Morphological Awareness

There is consistent empirical support that demonstrates the relationship between phonological
deficits of developmental dyslexics and their reading difficulties. However, the morphological
skills—which also play an important role in the development of alphabetic writing—are seldom
investigated among children and adolescents with dyslexia. The focus of this study was to analyse
reading patterns according to the dual route model and verify the performance of each subtype of
dyslexic in tests of morphological awareness. Participants were nine students classified as surface
or phonological dyslexics through their performance in an isolated words-reading task. Four tests
were applied to the participants to assess their knowledge of derivational morphology, and two
tests focused on their knowledge of inflectional morphology. The hypothesis that guided this research
was that students with different reading patterns would also present different performances
on morphological tests. This hypothesis was confirmed only for derivational morphology, in which
a higher performance was observed among participants with phonological dyslexia. It is concluded
that metamorphological skills may serve as facilitators of reading in students with developmental
dyslexia, and a focus on the development of these skills is suggested as a strategy to promote the
reading skills of these students.

Este trabajo se presenta como una argumentación a favor de la enseñanza de la morfología léxica, y más concretamente de los mecanismos sufijales, en el aula de Español como Lengua Extranjera (ELE) a estudiantes norteamericanos de niveles iniciales. Así, tratamos de ofrecer datos que nos permitan explicar por qué se deberían enseñar los sufijos derivativos en al aula y cuáles podrían incluirse en los niveles iniciales. También ofrecemos una breve propuesta de instrucción en la que explicamos cómo podrían insertarse los nuevos contenidos en los materiales ya existentes de los manuales de ELE.

Para llevar a cabo este trabajo procedimos por etapas. Primero, presentamos un panorama general sobre el papel de la morfología en los estudios lingüísticos, psicolingüísticos y de psicología de la educación. Una vez realizada esta primera etapa de revisión de la bibliografía previa, nos centramos en describir tres estudios propios en los que nos aproximamos a los conocimientos morfológicos, y sus dificultades relacionadas, de un grupo de estudiantes norteamericanos de ELE. El primer estudio, consistente en dos pruebas de priming morfológico, nos ofreció datos sobre el procesamiento automático de los alumnos y nos permitió observar si disponen de las habilidades lingüísticas necesarias para llevar a cabo la descomposición morfológica automática. Nuestro segundo estudio, de carácter evolutivo, nos ofreció datos cuantitativos y cualitativos sobre los errores y aciertos en cinco tareas de conciencia morfológica de sujetos repartidos por tres niveles de dominio del español. Finalmente, nuestro último estudio se centró en los efectos de una breve instrucción morfológica sobre los resultados de unos alumnos de primer semestre de español en las tareas previamente citadas.

Esta triple perspectiva nos permite ofrecer un panorama completo de lo que nuestros estudiantes son capaces de hacer sin ayuda del profesor, las dificultades que encuentran y en qué aspectos concretos una instrucción explícita les podría resultar más ventajosa. Basándonos en los datos de nuestros tres estudios y en los resultados de un análisis de manuales de ELE, terminamos este texto proponiendo una lista de recomendaciones con respecto a la introducción de los mecanismos de sufijación en el aula de ELE. Con esta aproximación esperamos ofrecer una herramienta de consulta para los profesores que estén interesados en introducir componentes morfológicos en su práctica docente.

Word formation is a key part of morphological awareness (MA) which is essential for vocabulary increase but neglected by the teachers and course planners (Tahaineh, 2012). In Pakistan, students of English language are not explicitly given morphological awareness and most of the courses are taught in English for general purposes. The study explores the development of students' knowledge to use prefixes and suffixes meaningfully, in a paragraph writing. For this, they were given morphological awareness on the word formation to construct, identify and to self-correct the words. Data was collected quantitatively through pre-test and post-test. Students were given treatment to check the effectiveness of MA before the post-test. Participants of the study were 30 students of BS English Language and Literature, 3 rd semester's students of a private university of Pakistan. The study found that morphological awareness is effective and improves students' writings. It further indicates that there is a need to include word formation as key component of English writing composition as undergraduate level. 1. Introduction Morphological awareness is a skill that allows language learners to understand the structure of words. Researchers believed that when language learners understand the morphological nature of words, they show impressive results in the development of different literacy skills such as reading, speaking, listening and writing (Oz, 2013).As English language contains number of words, the better way to learn new words and to increase the vocabulary is to understand common prefixes and suffixes. By knowing prefixes and suffixes, their meanings and rules, students get aware of the morphological structures of the new words of English language. According to Carlisle(1995), morphological awareness refers to individual's explicit knowledge. It also brings awareness of the internal structure of words and their capacity to reflect upon and manipulate upon their structure. Kuo and Anderson (2006), highlighted that understanding of word formation is necessary whereas Liu, McBride and Chang (2010), stated that MA is frequently associated with the development of reading and writing skills. They further added that MA and reading comprehension play important role in learning language. Oz (2013), mentioned that learners who understand affixation with word formation process perform better and become proficient in language.

This scoping review explores the causal relationship between morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 learners by synthesizing 12 primary studies published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 1,535). These studies focused on reading English as the target language and involved participants between kindergarten and Grade 12 from four countries (China, Egypt, Singapore, and the USA). Findings suggested that (a) morphological instruction led to consistent and positive gains in L2 children's morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, and the effect sizes (Cohen's ds) ranged from small to large; and (b) the relationship between morphological instruction and other outcomes such as phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension was inconclusive. Notably, transfer effects of L2 English morphological instruction on novel word learning in English or on reading development in an additional language were only examined and observed in four primary studies. Discussion was provided regarding future instructional and research design.