to become unhappy. An example of a suffix
can be ‘-er’ when added to a word such as farm to become farmer. Compounding creates
new words by combining two existing words such as when hair + cut becomes haircut.
Interestingly, in the case of compounds, the order of the stem is closer between Basque and
English than between these languages and Spanish. In Basque and in English compounds
are head-final (kortxo-kentzeko or corkscrew) but in Spanish they are head-initial
(sacacorchos).
When measuring morphological awareness, Carlisle (2000) makes a distinction between
creating new meanings by adding affixes to a base (farm-farmer) and decomposing tasks
(farmer = farm + er) because adding affixes requires knowledge of grammatical rules while
relational knowledge is enough to complete decomposing tasks (see also McBridge-Chang,
Wagner, Muse, Chow, & Shu, 2005). There can also be differences between the first and the
second or additional languages regarding the use of affixes and compounding. For example,
compounding is widely used in Chinese but prefixes and suffixes are not (see for example
Koda, Lü, & Zhang, 2014).
Morphological awareness has been related to literacy development including vocabulary
development and reading comprehension (Ke & Xiao, 2015; Kim et al., 2015; Pasquarella,
Chen, Lam, Luo, & Ramirez, 2011). Regarding vocabulary development, Nation (2008) explains
that word part analysis is one of the most effective vocabulary strategies because it involves
recognition of the parts of the word, the ability to attach a relevant meaning to the most
useful of those parts and the ability to relate the meaning of word parts to the whole word.
Morphological awareness is also related to reading subskills such as lexical inferencing,
decoding, spelling or word identification (Ke & Xiao, 2015).
Research has shown that specific instruction on morphological structure can develop
morphological awareness. In a meta-analysis of 22 studies from pre-K to Grade 8, Bowers,
Kirby, and Deacon (2010) reported a positive effect on vocabulary size and reading comprehension. Moreover, this positive effect could extend to students’ motivation to investigate
words. When students develop morphological awareness by using strategies to analyse
unfamiliar words, they are more likely to use these strategies proactively when they are
reading and find words they do not know. Goodwin and Ahn (2010, 2013) also concluded
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
3
that morphological instruction can have a positive effect on morphological awareness and
literacy skills. Morphological awareness can be enhanced by explicitly teaching students
how to infer unknown words made up of familiar morphemes. Zhang (2016) reported an
intervention aimed at developing morphological awareness in Singapore and found that
the teaching of English derivation had a positive effect, both on English and Malay morphological awareness and word reading tasks. Meanwhile, Carlo et al. (2004) reported the positive
effect of morphological instruction on learning academic words, awareness of polysemy,
the use of contextual clues, and morphological and cross-linguistic aspects of word meaning.
In sum, research on morphological awareness not only shows that it is an important
aspect of language learning but also that it is closely linked to the development of literacy skills.
Morphological awareness and translanguaging
Even when several languages are taught at school, there are usually hard boundaries
between them, and the idea of avoiding the use of the L1 when learning other languages
is also well established. The compartmentalization of languages takes place at the curricular
and organizational level. Often different language syllabuses are developed for each language and collaboration among language teachers is not encouraged (Arocena, Cenoz, &
Gorter, 2015). This traditional view has been contested in recent years and there is a growing
belief that connections between languages and collaboration among language teachers
should be encouraged. One of the concepts that is widely used is translanguaging. This
concept has been used mainly in reference to bilingualism but in this article we report a
study carried out in a multilingual context involving three languages. Baker (2011, p. 288)
defined translanguaging as “the process of making meaning, shaping experiences, gaining
understanding and knowledge through the use of two languages”. García (2009, p. 45) went
beyond the idea of considering the co-existence of two separate languages and defines
translanguaging as “multiple discursive practices in which bilinguals engage, in order to
make sense of their bilingual worlds”. Bilinguals have a unique linguistic repertoire which is
used strategically to communicate in diverse multilingual settings. Most studies about
translanguaging have focused on analysing its functions in the classroom. For example,
Creese and Blackledge (2010) identified strategies that adopt “flexible bilingualism” in complementary schools in the united Kingdom. Translanguaging was used to engage students,
to establish their identities and to provide more access to the curriculum content.
Cenoz and Gorter (2017a) proposed a distinction between spontaneous translanguaging
and pedagogical translanguaging. Spontaneous translanguaging refers to the fluid use of
languages both inside and outside school, while pedagogical translanguaging refers to the
designed instructional strategies that integrate two or more languages. Cenoz and Gorter
(2017b) describe different types of pedagogical translanguaging strategies, such as using
input and output in different languages, translation, comparison of language structures and
derivational morphology, and the use of cognates. Pedagogical translanguaging implies
that cross-lingual connections are made so as to use the whole multilingual repertoire, that
is the totality of an individual’s languages, as a resource. In the same vein, there are proposals
to use the students’ first language as a cognitive tool in language and content learning (see
for example Levine, 2011; Swain & Lapkin, 2013; Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain, 2009). Cummins
4
O. LEONET ET AL.
(2007, 2017) highlights the need to teach effective learning strategies in a coordinated way
across languages (see also Lyster, 2015). Cummins and Persad (2014, p. 18) advocate for
pedagogies that integrate students’ background knowledge so as to incorporate new knowledge in previously acquired structures or schemata, meaning that “students should be
encouraged to use their L1 to activate and extend their conceptual knowledge” (Cummins
& Persad, 2014, p. 18). Escamilla et al. (2013) also adopt a holistic approach for teaching and
assessing Spanish and English literacies, proposing cross-linguistic strategies to develop
students’ metalinguistic awareness. Jones and Lewis (2014) analysed 100 lessons in 29 different schools in Welsh-English bilingual schools. They concluded that translanguaging,
understood in the original Welsh way as using different languages for input and output, was
a useful tool because it facilitated the understanding of content. The potential benefits of
pedagogical translanguaging have also been highlighted by Canagarajah (2011) or Leonet,
Cenoz, and Gorter (2017).
Translanguaging pedagogies can be useful for instruction aiming at the development of
morphological awareness because students can relate word formation in the language(s)
they know better to other languages. Research studies have shown that cross-linguistic
influence can facilitate its development (see for example Candry, Deconinck, & Eyckmans,
2017; Deacon, Wade-Woolley, & Kirby, 2007; Ke & Xiao, 2015; Pasquarella et al., 2011). It has
also been reported that cross-linguistic interaction at the morphological level can take place
in the case of typologically distinct languages (Ke & Xiao, 2015; Pasquarella et al., 2011). This
is relevant for the study reported here because the languages involved – Basque, Spanish
and English– are relatively distant from a typological perspective.
Some examples of an intervention to develop metalinguistic awareness by using cross-linguistic resources in French immersion programmes in Canada are reported by Lyster, Collins,
and Ballinger (2009) and Lyster, Quiroga, and Ballinger (2013). The first study is a pedagogical
intervention on alternating languages while reading aloud in French and English. The French
language teacher read aloud in French and then the English teacher continued reading the
same book in English. The project aimed to encourage collaboration among teachers so that
they became aware of their students’ resources as bilinguals. The results of the project indicate that their students were highly motivated and collaboration among teachers was also
highly appreciated. A few years later, Lyster et al. (2013) conducted another project on the
development of derivational morphology in French and English. The results indicated that
students in the experimental group outperformed students in the control group in the
Morphological Awareness Test in French. Students had very positive attitudes towards the
intervention in word derivation.
The studies discussed above provide some evidence on the effect of instruction across
languages on morphological awareness. Moreover, this type of instruction can be carried
out by using translanguaging pedagogies. These pedagogies include instruction across languages to develop morphological awareness but are much wider because they can potentially affect any area of instruction provided that resources from the whole multilingual
repertoire are used. The aim of this study is to examine whether instruction on derivational
morphology (prefixes, suffixes and compounding) using cross-linguistic strategies can influence students’ morphological awareness. The intervention reported here encompasses three
languages: Basque, Spanish and English. Basque is a non-Indo-European language while
Spanish and English are both Indo-European but belonging to different branches: Germanic
and Romance. Even though there is typological distance between the three languages, they
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
5
share some vocabulary from Latin and Greek. Moreover, Basque and Spanish are spoken in
the same territory and are in intensive language contact. Given the minority status of Basque,
there is considerable influence of Spanish on Basque vocabulary. Basque and English have
some similarities in compounding.
This study examined the following research questions:
RQ1. Do translanguaging pedagogies across three languages influence students’ morphological awareness?
RQ2. Do translanguaging pedagogies across three languages influence students’ perception
of their multilingual repertoire?
In order to answer these research questions, a mixed-method approach combining quantitative and qualitative research was applied.
Method
Participants
Participants were 104 multilingual school students in the fifth and sixth years of primary
education (age~10.67). The school is public and located in the Basque Autonomous
Community (Spain). Basque is the main language of instruction at the school and Basque,
Spanish and English are taught as school subjects. Language classes sum up to 11 hours per
week: four for Basque, four for Spanish and three for English. Participants were divided into
two groups: experimental and control. Participants in the experimental group took part in
a pedagogical intervention while participants in the control group followed their regular
programme. There was a total of five classes, of which three were experimental classes (n = 64)
and two were control classes (n = 40). Over half of the students (n = 59) were female and 45
were male. Participants declared Spanish (51.9%), Basque (26.9%) or both Basque and
Spanish (21.2%) as their mother tongue. Basque is the main language of instruction at school
for all the students but Spanish is the dominant language in society. All the students learn
English as a third language for three hours per week. Table 1 shows students’ self-reported
language proficiency scores. Participants were asked to rate their language proficiency in
the three languages in a scale from 1 (none) to 10 (very well). Basque and Spanish were rated
similarly although the scores for Spanish, the majority language, were slightly higher. As
could be expected, English, the third language, was rated lower than the two other languages.
Pedagogical intervention
This study was part of a larger research project that aimed to develop communicative and
academic competences in Basque, Spanish, and English. The specific focus of this research
Table 1. self-reported language proficiency.
Basque
spanish
english
Understanding
Speaking
Reading
M (SD)
M (SD)
M (SD)
Writing
M (SD)
8.60 (1.31)
8.92 (1.21)
6.52 (1.85)
8.21 (1.37)
8.92 (1.04)
6.24 (1.92)
8.47 (1.20)
8.75 (1.05)
6.68 (1.89)
7.72 (1.49)
7.98 (1.23)
6.53 (1.92)
6
O. LEONET ET AL.
study was the development of morphological awareness. The pedagogical intervention
took place in the three language classes for 12 weeks. The main objectives of the pedagogical intervention were to improve multilingual competence in Basque, Spanish and English,
and to promote students’ multilingual and metalinguistic awareness. The intervention was
part of daily instruction and took place during the Basque, Spanish and English language
classes but only for 40-50% of the time. A pedagogical translanguaging approach towards
morphological awareness as reported here differs from other approaches because students
work with the three languages at the same time in each of the language classes. The idea
is that their whole linguistic repertoire is activated during the intervention.
The intervention was designed so as to allow students to take advantage of all the
resources in their linguistic repertoire. Participants in the experimental and control groups
had the same number of hours for the three languages but there were important differences
between the two groups regarding translanguaging pedagogies. While the control group
had three different language classes in which the use of languages other than the target
language was avoided, the approach was completely different in the case of the experimental
group because the three languages were used in all the languages classes. The activities in
the experimental group followed the same syllabus as in the control group but crossed the
boundaries between languages. The idea was that by translanguaging, students could benefit from their multilingualism by using resources from their whole linguistic repertoire.
The activities focused on oral and written language and mainly on vocabulary and discourse. Some exercises focused on derivatives and compounds in Basque, Spanish and
English so that students realized that there can be similar word formation processes in the
three languages even if the words are different. The idea was for students to develop metalinguistic awareness and strategies to improve the comprehension and production of
vocabulary. One of the activities was to look at pictures of different shops, to discuss orally
the type of shop in one of the languages and then to write the type of shop in the three
languages so as to compare the similarities or differences. For example, “liburudenda, librería,
bookstore” include two compounds in the same order (Basque “liburudenda” and English
“bookstore”) and a derivative (Spanish: “librería”). Another example of an activity was to read
a text in English and to identify cognates in two or three languages. At the discourse level,
some activities consisted on analyzing the structure of a text, for example, a description in
one language and to write additional descriptions following the same structure in the other
two languages. Some activities also included the use of two or more languages in the input
and the output following the original translanguaging activities from Wales (Lewis, Jones,
& Baker, 2012a). In this intervention translanguaging is designed and planned but it goes
further than the use of different languages in the input and output by adding other acitivities.
It also goes further because it involves three languages.
The pedagogical intervention was carried out by three teachers who took a short course
on translanguaging pedagogies before the intervention. They were provided with teacher
guides and were supported by the research team during the intervention. Before the intervention took place, general information about the school and specific information about
the content and teaching methodology used in the three language arts classes (Basque,
Spanish and English) was gathered so as to adapt the activities to the school. Several interviews were also carried out with teachers and school managers and some classes were
observed.
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
7
Instruments
The present study employed four instruments to obtain information so as to answer the
research questions: (a) Background questionnaire (b) Morphological Awareness Test (c)
Translanguaging questionnaire and (d) Focus group discussion. Verbal and written instructions for each task were provided in Basque as it is the main language of instruction at
this school.
Background questionnaire
All students in the experimental and control groups completed the background questionnaire in order to obtain personal and academic information before the pedagogical intervention took place.
Morphological awareness test
The Morphological Awareness Test used in this study was designed taking into account the
age of the students, the English language curriculum in the school and the characteristics
of the pedagogical intervention. It included two tasks to be carried out in English, which
was more challenging for the students than Basque or Spanish because it was their third
language. The test, which was designed ad hoc for this study after consulting other tests
designed for other contexts such as the Morphological Awareness Test by Quiroga (2013,
validated by Lyster et al., 2013). The Tham 2 test of metalinguistic abilities (Pinto, Candilera,
& Iliceto, 2003, validated in Spanish by Núñez Delgado & Pinto, 2015) was also examined
because it is aimed at the same age group. However, it was not used because its focus is not
specifically on morphological awareness but on other aspects of metalinguistic awareness.
The reliability score for the test used in this study was Cronbach’s alpha = .83.
The test had two parts: (1) a morpheme identification task which assessed the ability to
identify and decompose words into morphemes and (2) a word formation task to assess the
ability of participants to create new meanings by adding prefixes and suffixes or combining
two free morphemes. This second task requires more explicit knowledge. Most of the items
in the Morphological Awareness Test were on derivatives because they are more common
than compounds in the materials in the three languages for both the experimental and
control groups.
In the morpheme identification task, students were given a set of seven multi-morphemic
words in English and were asked to divide them into morphemes. One of the items (unhappiness) had two affixes and the other six had only one (teacher, swimmer, surprising, enjoyable,
mindful, dangerous). Students were given the following example:
Sportsman can be divided like this: sports/man
The items were scored as follows:
3 points: both the prefix and the suffix correctly identified in the word unhappiness
2 points: the suffix correctly identified in the other six words
1 point: only one of the two affixes identified in the word unhappiness
0 points: words divided in an incorrect way (tea/cher instead of teach/er)
8
O. LEONET ET AL.
The maximum number of points for this task was 15.
The word formation task included nine items. In six of the items students were asked to
provide a derivative word involving the stem plus a suffix (friendly, runner, farmer, peaceful,
darkness, enjoyable) and in two of the items a stem plus a prefix (disagree, unhappy) were
needed. There was another compound word comprised of two stems (fireman). Students
were given the following example:
My sister is always ready to help. She is very ………(helpful).
The items were scored as follows:
2 points: stem and affix linked without any spelling mistake (run-runner)
0 points: incorrect words divided in an incorrect way (run-runned)
The maximum score for this task was 18.
All students in the experimental and control groups took the Morphological Awareness
Test before and after the pedagogical intervention. They had an average time of 15 minutes
to complete each task, adding up to 30 minutes for the whole test.
Translanguaging questionnaire
After the pedagogical intervention, students in the experimental group completed a questionnaire of nine items concerning their perceptions about translanguaging and the pedagogical intervention. In fact, at school the whole pedagogical intervention was referred to
as translanguaging so students knew that the questionnaire was about the pedagogical
intervention. Items were rated on a 10-point Likert scale, ranging from 1 (strongly disagree)
to 10 (strongly agree). The aim of this questionnaire was to find out about students’ perceptions of the pedagogical intervention. The nine items were the following:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
Basque, Spanish and English are closer than I thought
It is confusing to learn Basque, Spanish and English at the same time
You learn more when you use Basque, Spanish and English in the same class
It is helpful to analyse Basque, Spanish and English jointly to promote understanding
It is easy to distinguish parts of a word
I prefer to learn languages separately
I prefer to learn the three languages at once
I like to do translanguaging
It is fun to compare languages
Participants had ten minutes to fill in the nine items of the questionnaire. The data of the
questionnaires and tests were analysed with the SPSS programme, version 22.
Focus group discussions
Focus group discussions were conducted by four trained researchers with students in the
experimental group. Students were assigned to 12 groups and, taking into account the age
of the participants, the researcher asked students in each group to write individual responses
on an answer sheet before proceeding with the discussion. Students were allowed to look
at the written reflection sheet during the discussion but they were encouraged to interact
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
9
spontaneously. Focus group discussions were conducted in Basque, the school language of
instruction, though participants were allowed to use any of the languages in their responses.
Several questions were asked during the focus group session but the ones relevant for this
study are the following:
1. You’ve been working with more than one language at the same time; have you learnt
more or less that way?
2. When you look at two or more languages at the same time, do you see more or less similarities between them?
Each focus group discussion only took an average of 10 minutes due to the age of the
students. Focus groups were audio-recorded and data from both written and oral reflection
were transcribed and analysed with the programme Atlas.ti, version 8.
Results
In order to answer our research questions, quantitative and qualitative analyses were carried
out. First, the results obtained in the two tasks of the Morphological Awareness Test will be
presented, followed by the translanguaging questionnaires and focus group discussions.
The development of morphological awareness
The first research question aims to analyse whether the pedagogical intervention in three
languages influences students’ morphological awareness. Analyses of covariance (ANCOVA)
were carried out so as to compare the experimental and control groups’ overall performance
in the two tasks of the Morphological Awareness Test: the morpheme identification task and
the word formation task, as well as the differences between the pre-test and the post-test.
ANCOVA allows us to explore differences between the two groups while statistically controlling the effects of initial between-group differences. Additionally, paired t-test analyses
were conducted with the experimental and control group to see the development in each
of the group separately.
Morpheme identification task
Table 2 shows the means, standard deviations and adjusted means in the morpheme identification task in the pre-test and post-test. The independent variable was the type of group
(experimental group, control group), with the dependent variable being the scores on the
morpheme identification task administered after the intervention (post-test). The covariant
was the morpheme identification task in the pre-test.
The one-way ANCOVA in the morpheme identification task, where participants were
asked to divide words into morphemes, shows no significant differences between the two
Table 2. Overall group analysis: Morpheme identification task.
Pre-test
experimental
Control
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
Adj M (SE)
5.65 (3.19)
4.82 (3.38)
6.71 (3.13)
5.97 (4.41)
6.54 (.40)
6.25 (.51)
10
O. LEONET ET AL.
groups on the post-test scores, F (1, 101) = .19, p = .66, after controlling for the results in
the pre-test. Figure 1 shows the means obtained before and after the intervention in the
morpheme identification task.
For a more detailed understanding of the way in which students divided each word, a
paired t-test was run for each of the groups comparing the pre-test and the post-test. Results
are shown in Tables 3 and 4.
In the case of the experimental group, participants obtained higher scores in the post-test
in five of the seven items, however the increase was only significant for the item “surprising”
t(58) = −2,43, p < .01, d =.32 and for the item “enjoyable” t(63) = −4.15, p < .00, d =.53 The
increase was marginally significant for the item “unhappiness” t(58) = −1.91, p < .06, d =.24.
8
6.71
7
6
5.97
5.65
4.82
5
4
3
2
1
0
Experimental
Control
Pre-test
Post-test
Figure 1. Pre- and post-test means by group in the morpheme identification task.
Table 3. experimental group. Differences between pre-test and post-test
in the morpheme identification task.
unhappiness
Teacher
swimmer
surprising
enjoyable
Mindful
Dangerous
Pre-test
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
.68 (.88)
.64 (.94)
.61 (.92)
.71 (.96)
1.30 (.96)
1.62 (.79)
1.00 (1.00)
.92 (.91)
.58 (.91)
.44 (.83)
1.10 (.99)
1.80 (.60)
1.71 (.70)
1.20 (.98)
T
S
−1.91
.42
1.21
−2.43
−4.08
−.83
−1.28
.06
.67
.22
.01
.00
.41
.20
Table 4. Control group. Differences between pre-test and post-test in the
morpheme identification task.
unhappiness
Teacher
swimmer
surprising
enjoyable
Mindful
Dangerous
Pre-test
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
.61 (.78)
.53 (.89)
.53 (.89)
.70 (.96)
.65 (.48)
1.41 (.92)
.69 (.96)
.70 (.63)
.71 (.97)
.65 (.95)
1.35 (3.30)
.70 (.46)
1.57 (.85)
.91 (1.01)
T
S
−.77
−1.13
−.70
−1.11
−.57
−1.00
−1.27
.44
.26
.48
.27
.57
.32
.21
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
11
Participants in the control group scored higher in the post-test than in the pre-test in all of
the items but the differences between the pre-test and the post-test were not significant
for any of the seven items.
Word formation task
Table 5 shows the means, standard deviations and adjusted means in the word formation
task in the pre-test and post-test. The independent variable was the type of group (experimental group, control group), with the dependent variable being the scores of the word
formation task in the post-test. The covariant was the word formation task in the pre-test.
The one-way ANCOVA on the word formation task yielded a significant group effect,
F (1, 101) = 4.37, p = .03, meaning that there were significant differences among the experimental and control groups at the time of the post-test. However, the effect size for this
difference was not very high (R2 = 0.42). The adjusted mean comparison shown in Table 5
revealed that the experimental group (Adj M = 9.79) outperformed the control group (Adj
M = 8.27). unadjusted means obtained before and after the intervention by both groups are
shown in Figure 2.
In order to obtain a more detailed picture of the differences between both groups when
creating new words from a given stem, t-tests were carried out separately for the experimental and control groups (Tables 6 and 7).
As can be seen in Table 6, the experimental group participants obtained a higher score
in five of the seven items in the word formation task in the post-test, after being exposed to
the pedagogical intervention. There was a statistically significant increase for the items
“friendly” t(60) = −3.93, p < .00, d=.50”unhappy” t(57) = −3.30, p < .02, d =.43 and “fireman”
t(43) = −3.62, p < .00, d=.55. The control group obtained higher scores in five of the nine
items in the post-test but the differences were not significant for any of the items. Thus, only
the experimental group obtained statistically significant scores in some items.
Table 5. Overall group analysis: word formation task.
Pre-test
experimental
Control
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
Adj M (SE)
4.53 (2.83)
4.95 (3.86)
9.70 (3.71)
8.42 (4.54)
9.79 (.45)
8.27 (.57)
12
9.70
10
8.42
8
6
4.95
4.53
4
2
0
Experimental
Pre-test
Control
Post-test
Figure 2. Pre- and post-test means by group in the word formation task.
12
O. LEONET ET AL.
If we take together the results of the word identification task and the word formation
task, we can observe that the students in the experimental group obtained higher scores
than those in the control group and that these differences were significant in some cases.
Students’ perception of their multilingual repertoire
The second research question focused on the experimental group and aimed at analysing
students’ perception of their multilingual repertoire after the intervention. The data were
obtained from the translanguaging questionnaire and the focus group discussions. Table 8
shows the means and standard deviation of the nine items in the translanguaging
questionnaire.
Students indicated their extent of agreement on a 10-point Likert scale from 1 (strongly
disagree) to 10 (strongly agree). The score for item 1 is relatively high (6.98) taking into
account the linguistic distance between the three languages. In spite of these differences,
students seem to find some similarities between the languages. According to the results,
students also perceive that using resources from their whole linguistic repertoire is not
confusing (item 2) but helpful to understand and learn (items 3, 4). Item 5 with a score of
8.58 refers to the morphological task of distinguishing parts of a word and it is relatively
high. The data also indicate that students also enjoy using resources from other languages
in pedagogical translanguaging (items 6, 7, 8, 9).
Students’ perception of their multilingual repertoire could also be seen in their participation in the focus group discussions. In excerpt 1 we can see that students provided valuable
Table 6. experimental group. Differences between pre-test and post-test in the
word formation task.
Friendly
runner
Farmer
Disagree
Peaceful
enjoyable
unhappy
Darkness
Fireman
Pre-test
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
.79 (.98)
1.33(.90)
1.04 (1.00)
.06 (.33)
.20 (.60)
1.11 (1.00)
.21(.61)
.02 (.14)
.34 (.74)
1.33 (.92)
1.22 (.93)
1.15 (.97)
.06 (.23)
.16 (.54)
.93 (1.00)
.59 (.91)
.07 (.33)
.89 (.97)
T
S
−3.93
.880
-.84
.00
.37
1.04
−3.30
−1.00
−3.62
.00
.382
.401
1.00
.70
.30
.02
.32
.00
Table 7. Control group. Differences between pre-test and post-test in the word
formation task.
Pre-test
Friendly
runner
Farmer
Disagree
Peaceful
enjoyable
unhappy
Darkness
Fireman
Post-test
M (SD)
M (SD)
1.06 (.99)
1.50 (.86)
1.22 (.93)
.15 (.55)
.48 (.87)
1.20 (1.00)
.28 (.70)
.25 (.68)
1.19 (.98)
1.24 (.96)
1.27 (.90)
1.19 (.92)
.08 (.27)
.57 (.92)
1.20 (1.00)
.34 (.76)
.38 (.80)
1.38 (.95)
T
S
−1.18
1.22
.22
.43
−.43
.00
−.57
−1.00
−1.00
,24
,22
,82
,67
,66
1,00
,57
,33
,33
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
13
Table 8. experimental group. Means and sDs for students’ perceptions on
translanguaging.
Min = 1- max = 10
1. Basque, spanish and english are closer than I thought
2. It is confusing to learn Basque, spanish and english at
the same time
3. You learn more when you use Basque, spanish and
english in the same class
4. It is helpful to analyse Basque, spanish and english
jointly to promote understanding
5. It is easy to distinguish parts of a word
6. I prefer to learn languages separately
7. I prefer to learn the three languages at once
8. I like to do translanguaging
9. It is fun to compare languages
M (sD)
6.98 (2.08)
3.42 (2.75)
8.57 (1.93)
9.01 (1.43)
8.58 (1.58)
3.98 (2.98)
7.48 (2.78)
7.87 (2.22)
7.98 (1.71)
insights about the way they perceive their learning process when they are aware of their
own resources.
Excerpt 1
Researcher: Bi edo hiru hizkuntzatan lan egin duzu. Ariketa mota honekin gehiago ala gutxiago ikasten da? [You’ve been working with two or three languages; do you learn more or less with
this type of exercise?]
(…)
023: Errazagoa izan da hiru hizkuntzekin egitea lan. [It has been easier to work with the three
languages together.]
Researcher: Ah bai? [Really?]
016: Kontzeptuak hobeto sartzen dira buruan. [The concepts are better assimilated this way.]
Researcher: Eta zergatik sartzen dira hobe kontzeptuak buruan? [And why are concepts better
assimilated this way?]
009: Ze badituzu beste hizkuntzetan hobeto eta orduan … [Because you know them better in
the other languages, so …]
007: Errazago ikasten da. [It is easier to learn.]
016: Eta delako gai berdina. Eta gai berdina ematen duzunean badakizu: Ah! Hau beste hizkuntzen egiten da horrela ba hizkuntza honetan egingo dut berdina, baina ingelesez. [And
because it’s the same topic. And when you do the same topic you realise, ah! If it is done this way in
the other languages, I will do the same in English.]
009: Daukagu maila desberdina, adibidez: euskaran altuena … Orduan egiten genuen ba ingelesez baxuagoa eta orain juntatu ditugunean hiruak egiten da askosaz ere errazagoa. [We have
different levels, for example, the highest in Basque… we used to do simpler things in English before,
but now that we work with the three languages together, we do it much easier.]
007: Ya! Eske lehen egiten genuen bakarrik hizkuntza bat. [Yeah! Before, we used to work with
one language at a time]
016: Lehen, igual L1 aurrizkiak euskaraz, eta gero aurrizkiak eta atzizkiak erdaraz. Denbora
desberdinetan egiten genuen hiru hizkuntzatan, eta ahazten ziren kontzeptuak. Eta orain dena
14
O. LEONET ET AL.
egiten dugu elkarrekin eta uste dut nik hobe egiten dugula lana. [Before, we used to do, for
example, prefixes in the Basque language class, and then prefixes and suffixes in Spanish. We did
things at different times in the three languages and that way, concepts are forgotten. But now, we
do everything together, I think we work better this way]
The four students who provide explanations in this example seem to agree about the
idea that they learn more when multilingual resources are used. They say that concepts are
assimilated better because they are used in the different languages. They also add that when
the languages are separate they tend to forget what they learn more easily because it is not
reinforced in the other languages.
When asked about the way they perceive similarities and differences between the languages, another group of students showed that they had become aware of the similarities,
as can be seen in excerpt 2.
Excerpt 2
Researcher: Hizkuntzak batera ikusten ditugunean, hizkuntzen arteko antzekotasun gehiago
ikusten duzu ala ez? [When you look at two or more languages at the same time, do you see more
or fewer similarities between them?]
030: Ez dakit. [I don’t know.]
027: Gehiago. Antza daukalako hitz batzuk. [More because some words are similar.]
045: Gehiago, ikusten duzunean batera gehiago ikusten dira antzekotasunak. [More because
when you see it, you see the similarities better.]
034: Ba, gehiago, hiruak batera badaude ikusten da oso ondo. [More, it can be seen very well with
the three at the same time.]
048: Ba nik antzekotasun gehiago ikusi dut eta niretzako da errazago, ze ez badakizu hitz bat,
dagoenez hiru hizkuntzetan, ez badakizu ingelesez, baina bai erdaraz, ikusten duzu erdaraz eta
ya badakizu zer esan nahi duen. [I see more similarities and it is easier for me, if you don’t know a
word, as it is in three languages, if you don’t know it in English and you do in Spanish, you look at
the Spanish and then you know what it means.]
032: Gehiago, baina ez dakit nola azaldu zergatik. [More but I don’t know how to explain why.]
Furthermore, as can be seen in excerpt 3, the students reported that they became aware
of the fact that the procedure of word formation works in a similar way in Basque and in
English even if the languages have a different origin:
Excerpt 3
Researcher: Hizkuntzak batera ikusten ditugunean, hizkuntzen arteko antzekotasun gehiago
ikusten duzu? [When you look at two or more languages at the same time, do you see similarities
between them?]
Various St: Bai. [yes]
Researcher: Zeintzuk ikusi dituzue? [Which similarities, for example?]
059: Adibidez, ‘playground’. ‘Play’ da jolastu eta ‘ground’ da ‘toki’ bat eta gero euskaraz da
‘jolastoki’. [For example, playground. Play is jolastu (to play) and ground is ‘tokia’ (place), and then
in Basque is ‘jolastoki’ (playground).]
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
15
Researcher: Orduan da, hitz elkartu bat eta berdina da ingelesez eta euskaraz. Eta zer gehiago,
zer antzekotasun gehiago topatu dituzue? [Then it is a compound and it is the same in English
and Basque. And what else, did you find other similarities?]
071: Hitzen artean, antzekotasunak daudela. [That there are similarities between words.]
Here we see how student 59 is able to relate the structure of compound nouns in English
to those in Basque.
In sum, the results of the translanguaging questionnaire and the examples from the focus
group discussions indicate that students are more aware of the relationships between the
languages in their multilingual repertoire. The results indicate that translanguaging pedagogies across the three languages influence students’ perception of their multilingual repertoire. They also found the pedagogical intervention both useful and enjoyable.
Discussion
The first research question addresses the influence of the pedagogical intervention on students’ morphological awareness. The results of the Morpheme Awareness Test show some
differences between the experimental and the control groups. The differences did not reach
significance in the case of the total score in the morpheme identification task but the experimental group scored significantly higher in three of the seven items. The differences between
the two groups were significant in the total score of the word formation task. The results
also indicate that in this test the experimental group obtained significantly higher scores in
the post-test than in the pre-test in three items while there were no differences between
the pre-test and post-test for any of the items in the case of the control group. These results
indicate that the pedagogical intervention based on translanguaging had a positive effect
on the development of morphological awareness. These results are consistent with other
studies showing the effect of instruction on the development of morphological awareness
(Bowers & Kirby, 2010; Deacon et al., 2007; Zhang, 2016). They are also consistent with the
results obtained by Lyster et al. (2013) who reported higher scores in the test of morphological awareness in French for students who had taken part in a pedagogical intervention
using cross-linguistic resources as is the case in this study.
Our results indicate that there are more differences in the case of the word formation
task than in the morpheme identification task. Following Carlisle (2000), these differences
can be explained by the different characteristics of the tasks. The identification task only
requires relational knowledge and as participants in this study are students in the fifth and
sixth years of primary school, it is likely that they have already developed some skills of
decomposing words due to their exposure to orthographic representation (see also Carlisle
& Stone, 2005). Therefore, it is likely that the effect of the pedagogical intervention was
more moderate for this reason. Producing derived forms requires more complex abilities
than morpheme identification because it requires knowledge of grammatical rules and the
meanings of suffixes (Carlisle, 2000; Koda et al., 2014). The fact that students who received
instruction on morphological awareness obtained significantly higher scores in the morpheme derivation task could be explained by the instruction effect indicating that when
the task is more complex, instruction has more effect. As Bowers and Kirby (2010) explain,
explicit instruction facilitates the recognition of the base in derived words that could be
ignored without the scaffolding of word structure knowledge. This could explain why there
16
O. LEONET ET AL.
are also some differences in items in the morpheme identification task. Students who
received explicit instruction were able to accurately identify morphemes within the most
opaque words in the test (unhappiness, surprising). Spelling changes between the items
unhappiness and surprising occur according to consistent suffixing patterns, as can be seen
in the y/i change in unhappiness and the replacement of the single silent e in surprising,
making identification more difficult (Bowers et al., 2010; Lubliner & Hiebert, 2011).
Knowledge of the meaning of affixes may also affect students’ performance in the morpheme derivation task. The significant differences found in some items could be due to the
higher exposure to affixes during the intervention.
The second research question addresses students’ perception of their whole linguistic
repertoire. In our case, during the intervention, translanguaging pedagogies are used to
relate the three languages in the school curriculum. The results of the translanguaging questionnaire and the focus group discussions show the enthusiasm exhibited by experimental
group students about the intervention, and the opportunities given for cross-lingual comparisons. The use of cross-linguistic resources has also been highly valued in other studies
(Lyster et al., 2009, 2013; White & Horst, 2012).
In our study, students showed a clear preference for working with the three languages
together instead of learning them separately. They reported that they learn more when they
work with the three languages simultaneously because translanguaging provides opportunities for comparison across languages. The results indicate that working with the three
languages can be positive for the acquisition of the L3 because students can use the resources
they have already acquired in the other two languages. These findings are consistent with
recent trends to soften boundaries between languages (e.g., Cenoz & Gorter, 2015; Cummins
& Persad, 2014; García, 2009; Lewis, Jones, & Baker 2012b; Lewis et al., 2012a; Swain & Lapkin,
2013; Turnbull & Dailey-O’Cain, 2009). Swain and Lapkin (2013) and Jones and Lewis (2014)
explain that the use of L1 supports language and content comprehension and this idea is
consistent with the students’ explanations in some of the focus group discussions.
Another interesting point is students’ perception of the distance between Basque, Spanish
and English. The perception of language distance is considered a decisive factor in crosslinguistic influence, since the subjective perception of language similarity influences the
identification of objective similarities between languages (Cenoz, Hufeisen, & Jessner, 2001).
Translanguaging pedagogies highlight specific similarities between the three languages
and the results obtained here made clear that students in the experimental group perceived
these pedagogies as useful. The results indicate that cross-linguistic identifications may have
decreased the perception of language distance. Students become more aware of their own
resources as multilinguals when the pedagogical intervention highlights similarities in
derivational morphology.
In sum, the quantitative and qualitative data converge showing that translanguaging
pedagogies can potentially develop morphological awareness and the perception multilingual students have of their multilingual repertoire. This study has some limitations because
it has been carried out in a specific context and with a limited number of students. The
students’ age can also be considered a limitation because it has not allowed for long focus
group discussions.
In spite of these limitations, the findings obtained in this study support those obtained
in other research studies because they show that instruction in morphological awareness
can be positive for L3 acquisition. In fact, this study contributes to research on
LANGuAGE AWARENESS
17
morphological awareness instruction by revealing the possibility of using more than
one language at the same time as a resource in pedagogical translanguaging. Our findings imply that more opportunities for cross-linguistic connections should be made in
language teaching. Students should be encouraged to identify similarities between
languages so as to benefit from their linguistic repertoire by becoming increasingly
aware of the relationships between new words in the target language and the words
they already know. Softening boundaries between languages and acknowledging the
resources multilingual students bring to the classroom by using translanguaging pedagogies can have an important potential in all areas of language teaching including
morphological awareness.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.
Funding
This work was supported by the MINECO/FEDER [grant number EDu2015-63967-R] and the
Basque Government [grant number DREAM IT-1225-19].
ORCID
Oihana Leonet http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8801-5455
Jasone Cenoz http://orcid.org/0000-0001-9000-7510
Durk Gorter http://orcid.org/0000-0001-8379-558X
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