Effects of Morphological Awareness Training on Reading Accuracy in Children with Dyslexia and its Transfer Effect on Phonological Awareness

We examined the effects of a morphological awareness (MA) training program on the enhancement of word and pseudo-word reading and phonological awareness in Arabic-speaking children with dyslexia. We compared two groups of children with dyslexia from Grade 3, an experimental group (n = 12; mean age = 112.4 months) with a control group (n = 13; mean age = 111.61 months). The training program focused on morphological analysis, derivational morphology and inflexional morphology. Results revealed that the experimental group outperformed controls on all post-training measures for MA, reading words and pseudo-words as well as phonological awareness. Also, the post-training measures were better achieved in the experimental group than pre-training ones, which confirm the efficacy of the morphological training program. We discuss these findings in light of the relationship between morphological awareness and word reading and phonological awareness, and the Arabic orthographic features as a morphological based language.

Efectos de la intervención en conciencia morfológica sobre la lectura, escritura y comprensión: Meta-análisis

The aim is to check, through a meta-analysis, the impact of morphological awareness training on writing, reading, comprehension and vocabulary of grade schooler. 31 studies were included in the meta-analysis; they were obtained from 19 articles that meet the selection criteria. Morphological awareness instruction has a high-medium and significant effect size in studied variables of literacy. On writing, <em>g</em>=0.491, <em>SE</em>=0.078, <em>IQ</em>=0339-0643, <em>p</em>=.000, reading, <em>g</em>=0.473, <em>SE</em>=0.096, <em>IQ</em>=0284-0662, <em>p</em>=.000, comprehension, <em>g</em>=0.468, <em>SE</em>=0.123, <em>IQ</em>=0227-0708, <em>p</em>= .000 and finally vocabulary, <em>g</em>=0.501, <em>SE</em>=0.152, <em>IQ</em>=0203-0798, <em>p</em>= .001. The test of Heterogeneity <em>Q</em> is only significant on writing so other moderating variables were explored but no differences between groups were found. It shows morphological awareness training improves reading, vocabulary and comprehension of grade schooler with and without reading difficulties. Nevertheless, the results on writing are more heterogeneous.

On the relationship between morphological and phonological awareness: Effects of training in kindergarten and in first-grade reading

This study examined the relationship between phonological and morphological awareness in kindergarten, and their respective influence on learning to read in first grade, through an experimental training design with three groups of children. One experimental group received phonological awareness training while the other received morphological awareness training. The control group did not receive any training. Both training sessions were efficient since the largest pre- and post-test improvements were observed in the trained domains. Reciprocal influence analysis indicated that morphological awareness improved phonological sensitivity, but not the explicit manipulation of phonemes. In addition, phonological awareness training helped children to segment morphemes, but not to derive complex words. Thus, while some processes are shared by both metalinguistic domains, each domain appears to have its own specificity and may develop independently, at least partly. Even though morphological awareness training was found to be efficient at the kindergarten level, no clear impact on reading was found at the first-grade level, while phonological training displayed a clear positive effect on reading.