The Role of Morphological Awareness in Elementary Students Early Reading Skills
Abstract
While the extant literature emphasizes the role of Phonological Awareness (PA) and Rapid Automatized Naming (RAN) in children’s developing reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition skills, there has been a paucity of information on the contributions made by other factors such as Morphological Awareness (MA). Although evidence of a relationship between MA and children's literacy development has emerged, questions remain about both the direction of that relationship and the underlying factors at play. As such, this study evaluated MA from a subword, word, and sentence level perspective, as a means of ascertaining the role it plays in elementary students (N = 78) literacy competence. The results revealed: 1) MA (subword and word levels) uniquely predicts elementary students’ reading comprehension skills above and beyond their PA and RAN abilities; and 2) MA (subword, word, and sentence levels) uniquely predicts elementary students' vocabulary knowledge above and beyond their PA and RAN abilities. Overall, the findings demonstrate that instruction in MA holds promise as an early identification and intervention approach to enhancing children’s literacy competence. Limitations and future directions are discussed in light of these findings.
Subject Area
Educational psychology|Education|Psychology|Elementary education
Recommended Citation
Noori, Quadrina, "The Role of Morphological Awareness in Elementary Students Early Reading Skills" (2023). ETD Collection for Fordham University. AAI30493561.
https://research.library.fordham.edu/dissertations/AAI30493561
