The Contribution of Morphological Knowledge to 7th Grade Students' Reading Comprehension Performance.

The Contribution of Morphological Knowledge to 7th Grade Students' Reading Comprehension PerformanceWhat is Morphology? Morphology generally refers to how words are formed and how they fit together into the syntactic structure of sentences to create meaning. Knowledge of word formation, which consists of a mix of implicit awareness and explicit knowledge of the internal structure of words, is often referred to as morphological knowledge or morphological awareness. Following Carlisle (2010), we define morphological knowledge or awareness as a student's conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of words, and the ability to reflect on and effectively manipulate that structure.Linguists make a distinction between two general classes of morphological formations in English (e.g., Curzan & Adams, 2006; Feldman, 1995). The first class pertains to words that differ in their derivational affixes but share a base root word or morpheme. For instance, the words "instruction" and "instructor" share the root word "instruct," but they are generally considered to be different words and to have different meanings. The second class of morphological formations refers to words that differ in their inflectional affixes and share a base root or morpheme, but are considered to be versions of the same words. For instance, the base root word "instruct" can retain its core meaning with inflectional affixes, such as 'ing' or 'ed,' but they have a new syntactic purpose indicating tense (how an event is located in time) and aspect (how an event is viewed relative to time), as in the words "instructing" or "instructed. "Another important distinction that linguists make between these two classes of morphemes is that while derivational formations often change the parts of speech, inflectional formations do not change word class membership to which the base word belongs. For instance, adding the suffix 'er' to the verb 'read' changes its part of speech from verb to noun. On the other hand, adding the morpheme 's' at the end of the verb 'read' does not change its part of speech.Because space does not permit a detailed explanation of the finer distinctions between derivational and inflectional morphology, we provide, at the end of this article, a set of recommended resources that readers will find helpful in gaining a fuller understanding and appreciation of morphology in terms of its theoretical and research underpinnings, its assessment, and its teaching.What Role Does Morphology Play in Reading Ability? Researchers agree that, as teachers, we should expect morphological knowledge and skills to contribute to children's vocabulary development and reading comprehension for the simple reason that morphological processing contributes directly to language comprehension. Carlisle (2004) noted that in the act of comprehending texts, "morphologically complex words contribute lexical, semantic, and syntactic information" (p. 333). In other words, readers who understand the morphemic structure of words have a distinct advantage not only in word decoding, but also in vocabulary and comprehension processes. Snow, Burns, and Griffin (1998) maintained that knowledge of morphology is important because it helps readers connect word forms and meanings within the structure of sentences. For example, "children learn that events having already occurred are marked by morphological inflections such as 'ed'. For children, sensitivity to morphology may be an important support skill in reading and spelling" (p. 74). In asserting the significance of morphological knowledge, Carlisle (2010) noted that, "Access to morphemes and the richness of linguistic information about them (e.g., grammatical roles, semantic features) affects the facility of lexical processing, including learning new words" (p. 465). Understanding morphemes allows students to recognize relationships in words so that decoding for meaning may occur more effectively. …