The Development of Morphological

Awareness

EFL- University Hyderabad India

12/10/2011By: Zabihullah Alimyar

What is Morphological Awareness?Morphological awareness is the“conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of words and (the) … ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle, 1995, p.194).An awareness of morphemic structure provides useful strategies for students to decode and analyze meaning of words that contain familiar morpheme. for instance:Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in words: un+ control + able

Acquiring of Morphological AwarenessThe process of acquiring morphological

awareness continues throughout the school years and beyond. First grade children’s morphological awareness is limited and they are laying the foundation for analytic reasoning about words including those that are Morphologically Complex.

Researcher have shown that middle school students have difficulties attending to the meaning and grammatical role of suffixes

(Tyler & Nagy, 1989; Wysocki & Jenkins, 1978).

Continued…

Semantics

Orthography Phonology

Awareness helps to understand the derivational morphemes such as: prefixes and suffixes (affixes); they attach to root words to create new words. Derivation may seem to be late-development of word knowledge however it is proved that from the 1st grade morphological awareness is related to reading skill.

sign, signal, signature, design, designate

Morphology

Morphological Awareness Limitation

• Any method of promoting vocabulary growth, wide reading has some limitations:

• No. 1- is wide reading may be effective in producing general vocabulary growth; 1st grade students are laying the foundation for analytical reasoning about words including morphological complex.

• No. 2- is that wide reading alone cannot ensure that they develop the kind of word-learning strategies they need to become independent word learners.

Metalinguistic in Anglin’s (1993) study of vocabulary growth

• Metalinguistic is the pinnacle (peak) of language development, such as:

• 1. ability to analyze language • 2. use higher form• 3. oral language – literacy connection • Between 3rd / 4th graders there is a rapid increase

in their knowledge the of meaning of derivation.• 5th graders the number derivation far outstripped Most frequently occurring suffixes in printed school English are inflectional

endings such as -s, -es, -ed, -ing, -en, -er, and -est. Most young students use these endings in their oral language and so should have few problems learning and using them. Derivational suffixes such as -y, -ly, -ia, - tioin,- able, let,…

Child’s strategies for decoding and analyzing the meaning of the words

Morphologically Complex Words

Are made up of derivational and lexical morphemes occur with frequency in school based materials.

Make up a large proportion of unfamiliar words.The frequency of morphological problem solving is a

way of knowing the meaning of a word Morphological problem solving is rapid increase in

number of derivatives that students know for example : ( riverlet )=(river+ let ) = small river

(tree+let)

Correlational EvidenceMorphological awareness is correlated with and predicts word reading and reading comprehension.Continues to predict after controlling factors

such as intelligence, vocabulary, phonological awareness, naming speed, orthographic processing.Even 1st and 2nd level morphological awareness has been found to predict both word reading and reading comprehension.