Reading
Does early awareness of word parts predict how kids read?
Open access · cc by · source: Europe PMC
Young Greek children's awareness of how words are built from meaningful parts predicted how well they understood what they read two years later, but not how fast they read words.
Study at a glance
- Design
- Cohort — Three-wave longitudinal study (kindergarten, grade 1, grade 2) with hierarchical regressions controlling IQ, vocabulary, maternal education, letter knowledge, phonological awareness, RAN and earlier reading.
- N
- N=215 · 215 children in the final sample; 14 others recruited in kindergarten moved away and were lost.
- Population
- Greek-speaking children from 10 kindergartens in Heraklion, Crete, followed to grade 2
- Outcome
- Word reading fluency and cloze-format reading comprehension in grades 1 and 2
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Key findings
None of the morphological skills predicted word reading fluency once the other predictors were controlled. In contrast, kindergarten inflectional and derivational awareness each explained a small but significant slice of grade 2 comprehension (about 1-2% of variance), even after controlling grade 1 comprehension; grade 1 morphological skills explained about 2-4%. When all three skills were entered together, only derivational awareness remained a unique predictor, and compounding awareness only mattered when measured in grade 1.
Methodology
The researchers tested Greek kindergartners and followed 215 of them to grade 2. In kindergarten and grade 1 children did oral tasks measuring three kinds of morphological awareness: inflection (e.g. plural and tense endings), derivation (building new words with prefixes and suffixes) and compounding (joining two stems). The team then asked whether these skills predicted later word reading fluency and reading comprehension after controlling for non-verbal IQ, vocabulary, mother's education, letter-sound knowledge, phonological awareness, rapid naming and earlier reading ability.
Limitations
It is correlational, so it cannot show that teaching morphology would improve comprehension; the unique effects are small (a few percent of variance). The fluency test used isolated, mostly simple words, which may have hidden a role for morphology in reading complex words, and both comprehension tests used the same cloze format, so results may not generalise to other kinds of comprehension. The sample came from one Greek city and a transparent orthography taught through phonics, so the pattern may differ in languages like English.
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