Does teaching preschoolers word parts help reading years later?
Children taught to notice word parts (prefixes, suffixes, compounds) in preschool understood texts better six years later than untrained children.
Source
Preschool morphological training produces long-term improvements in reading comprehension
Study at a glance
- Design
- Other — Quasi-experimental preschool intervention: teachers randomly assigned to morphological or phonological training, non-random control group, followed up to Grade 6
- N
- N=269 · 269 children in the original study (analysed with full-information maximum likelihood); 115 were retested in Grade 6
- Population
- Norwegian-speaking children aged 5-6 in their last preschool year
- Outcome
- Word reading and reading comprehension at end of Grade 1 and Grade 6
Structured fields used in claim comparison tables when every cited study has a complete layer.
What they did
Preschool teachers were randomly assigned to deliver either morphological awareness training (spotting and manipulating prefixes, suffixes and compound words) or phonological awareness training (sounds and rhymes) for about 30 minutes a week over 17 weeks; a non-randomised control group did ordinary preschool activities. The researchers tested word reading and reading comprehension at the end of Grade 1 and again in Grade 6, using structural equation models that controlled for mother's education, vocabulary, nonverbal IQ and early phoneme awareness.
What they found
The morphology group had better Grade 6 reading comprehension than controls (effect size about .72, rising to .83 with controls), but no advantage in Grade 6 word reading. Morphology training also improved Grade 1 word reading and comprehension, yet the Grade 6 effect was not carried through Grade 1 comprehension. Phonological training showed no lasting effect versus controls, and the two training groups did not differ significantly from each other.
The limits
What it doesn't show
The control group was not randomly formed and was small, and only 115 of 269 children were retested in Grade 6, with very few from the phonology group. The Grade 6 tests had ceiling effects, which the authors warn may inflate the standardised effect size. Because morphology and phonology groups did not differ significantly, the study cannot show that morphology training specifically beats phonological training, and the broad programme cannot identify which component mattered.
Key terms
- Morphological awareness
- The ability to reflect on and manipulate morphemes, the smallest meaningful parts of words such as prefixes, suffixes and roots.
- Phonological awareness
- Awareness of the sound structure of spoken words, such as rhymes, syllables and individual phonemes.
- Ceiling effect
- When a test is too easy so many scores bunch at the top, hiding real differences between people.
- Mediation
- Testing whether an effect on a later outcome travels through an intermediate variable, here Grade 1 reading.
- Full information maximum likelihood
- A way to estimate a model using all available data from every participant, even those with missing follow-up scores.
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Quiz yourself
Which group showed better Grade 6 reading comprehension than controls?
Common questions
Why can't we say morphology training is better than phonology training?
When the two training groups were compared directly, the difference was small and not statistically significant; only the comparison with the control group was significant.
Why did phonological training not have a lasting effect?
All children later received phonics-based reading instruction in a very regular orthography, so the authors expected everyone to catch up on sound-based skills.
Is the large effect size trustworthy?
Partly. The authors note the small control group and ceiling effects on the Grade 6 tests could make the effect look larger than it really is.
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