Morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 readers: A scoping review of causal relationships

This scoping review explores the causal relationship between morphological instruction and reading development in young L2 learners by synthesizing 12 primary studies published between 2004 and 2019 (N = 1,535). These studies focused on reading English as the target language and involved participants between kindergarten and Grade 12 from four countries (China, Egypt, Singapore, and the USA). Findings suggested that (a) morphological instruction led to consistent and positive gains in L2 children’s morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge, and the effect sizes (Cohen’s ds) ranged from small to large; and (b) the relationship between morphological instruction and other outcomes such as phonological awareness, word reading accuracy, word reading fluency, spelling, and reading comprehension was inconclusive. Notably, transfer effects of L2 English morphological instruction on novel word learning in English or on reading development in an additional language were only examined and observed in four primary studies. Discussion was provided regarding future instructional and research design.

Yes Children Need to Learn Their GPCs but There Really Is Little or No Evidence that Systematic or Explicit Phonics Is Effective: a response to Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (2020)

Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (Educational Psychology Review, 2020) have raised a number of conceptual and empirical challenges to my claim that there is little or no evidence for systematic phonics (Bowers, Educational Psychology Review, 32, 681–705, 2020). But there are many mistakes, mischaracterizations, and omissions in the Fletcher et al. response that not only obscure the important similarities and differences in our views but also perpetuate common mischaracterizations of the evidence. In this response, I attempt to clarify a number of conceptual confusions, perhaps most importantly, the conflation of phonics with teaching GPCs. I do agree that children need to learn their GPCs, but that does not entail a commitment to systematic or any other form of phonics. With regard to the evidence, I respond to Fletcher et al.’s analysis of 12 meta-analyses and briefly review the reading outcomes in England following over a decade of legally mandated phonics. I detail why their response does not identify any flaws in my critique nor alter my conclusion that there is little or no support for the claim that phonics by itself or in a richer literacy curriculum is effective. We both agree that future research needs to explore how to combine various forms of instruction most effectively, including an earlier emphasis of morphological instruction, but we disagree that phonics must be part of the mix. I illustrate this by describing an alternative approach that rejects phonics, namely, Structured Word Inquiry.

Yes children need to learn their GPCs but there really is little or no evidence that systematic or explicit phonics is effective: A response to Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (2020)

Fletcher, Savage, and Sharon (Educational Psychology Review, 2020) have raised a number of conceptual and empirical challenges to my claim that there is little or no evidence for systematic phonics (Bowers, Educational Psychology Review, 32, 681-705, 2020). But there are many mistakes, mischaracterizations, and omissions in the Fletcher et al. response that not only obscure the important similarities and differences in our views, but also perpetuate common mischaracterizations of the evidence. In this response I attempt to clarify a number of conceptual confusions, perhaps most importantly, the conflation of phonics with teaching GPCs. I do agree that children need to learn their GPCs, but that does not entail a commitment to systematic or any other form of phonics. With regards to the evidence, I respond to Fletcher et al.’s analysis of 12 meta-analyses and briefly review the reading outcomes in England following over a decade of legally mandated phonics. I detail why their response does not identify any flaws in my critique nor alter my conclusion that there is little or no support for the claim that phonics by itself or in a richer literacy curriculum is effective. We both agree that future research needs to explore how to combine various forms of instruction most effectively, including an earlier emphasis of morphological instruction, but we disagree that phonics must be part of the mix. I illustrate this by describing an alternative approach that rejects phonics, namely, structured word inquiry.

Structured Word Inquiry (SWI) Teaches Grapheme-Phoneme Correspondences More Explicitly Than Phonics Does: An open letter to Jennifer Buckingham and the reading research community

This “open letter” responds to a recent article by Buckingham (2020) which made the claim that the instructional approach known as “Structured Word Inquiry” (SWI) does not teach grapheme-phoneme correspondences (GPC). I counter this claim and provide evidence for SWI’s teaching of GPCs by citing not only the publications on SWI, including the original article introducing it in 2010, but also provide many links to publicly available illustrations of GPC instruction by teachers working with SWI. A description is provided of the qualitative differences between how GPCs are taught in SWI and phonics. Unlike phonics, SWI explicitly teaches the role of morphology and etymology for making sense of grapheme choice in our morphophonemic language and provides graphic representations of orthographic structure to support this instruction. Research evidence about the effects of morphological instruction, including its positive effects on phonological learning, provide a strong basis to motivate more explicit research attention to structured word inquiry in general and specifically as a proposal for a novel form of instruction about GPCs across a wide range of ages and abilities. The debate about whether SWI type instruction is appropriate in the earliest instruction is addressed. I highlight two tools used in SWI, the matrix and the word sum. I show why these are essential for teaching the interrelation of morphology and phonology, but have been largely ignored by the research community so far.

Mayers-Scotten’s 4-M Model: A Qusai-Experimental Study of Pashto-English Morphological Ability

Bilingualism has been a myth for linguists and language policy and planning professionals for decades. Current study observes morphological ability and bilingual profile of L1 and L2 of Pashto mother-tongue children. Bilingual profile of the participants measured through bilingual language profile (BLP) tool. Both L1 and L2 children were tested before and after intervention. Morphological ability was measured through 4 M model. After 4 weeks of intervention, experimental child was able to read and write complex words with bridge morphemes. In contrast, controlled sample was not exposed to the intervention. The participants performed assigned language tasks and their performance-expressions were analyzed. Study confirms that early and late bridge morphemes are acquired and children have intelligibility of the language despite the fact that BLP shows low profile of the mother tongue. Significant effects of mother tongue were recorded in the participants’ performance. Effects of explicit morphological instruction was focused on identifying Pashto orthography and applying morphological ability on word formations. Findings reveal bilingual profile and patterns of morphological ability after didactic practice of intervention. Intervention contributed in developing Pashto orthography that was crucial for reading and writing proficiency. Direct impact on text-based inference and reading comprehension was another milestone of this qusai-experimental research. This model can be used for longitudinal studies.

Exploring How Initial Response to Instruction Predicts Morphology Outcomes Among Students With Decoding Difficulties

Children with weak decoding skills often struggle to learn multisyllabic words during reading instruction. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the extent to which initial response to morphological awareness instruction, along with specific language and cognitive variables (i.e., phonological awareness, rapid naming, orthographic knowledge/awareness, verbal comprehension, working memory), predicts responsiveness to morphological awareness instruction for third-grade students who were at risk for reading disabilities. Thirty-nine third-grade students with decoding deficits were assessed on five independent variables identified as critical predictors of future performance on morphological tasks. A series of regression analyses showed that initial response to instruction, compared to other cognitive and language variables, predicted the most variance in students' morphological skills with prefixes. Furthermore, two cognitive variables, verbal working memory and comprehension, were predictive of performance on morphological tasks after accounting for initial response to instruction. Findings from this study suggest that students with decoding deficits may benefit from morphological instruction and those who demonstrate low response to initial morphological instruction or have weak verbal comprehension and verbal working memory abilities could be risk for failing to acquire morphological instruction as expected.

The Importance of Morphological Awareness in Bilingual Language and Literacy Skills: Clinical Implications for Speech-Language Pathologists

Purpose This clinical focus article will highlight the importance and role of morphological awareness (MA) across orthographies, in particular, the role it plays in reading development, specifically with bilingual populations. MA supports reading acquisition and development beyond other predictors of reading, such as phonological awareness, orthographic knowledge, and rapid automatic naming to name a few. While MA aids in the development of decoding fluency, vocabulary development, and reading comprehension, explicit morphological instruction does not occur regularly in reading intervention. For English learners (ELs), instruction should focus on improving MA, semantic awareness, and orthographic processing, which in turn would exert a positive influence on reading accuracy, fluency, and comprehension. This clinical focus article aims to provide speech-language pathologists with applicable tasks to measure MA and strategies to guide explicit morphological instruction. Method The role of MA in reading development will be described with regard to its importance beyond other predictors and the role it plays in theoretical models of reading development. Then, MA will be described across orthographies, with a focus on cross-linguistic influences. Finally, measurement tasks will be described, and clinical implications will be discussed in terms of using different strategies and tools to explicitly address MA. Conclusion Clinical implications of morphological instruction should be further explored and incorporated in current practices. With regard to ELs, it is important that we provide effective and specific instruction to better bridge the academic achievement gaps and increase overall language and literacy skills. Morphological instruction should be explicit and provided in conjunction with other domains of language. Equally important is leveraging families of ELs to promote their children's oral language and literacy in their first language.

THE ROLE OF MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND EXPLICIT MORPHOLOGICAL INSTRUCTIONS IN ELT

As a branch of linguistics, the role of morphology in learning English should not be taken carelessly. As the study of internal structure of words, morphology provides a lot of knowledge necessary to develop students’ English proficiency. However, many English teachers are still not aware of its important role in successful and effective learning process because they tend to be busy searching for media, strategies or techniques which they consider effective in teaching. In relation to the importance of morphology in English language teaching (ELT), this paper aims at explaining the important role of morphological awareness and instructions in teaching English as a foreign language to junior high schools in Indonesia. This is a descriptive study using literature review as the method. The data were secondary data in the form of documents including articles, journals and books. The data were analyzed using a content analysis by reading and reviewing the documents. The results of the data analysis show the significant role of morphological awareness and morphological instructions in facilitating the students at junior high school to learn English more easily, with significantly greater achievement. It is, therefore, concluded that students with morphological awareness or students that are treated by using morphological instruction gain better achievements in their English learning, resulting in their better English proficiency.