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Morphological awareness and word-level reading in early and middle elementary school years

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  03 May 2019

Erin K. Robertson Open the ORCID record for Erin K. Robertson [Opens in a new window]  and
S. Hélène Deacon
Erin K. Robertson*
Affiliation:
Cape Breton University
S. Hélène Deacon
Affiliation:
Dalhousie University
*
*Corresponding author. E-mail: erin_robertson@cbu.ca
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Abstract

We examined whether morphological awareness made a significant contribution to word-level reading across Grades 1 to 4. We test these relations specifically in a task measuring awareness of past-tense forms. A total of 375 children from Grades 1 to 4 completed tasks assessing past-tense morphological awareness along with real word and pseudoword reading. Children also completed control measures assessing phonological awareness, phonological short-term memory, sentence-level language skills, and nonverbal cognitive ability. After these controls, past-tense morphological awareness was a significant predictor of real word reading in Grades 1 and 2, but not in Grades 3 and 4. Further, following on all controls, past-tense morphological awareness was a consistent predictor of pseudoword reading across Grades 1 to 4. Morphological awareness, at least as measured with past-tense verbs, appears to have a role in word reading across the early to middle elementary school grades; for young readers, there are relations to reading of both known and novel words, and for older readers, relations are significant specifically in reading novel words. These findings are discussed within the context of theories of word reading development.

Keywords

morphological awarenessword-level reading
Type
Original Article
Information
Applied Psycholinguistics , Volume 40 , Issue 4 , July 2019 , pp. 1051 - 1071
Copyright
© Cambridge University Press 2019 

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