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The effects of training of morphological structureon spelling derived words by dyslexic adolescents

Styliani N. Tsesmeli1* and Philip H. K. Seymour2

1Department of Education, University of Aegean, Rhodes, Greece2Department of Psychology, University of Dundee, Dundee, UK

This exploratory study aimed to determine the effects of explicit instruction about

morphological structure on the spelling of derived words. A cross-sectional ability

level-design was employed in order to determine differences in response to instruction

between dyslexic students aged 13 þ years and age-matched and spelling level matchedcontrol groups. The study was based on the word-pair paradigm (a base and derived

word) and combined oral instruction with written materials. The intervention had a

substantial impact in enhancing the spelling of derivations by the dyslexic adolescents.

Their gains were appropriate for their spelling level, stable two months after the

intervention, and generalized to untrained but analogous items in terms of structure

and suffixation. Non-dyslexic younger participants matched in terms of spelling level

also showed training and generalisation effects of the same size as their dyslexic

counterparts, while the age-matched controls did not improve so much because of

ceiling effects. It is proposed that morphological awareness constitutes a positive asset

for dyslexic adolescents that can be used efficiently to counterbalance their severe

phonological deficiencies.

The importance to literacy of phonological skills is well established (Bryant & Bradley,1985; Liberman, Shankweiler, & Liberman, 1989; Torgesen & Wagner, 1992) andpreschool phonological training has the potential to produce gains in readingdevelopment (Byrne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1995; Lundberg, Frost, & Petersen, 1988) andto treat reading disability (Hatcher, Hulme, & Ellis, 1994). There is now a consensus(Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1999; Henry, 1993; Moats, 1998; Snowling, 2000) that other aspects of literacy disability merit further investigation, especially the morphemicpatterns of language that could provide an effective complementary strategy for later

reading and spelling development.Recent experimental evidence suggests that awareness of the internal structure of

words is linked to spelling development in a variety of alphabetic orthographies (Arnbak & Elbro, 2000; Bryant et al., 1999; Bryant, Nunes, & Aidinis, 1999; Leong, 2000;

* Correspondence should be addressed to Dr Styliani N. Tsesmeli, Department of Education, University of Aegean, 85100Rhodes, Greece (e-mail: [email protected]).

The

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British Journal of Psychology (2009), 100, 565–592

q 2009 The British Psychological Society

www.bpsjournals.co.uk

DOI:10.1348/000712608X371915




Senechal, Basque, & Leclaire, 2006), especially in its advanced stages. Scientists theorisethat the processing of morphological units aids the retrieval of orthographic patterns

during spelling. The role of morphological knowledge in learning to spell has beenemphasized when, for instance, a child should decide between two or morephonetically acceptable spellings for the same sound in English (e.g. box and socks ) or when to spell silent morphemes marked only by morphology in French (e.g. il chant )(Bryant et al., 1999). Students with dyslexia are usually severely disabled in their spellingperformance in comparison with their age-mates, and, in many cases, with younger

children of the same reading ability. Besides, they continue to present serious spellingdifficulties late into childhood and even in adulthood (Bruck, 1992, 1993; Critchley,1981; Deacon, Parrila, & Kirby, 2006; Hoien & Lundberg, 2000; Lefly & Pennington,

1991; Pennington et al., 1986, 1990). The difficulties appear to be most substantial inthe spelling of morphologically complex words, particularly derived forms. Theseforms, due to their length and complexity, pose special difficulties for students with dyslexia, whose spelling performance reflects, apart from the established phonologicaldeficiencies, a lack of morphological skills appropriate for their age-level. A number of studies have examined whether morphological knowledge is weaker in children with identified spelling difficulties (Senechal & Kearnan, 2007). Evidence from spelling taskssuggests that readers with literacy difficulties and/or with dyslexia exhibit poorer morphological knowledge than their normal age peers (Carlisle, 1987; Leong, 1989;Leong & Parkinson, 1995; Fowler & Liberman, 1995), fail to recognize that derivationally

related words involve additions to already familiar stems (Carlisle, 1987; Derwing,Smith, & Wiebe, 1995; Kemp, 2006) and their spellings are affected considerably by themorphological transparency of the orthography (Leong, 1989; Senechal et al., 2006).

Given the effects of morphological knowledge to spelling, current suggestionsinvolve that systematic and sequential instruction of morphology is needed during theelementary years of schooling (Senechal & Kearnan, 2007). However, interventionstudies in this field are very few and often confined to limited periods of training. Henry (1988, 1993) conducted a wide ranging study with normal readers in grades 3–5. Thecontrol group received traditional basal instruction while the experimental groups weregiven additional training (see Henry, 1990) in phonological and morphological skills,including compounding and the identification of word structure according to origin(Anglo-Saxon, Latin or Greek layers). Significant treatment effects occurred for most of

the measures in the pre- and post tests. In a further study of primary school dyslexicstudents (Henry, 1993), the intervention programme enabled learning-disabled studentsto make significantly higher gains on the morphological subtests than on thephonological subtests. The gain in Spelling was more marked for upper grade studentsthan lower grade students, especially on roots and the prefixes/suffixes/syllablescategory. Although this study incorporated the teaching of morphological patterns tonormal and dyslexic individuals, the lack of appropriate control groups and theintermixture of phonological and morphological subtests in the design make it difficultto reach conclusions about the effects of the morphological factor on spelling

performance.More recently, Nunes, Bryant, and Olsson (2003) attempted to distinguish effects of

phonological and morphological training to 7- and 8-year-old children’s reading andspelling performance, with the inclusion of appropriate controls. The intervention was

conducted in small groups of four to eight children in 12 weekly sessions which consisted of group games, the aim being to promote explicit understanding either of morphological or phonological rules. Children were allocated in five groups:

566 S. N. Tsesmeli and P. H. K. Seymour




(a) Morphological training only ( N ¼ 55), (b) Morphological training with writing( N ¼ 55), (c) Phonological training only ( N ¼ 55), (d) Phonological training with

writing ( N ¼ 55) and (e) Control group ( N ¼ 237). The morphological groups weretaught about word stems and grammatical categories in relation to inflectional affixesand derivational affixes, while the phonological ones were taught mainly about long andshort vowels combined with a variety of operations (blending, classifications etc.).Results showed that only the groups that received an intervention where instruction was combined with writing showed more progress in spelling than the control group,

and while there were no discernible effects on the use of phonologically basedconditional spelling rules, morphological intervention effects were significant inspelling, especially on derivational suffixes.

An extensive training study of morphological awareness in dyslexic students was

conducted by Elbro and Arnbak (1996; Arnbak & Elbro, 2000). The experimental groupconsisted of 33 students aged 10 and 12 years with severe reading and spellingdifficulties (at least 2 years below expected reading level). The control group comprised27 reading disabled students matched in chronological age, gender and IQ. Both groupsparticipated in remedial education in phonological awareness, grapheme-phonemerecoding, spelling to dictation, and oral and silent reading. The experimental groupreceived additional training in morphological awareness of compounding andderivational and inflectional morphology 1 for about 45 min per week over a period of three months. The pre- and post tests included assessments of morphological awareness

(oral tests of morpheme subtraction, morphological analogy, and new word production)as well as various reading and spelling tasks. The experimental group made gains relative

to the controls in morphological awareness and the spelling of compounds andderivations. Elbro and Arnbak (1996) concluded that the study warranted replication‘in order to reveal to what extent morphological decomposition in spelling is acompensatory strategy in dyslexia’ (p. 237). They also concluded that morphologicaltraining might be most effective if it included written material: ‘Students should hear,see and write the morphemes they are supposed to learn to read and write’ (p. 238).This suggestion is in agreement with Hatcher et al. (1994) who found that phonologicaltraining was effective only when combined with explicit ‘linkage’ to orthographicstructures and also with earlier similar findings by Bradley and Bryant (1983).

Following these suggestions, we undertook a small exploratory study of the

effectiveness of morphographic training on the spelling of complex words by dyslexicadolescents. The study employed a cross-sectional spelling level-design (Backman,Mamen, & Ferguson, 1984; Mamen, Ferguson, & Backman, 1986) as the mostappropriate method to investigate spelling disability. Performance was compared with age matched (CA) and spelling level (SA) matched control groups, the aim being todetermine whether improvement by dyslexic individuals as an effect of morphologicaltraining is associated with their chronological age or spelling ability.

The study was based on the word-pair paradigm (a base and derived word) which was first introduced by Derwing (1976) as a way of evaluating the word relatedness in

1 Inflectional morphology deals with the selection of the particular form or variant of a word that is appropriate to the syntactic context of a sentence or utterance (Matthews, 1991). Inflectional morphemes do not change the word-class or the meaning of a word (e.g. book-books ), such as the derivations. By contrast, derivational morphology refers to the creation of new lexical items by prefixation and/or suffixation of a single root (e.g. walk-walker). Compounding is another way to create new words. Itrefers to the process of combining two bases together which can be rare roots or affixed words (e.g. teapot, kind-hearted )(Katamba, 1994).

Morphological spelling training and dyslexia 567




terms of meaning. In this study, each pair consisted of a base and a derived form and wasused as an index of the application of morphological strategies in spelling. It was

previously found (Carlisle, 1987; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006) that disabled readers and younger children spelled derived words significantly worse than their bases and tendedto perceive the items as two different words (e.g. sun-sany instead of sun-sunny ),suggesting a failure to deduce unfamiliar words from more familiar ones. Kemp (2006)also found that transfer of spelling effects was no better than chance when the childdid not know how to spell the base word, but was over 70% when the base form

was known.Training combined oral instruction with written materials, the aim being to train

students in the morphological structure of derived words and to make explicit the linksbetween morphological and orthographic structure. The intervention was targeted at

derived words since the derivation process is strongly linked to the creativity of thelanguage through the formation of new words. It constitutes a very central process for the expansion of word knowledge from known to unknown items (Katamba, 1993). Inaddition, derived words are typically long, low in frequency and abstract in meaning(Nagy & Anderson, 1984), and create significant difficulties in spelling (Carlisle, 1987;Kemp, 2006; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006).

In a deep orthography such as English the achievement of full competence inspelling requires the coordination of a number of distinct categories of knowledge.These include: (i) a grasp of the phonography of the language, encompassing the

alphabetic principle by which the phonemes of speech may be represented by lettersand letter groups; (ii) a word-specific lexigraphic memory for the exact letter choicesconventionally employed to identify particular words or free morphemes; and (iii) a

morphographic knowledge of conventions for representing bound morphemes(prefixes, inflections, derivational suffixes) and combining them with word stems.In some accounts (e.g. Frith, 1985; Seymour & Duncan, 2001) these categories of knowledge are acquired cumulatively with phonography as the early foundation andmorphography as a later and more sophisticated development. According to this view,compensatory morphological instruction might be most effective in the later stages of development. In order to examine this point we tested the effects of morphographicintervention on both normally developing and dyslexic individuals with widely differinglevels of orthographic development.

Morphographic instruction might help spelling by leading students towards therealisation that a complex and difficult word, such as ‘darkness’, is in fact composedof two simpler elements, ‘dark’ þ ‘ness’, which recur in other contexts, thusreducing the number of distinct forms which need to be learned. However, in many cases, the conventional spelling of derivations involves additional changes, for example: ‘happiness’ ¼ ‘happy’ þ y ! i þ ‘ness’, ‘noisy’ ¼ ‘noise’ – e þ ‘y’. In theseinstances, correct spelling requires learning of the standard forms for the free (base word) and bound (suffix) morphemes and an understanding of the conditionsdemanding implementation of certain orthographic transformations (delete ‘e’,

change ‘y’ to ‘i’, etc.). In order to separate these aspects we included derivationsinvolving simple attachment of a suffix to a base (no change items) and derivationsrequiring a transformation (orthographic change items) in the intervention study. We additionally wished to determine how far learning generalized from the specific

items used in instruction to other words having the same morphological structure,and compared intervention effects for both taught and untaught items for thispurpose.





In particular, the main hypotheses for the intervention studies were the following: (i)Findings (Carlisle, 1987; Elbro, 1990) suggest that the dyslexic group will perform below

the CA- and the SA-controls before the intervention. It is hypothesized that the CA-group will gain less from the intervention than the other two groups, due to their high performance before training. Gains of the dyslexic group are expected to be comparableto those of younger children of the same reading level, (ii) Evidence posits that spellingof base words is better than derived words (Carlisle, 1987; Kemp, 2006; Moats, 1998).It is anticipated that this effect will be present before the intervention, and that the

outcome of the training will be to increase performance on derived words in every group, (iii) Spelling performance is affected by morphological complexity and studentsperform better on transparent than on non-transparent items (Carlisle, 1987; Moats,1998). It is hypothesized that each group will show better scores on No Change than on

Orthographic Change items on the pre-test, and that training will selectively enhanceperformance on Orthographic Change items for each group, (iv) Training effects will beevaluated in relation to three word sets, trained, untrained but analogous, and untrainedand non-analogous words, anticipating that each group will perform better oninstructed words than on uninstructed words, (v) Generalisation effects will be further examined hypothesizing that untrained but analogous items to trained ones in terms of word-structure and suffixation will evoke transfer-of-learning effects (Freyd & Baron,1982; Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987). Finally, (iv) durability of training effects will be exploredby carrying out a delayed post test, after two months of the completion of the study, only

with the dyslexic group, due to serious restrictions of time for the rest of theparticipants.

Method

Participants

The participants followed mainstream schooling in secondary and primary education inthe Perth and Kinross educational district in Scotland. They were selected so as to formthree groups:

Dyslexic groupThis consisted of nine male individuals from the 2nd ( N ¼ 5) and 3rd ( N ¼ 4) years of secondary education, mean ages 13.9 years (range: 13.4–14.5 years) and 14. 9 years(range: 14.11–15.3 years). They were suggested by the principal teacher of the LearningSupport Unit basedon assessments(by educational psychologists) of intelligence, literacy and cognitive function and after they had been issued with a statement of special

educational needs (DfEE, 1994). They attended a Learning Support Unit for between oneand ten sessions per week and most received educational help from Learning Support Assistants. No participants with any sight, hearing or serious health problems wereincluded. Their deficiencies on basis of disruption of accuracy of reading and spellingprocesses (British Psychological Society, 1999) were further verified by completing acognitive assessment battery (Seymour & Evans, 1993) that contained tasks of word andnon-word reading and spelling. Items from tasks were regular ( e.g. cut ), rule-based

(e.g. air ) and irregular (e.g. who ) words of graded difficulty stratified in terms of wordfrequency and length to represent three levels of orthographic complexity. There werelarge discrepancies between individual dyslexic scores and mean scores of the





CA-matched controls (by p , .001) on both word/non-word reading and spelling. Error analysis showed that dyslexic individuals presented significantly higher rates ( p , .001)

than their classmates on word substitutions (e.g. brush instead of bunch ), regularisations(e.g. autom for autumn ), and severe phonological distortions (e.g. pipint for puppet )(Tsesmeli, 2002). Individual data are shown in Appendix A.

Chronological age (CA) control group

They were secondary 2 and 3 students ( N ¼ 14) with mean ages of 13.7 years (range: 13.4 to 14. 3 years) and 14. 9 years (range: 14.7 to 15.4 years). They were selected through

the English department of the school as having average performance in National Tests of reading and spelling. None of them attended the Support Unit and the majority wereclassmates of the dyslexic group.

Spelling age (SA)/reading age (RA) control group2

They were selected from secondary 1 and primary 4–7 classes to reflect the range of reading and spelling ability of the members of the dyslexic group3 ( N ¼ 23 for the Adjective Study, N ¼ 22 for the Noun Study). Selection was based on class teachers’identification of average readers who presented no particular difficulties in reading or spelling relative to their age.

All participants undertook a psychometric assessment consisting of Raven’s Standardor Coloured Progressive Matrices4 (Raven, 1958; 1962) and the British Abilities Scale(BAS) subtests of Word Reading, Spelling and the Digit Span (Elliot, 1992; Elliot, Murray,& Pearson, 1983). Summary results for the three groups have been included in Table 1.Following analysis of variance, post hoc (Tukey HSD) tests showed that the dyslexicgroup did not differ from the CA-group in age or intellectual ability and was equivalentto the SA-group in reading and spelling age. However, there was a difference in DigitSpan between the dyslexic group and both control groups ( p , .001).

The intervention study

Experimental stimuli

The items devised by the first author and included two lists of word pairs, the adjectivelist ( N ¼ 97 pairs) and the noun list ( N ¼ 100 pairs). The derivation process is

2 Spelling Age (SA) control group is identical with Reading Age (RA) control group on this sample. For the sake of brevity only theterm of the SA-group is used throughout the paper. Spelling ages in each group were somewhat lower than their reading ages.Details for the dyslexic group are given in Appendix A. Spelling and reading ages are in parentheses for the CA-group(RA ¼ 14.20, SA ¼ 12.93) and for each sub-group of the SA-group (P4: RA ¼ 7.87, SA ¼ 7.24, P5: RA ¼ 8.85,SA ¼ 8.67, P6: RA ¼ 9.64, SA ¼ 9.26, P7: RA ¼ 11.85, SA ¼ 10.47, S1: RA ¼ 15.47, SA ¼ 10.87). The correlationbetween reading and spelling age was strong and significant in both dyslexic ( r ¼ .777, p , .01) and control groups( r ¼ .840, p , .001).3 The variability in Spelling Age (SA) scores in the dyslexic group (see Appendix A) did not allow us to form a homogenousSA-group in terms of spelling ability but rather a ‘stratified’ sample. Thus, singles or dyads of dyslexic individuals of common SAmatched with a small group of similar SA of particular Grade, since it is not possible to choose pupils with normal spelling skillsof low SAs from high Grades and the reverse. For example, dyslexic pupils with SAs of 7.02, 9.01 or 10.10 matched with groups of younger pupils but with normal spelling skills with means of 7.24 (Grade 4), 9.26 (Grade 6) and 10.47 (Grade 7) asappropriate. This led to a variation in SA within the SA-group.4 The Standard Progressive Matrices was used for the Dyslexic group, the CA-control group and the S1 of the SA-control group, while the Coloured Progressive Matrices was applied to the P4 to P7 of the SA-control group.





applicable only to content words (i.e. nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs), thusadjectives and nouns derivations were chosen as they are among the most

representative of derivational suffixes in English (Katamba, 1993). The selection of derivational items was based on pilot studies undertaken to identify suffixes which wereparticularly problematic for dyslexic students (e.g. -ous: 3.33%, -ance: 7.77%, -ful : 15%,Tsesmeli (2002)). The derivational items in the adjective list contained five differentsuffixes: (i) 20 items in – y (LUCK-LUCKY); (ii) 17 items in – ful (USE-USEFUL); (iii) 20items in –ous (DANGER-DANGEROUS); (iv) 20 items in –ive (ACT-ACTIVE); and (v) 20items in –al (NATION-NATIONAL). The suffixes for the noun list were: (i) 20 items in –

ness (DARK-DARKNESS); (ii) 20 items in –ance (PERFORM-PERFORMANCE); (iii) 20items in –ity (POPULAR-POPULARITY); (iv) 20 items in –ion (PROTECT-PROTECTION);and (v) 20 items in –er (TEACH-TEACHER). The suffix types were crossed with two

levels of morphological complexity 5: (i) NO CHANGE ( N ¼ 50), where there is nochange between the base form and its derived counterpart as in STEM þ SUFFIX (e.g.LUCK LUCK þ Y or DARK DARK þ NESS); and (ii) ORTHOGRAPHIC CHANGE

( N ¼ 47 for adjectives, N ¼ 50 for nouns), where there is an alteration in the base word when the suffix is added as in STEM þ RULE þ SUFFIX (e.g. SUN þ Y ¼ SUN þ Nþ Y; NOISE þ Y ¼NOIS þ Y; HAPPY þ NESS ¼ HAPP þ I þ NESS). Despite their inconsistency, these three derivational rules (i.e. consonant doubling, ‘magic –e’ , and‘change -y- to -i- ’) are the most common rules in English that are applied to the majority of items involving morphophonemic changes (see also below the Section Quality of

errors, and Table 5 about this issue).

For the purposes of the training study, each list was divided into three subsets of items: (1) Trained items ( N ¼ 40) were the word pairs used in the teaching programme.They included the suffixes – y, -ful, -ous and –ive for the Adjective Study and –ness, -ance,

-ity and –ion for the Noun Study, (2) Untrained 1 items ( N ¼ 37 for adjectives, N ¼ 40for nouns) similarly contained items ending in – y, -ful, -ous and –ive for the AdjectiveStudy and –ness, -ance, -ity and –ion for the Noun Study. These words were analogous totrained items in terms of word structure and suffix-type (e.g. RUST-RUSTY analogous to

Table 1. Psychometric data for the groups

BAS

CA RA SA Raven’s PM Digits

Dyslexics 13.87 (0.62) 9.14 (2.06) 8.13 (1.10) 37.60 (4.90) 25.40 (22.6)

CA-group 13.77 (0.71) 13.79 (0.62) 12.40 (1.13) 44.90 (6.91) 55.40 (26.9)

SA-group 9.64 (1.75) 10.17 (2.11) 9.30 (1.78) 26.44 (9.73) 58.84 (32.3)

Note. Chronological age (CA), reading age (RA), spelling age (SA), standard/coloured progressive

matrices (raw scores) and BAS-digit recall (centiles).

5 Although a number of other changes could have been envisaged (e.g. phonological only, both phonological and orthographic, see Carlisle, 1987; Leong, 1989), orthographic change was the prevalent feature for these pair-itemsinvolving the most problematic derivational suffixes for dyslexic students. However, a few items involving phonological changes (usually stress shifts: 23/197 or vowel alternations: 3/197) were unavoidable, due to scarcity of appropriate itemsin each category. These cases are noted in Appendices II & III and were reasonably well balanced between the No Changeand Orthographic Change categories. In addition, while phonological changes are shown to affect mostly oral production of derived items (Carlisle, 1987; Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Leong, 1989), orthographic change appears to affect moreprominently their spelling (Tsesmeli, 2002).





LUCK-LUCKY or MAD-MADNESS to DARK-DARKNESS) but they did not receive any direct instruction, and (3) Untrained 2 items ( N ¼ 20) did not relate in any way to the

trained items and did not receive any instruction. They ended in –al (e.g. POST-POSTAL)for the Adjective Study and in –er (e.g. TEACH-TEACHER) for the Noun Study.

A full listing of items along with frequency and letter-length details is given in Appendices B and C.

General procedure of the study The general procedure of the study is outlined in Table 2. Each separate study included apre-test, a training programme and a post test. A delayed post test was given

approximately two months after the completion of the study only to the dyslexic group,due to serious restrictions of time for the rest of the participants. Each study lastedapproximately three months, the Adjective Study preceded the Noun Study and both

were completed during the last semester of a school year.

Assessments before and after the teaching programme All the items for each study (see Appendix B and C) were randomised to form the pre-,

post- and delayed post tests. Each test was given individually to the student by the firstauthor and lasted two sessions of about 40 min. Both base and derived words wereinstructed to dictation as a pair (e.g. LUCK-LUCKY). The students had to write down thespellings on three A4 sheets marked with two separate columns, placing the basespelling in the left column and the derivation in the right column. Although thisprocedure favours immediate recognition of the stem–derivation relationship, contrastto other practises in experimental literature (Derwing, 1976; Derwing et al., 1995), itappears to evoke more sensitive results. Surprisingly to an experienced reader, we found

Table 2. General procedure for the intervention study

A. Pre-testing

1. Pre-test of the Adjective Study 97 pairs randomised 2 sessions

2. Pre-test of the Noun Study 100 pairs randomised 2 sessions

B. Training programme

1. Adjective Study 40 pairs in a systematic order 8 sessions

- Y (NC, OC) Luck-Lucky/Fun-Funny 2 sessions

- FUL (NC, OC) Use-Useful/Beauty-Beautiful 2 sessions

- OUS (NC,OC) Danger-Dangerous/Fame-Famous 2 sessions

- IVE (NC,OC) Act-Active/Expense-Expensive 2 sessions

2. Noun Study 40 pairs in a systematic order 8 sessions

- NESS (NC, OC) Dark-Darkness/Happy-Happiness 2 sessions

- ANCE (NC, OC) Perform-Performance/Guide-Guidance 2 sessions

- ITY (NC,OC) Personal-Personality/Active-Activity 2 sessions

- ION (NC,OC) Act-Action/Educate-Education 2 sessions

C. Post-testing

1. Post-test of the Adjective Study 97 pairs randomised 2 sessions

2. Post-test of the Noun Study 100 pairs randomised 2 sessions

D. Delayed post-testing (only for dyslexic students)1. Delayed post-test of the Adjective Study 97 pairs randomised 2 sessions

2. Delayed post-test of the Noun Study 100 pairs randomised 2 sessions





(Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006) that our dyslexic students on different spelling tasks fromthe present study presented significantly ( p , .001) higher inconsistent stem spelling

scores of misspelled pairs (44%) than CA- and RA-groups (5 and 27%, respectively)showing that familial relationships of a word-pair are not so salient for the dyslexicstudents as for normal readers of both groups.

Training programme

The training programme was also implemented by the first author in individual sessionsof about 40 min for each student of the three groups. There were eight separateTeaching units for every study, each involving instruction on five word pairs belongingto a particular suffix-type and morphological complexity condition. The No Changeitems always preceded the Orthographic Change items. The sequence of instruction interms of suffix-type and condition was the same for all students (see Table 2).

The programme aimed to teach students in a step by step way the internal structureof the words and how this related to their spelling. Each session had a sequential andstructural nature and was based on the active participation of the individual. Morespecifically, instruction was targeted towards four main principles: (i) word structure -

every derived word was composed of a stem and a suffix; (ii) stem consistency – thebase and the stem of the derived word were spelled identically; (iii) suffix consistency –the suffixes were spelled identically despite their different linguistic environments; and

(iv) derivational rules - in Orthographic Change items rules are applied in a systematic way. The sessions were divided into three main phases, referred to as the Workshop, the Discussion, and Practise in word-pair spelling (see Table 2). The Workshop based onstudent’s own implicit understanding of word structure and can be viewed in AppendixD. The child was presented with a pair of soft cards and asked to analyse the word intoits constituent morphemes, to spell the stem, the suffix and finally to create the new word by combining the stem and the suffix appropriately. The Discussion phase aimedto make the relationships between familial words more salient. To this end, the wordpairs printed on coloured cards where base words and the stems of derivations were

printed in blue, their suffixes in green and letters subject to change due to derivationalrules in yellow (e.g. HAPPINESS). All the coloured cards were laid together to facilitate adiscussion on the principles of stem and suffix consistency. Spelling practise followedDiscussion and aimed to make explicit how the knowledge of word structure links with

the spelling of the word pairs based on accuracy. This means that the child should writeeach word-pair at least 3 times correctly before proceeding to the next pair.

Scoring procedure

The spellings produced in the pre- and post tests (and in the delayed retention test) wereclassified as conventionally correct or as errors. Every accurately spelled word wasassigned 1 point and every misspelled word 0 points (e.g. wurmth instead of warmth ).

Results

Table 3 reports the mean accuracy rates for the dyslexic group and for the two control

groups in the Adjective Study. Table 4 gives a comparable summary for the Noun Study.The overall appearance of the data is very similar in the two studies. In the pre-testsdyslexic performance was massively impaired relative to the results for the




Table 3. The adjective study

Base words Derivations

No change Orthographic change Overall No change Orthographic change Ov

Dyslexics

Pre- 47.55 (18.99) 28.36 (15.77) 37.95 (17.13) 21.11 (19.31) 13.94 (11.70) 17.52

Post- 56.00 (16.30) 35.93 (19.16) 45.96 (17.31) 49.55 (18.70) 28.13 (19.43) 38.84

Gain 8.44 (8.64) 7.56 (10.21) 8.01 (7.86) 28.44 (12.31) 14.18 (12.94) 21.3

Delayed post- 57.11 (16.64) 38.53 (19.04) 48.11 (17.48) 43.55 (22.40) 25.05 (22.66) 34.59

Retention 9.55 (8.41) 10.16 (9.67) 9.85 (7.97) 22.44 (13.77) 11.11 (13.44) 16.95

SA-group

Pre- 64.95 (21.68) 50.69 (23.78) 57.82 (22.35) 48.17 (26.45) 33.30 (26.30) 40.73

Post- 74.26 (16.47) 61.51 (22.10) 67.88 (18.99) 70.78 (18.90) 54.11 (24.76) 62.44

Gain 9.30 (9.54) 10.82 (12.95) 10.04 (9.98) 22.60 (17.98) 20.81 (21.14) 21.70

CA-group

Pre- 94.00 (4.15) 85.56 (7.13) 89.78 (5.19) 86.14 (8.89) 70.06 (17.67) 78.10

Post- 95.28 (2.01) 90.57 (5.39) 92.92 (3.36) 93.00 (4.42) 85.25 (10.20) 89.12

Gain 1.28 (3.81) 5.01 (4.54) 3.14 (3.18) 6.85 (7.83) 15.19 (11.46) 11.02

Note. Mean accuracy rate (%) for base words/derivations and No Change/Orthographic Change items.



Table 4. The noun study

Base words Derivations

No change Orthographic change Overall No change Orthographic change Ov

Dyslexics

Pre- 46.44 (20.48) 28.66 (15.87) 37.55 (17.66) 33.77 (20.16) 21.11 (18.16) 27.44

Post- 60.66 (21.79) 39.55 (21.20) 50.11 (21.20) 54.22 (23.37) 34.44 (23.51) 45.83

Gain 14.22 (9.35) 10.88 (10.30) 12.55 (8.17) 20.44 (13.48) 13.33 (9.94) 16.88

Delayed post- 54.44 (20.85) 40.00 (20.97) 47.22 (20.63) 45.33 (24.85) 27.33 (24.57) 47.22

Retention 8.00 (5.00) 11.33 (11.48) 9.66 (6.12) 11.55 (11.73) 6.22 (11.50) 19.88

SA-group

Pre- 69.90 (14.32) 55.09 (21.38) 62.50 (17.28) 57.00 (24.17) 38.72 (25.61) 47.86

Post- 80.63 (15.21) 68.54 (19.31) 74.59 (16.85) 77.36 (20.92) 66.18 (21.44) 71.77

Gain 10.72 (7.64) 13.45 (10.40) 12.09 (6.61) 20.36 (15.32) 20.81 (21.14) 23.90

CA-group

Pre- 95.71 (4.06) 89.42 (7.97) 92.57 (5.58) 91.42 (5.73) 81.42 (18.23) 86.42

Post- 97.57 (2.95) 89.71 (7.31) 93.64 (4.73) 96.42 (3.34) 88.28 (8.03) 92.35

Gain 1.85 (2.76) 0.28 (3.22) 1.07 (2.30) 5.00 (3.98) 6.85 (11.11) 5.92

Note. Mean accuracy rate (%) for base words/derivations and No change/Orthographic Change items.




Chronological Age control, which were close to ceiling, and fell below the level of theSpelling Age control. Derived words were spelled less accurately than base words, and

accuracy was lower for Change than for No Change derivations.The effectiveness of the intervention was initially evaluated in terms of the

improvement in performance on the post-test relative to the pre-test, referred to as the‘gain’ score. It can be seen that the gains were in general smallest in the CA-group, due tothe ceiling effect, and were of comparable magnitude in the dyslexic and SA groups.Both groups improved more in spelling derivations than in spelling base words. The

SA-group achieved approximately equal gains in spelling Change and No Changederivations while the dyslexic group improved more on the No Change items.

Main training effects

The first hypothesis stated that gains by CA-group would be smaller than the other twogroups due to their high performance before training. The gains of the dyslexic group were expected to be comparable to those of younger children of the same spelling level.The significance of the gains was tested in analyses of variance in which Test (Pre- vs.Post-) was a within-participants factor and group (Dyslexics, CA-group, SA-group) a

between-participants factor. These verified significant effects for Testing( F (1,43) ¼ 55.09; p , .001 for the Adjective Study; F (1,42) ¼ 95.68; p , .001 for theNoun Study) and Group ( F (2,43) ¼ 28.27; p , .001 for the Adjective Study;

F (2,42) ¼ 28.08; p , .001 for the Noun Study). The interaction testing by group( F (2,42) ¼ 15.19; p , .001) was significant only for the Noun Study, a differenceattributed to the smaller gains made by the CA-group. Post hoc analysis (Tukey HSD)revealed that the dyslexic group performed significantly below the CA-group ( p , .001)and the SA-group ( p , .001 for the Adjectives; p , .01 for the Nouns). The two controlgroups also differed ( p , .001). Replication of the analysis on the Dyslexic and SA-

groups confirmed that the small difference in gains was not significant (testing by group( F (1,30) , 1 for adjectives; ( F (1, 29) , 1 for Nouns) indicating that the dyslexicstudents presented the same degree of change following the intervention as the younger

group of the same reading ability. Analysis of variance by Item revealed significanteffects for testing only for the adjectives ( F (1,386) ¼ 34.56; p , .001). Group effects were significant in both studies ( F (2,772) ¼ 1015.98; p , .001 for adjectives; F (2,796) ¼ 992.41; p , .001 for nouns) while the interaction group by testing( F (2,772) ¼ 13.08; p , .001) was significant only for the Adjective Study.

The size of the potential for gains in spelling ability might be expected to vary depending on the orthographic level which had been achieved. In order to examine thispoint, we considered the relationship between gain scores and reading and spelling agein the control groups. The correlation between reading (RA) and spelling age (SA) was

strong and significant in both dyslexic ( r ¼ .77, p , .01) and control groups ( r ¼ .84, p , .001). Figures 1a,b and 1c,d plot individual gain scores against reading and spellingages respectively for the adjective and noun studies. It can be seen that the relationship was negative for both reading ( r ¼ 2.43, p , .01, r ¼ 2.64, p , .001) and spelling( r ¼ 2.54, p , .01, r ¼ 2.59, p , .001) for the normally developing readers, indicatinga trend for gains to be numerically larger at the lower levels of reading and spelling skill.This relationship was echoed in the results for the dyslexic individuals (see Figures 1a,b

and 1c,d) whose gain scores fell almost within the ^

95% boundaries for the controlgroups. This analysis confirms that the spelling of the dyslexic individuals advanced inresponse to morphographic instruction in line with orthographic level.





Training effects on word-types

Pre-test assessments verified that spelling of derived words was inferior to spellingof base words for both studies ( F (1,43) ¼ 185.17, p , .001 for adjectives;

F (1,42) ¼ 62.48, p , .001 for nouns). These differences were verified by item analyses( F (3,384) ¼ 22.71; p , .001 for adjectives; F (3,396) ¼ 4.71; p , .01 for nouns).

According to the second hypothesis, the training would increase performance onderived words in every group. The significance of the gains was tested in analyses of variance in which test (pre- vs. post-) was a within-participants factor. These confirmedthe effects of base/derived words in both studies ( F (1,43) ¼ 185.17; p , .001 for the

Adjective Study; F (1,42) ¼ 62.48; p , .001 for the Noun Study). The interactions of testby base/derived words were also significant ( F (1,43) ¼ 56.64; p , .001 for the AdjectiveStudy; F (1,42) ¼ 28.06; p , .001 for the Noun Study), supporting the conclusion thatthe gains following the intervention were larger for derivations than for the base words. A subsidiary analysis indicated that the pattern of gains was very similar in the dyslexicand SA control groups (group by test by base/derived interaction: F (1,30) ¼ 0.20, ns, for adjectives; F (1,29) ¼ 4.00, ns, for nouns). Analysis by items confirmed the effects of base/derived words in both studies ( F (3,384) ¼ 22.71; p , .001 for adjectives;

F (3,396)¼

4.71; p,

.01 for nouns).Preliminary analyses indicated that spelling was more accurate for No Change items

than for Orthographic Change items ( F (1,43) ¼ 241.13; p , .001 for Adjectives;

Figure 1. (a) Gains of the adjective study in relation to reading age; (b) gains of the noun study in

relation to reading age; (c) gains of the adjective study in relation to spelling age; (d) gains of the Noun

Study in relation to spelling age. Scatterplot of dyslexic and control accuracy scores (mean %). The

regression line is based upon the control group data, the outer lines mark the boundaries beyond which

scores are significantly outlying from the control group mean at p , .05.





F (1,42) ¼ 144.65; p , .001 for Nouns). These differences were also significant initem analyses ( F (1,190) ¼ 16.43; p , .001 for Adjectives; F (1,196) ¼ 26.10; p , .001

for Nouns).The third assumption stated that training would enhance performance on

Orthographic Change items for each group. The relative gains for Change and NoChange items were tested initially in a 3 (Dyslexics, CA-group, SA-group) by 2 (pre-,post-) by 2 (Change, No Change) analysis of variance. The three-way interactions weresignificant ( F (2, 43) ¼ 7.07; p , .01 for adjectives; F (2, 42) ¼ 4.35; p , 0.5 for nouns)

showing different effects of training for each group. A closer examination of Tables 3and 4 shows that only the CA-group improved their spelling of Change words after intervention. Another 2 (dyslexic, SA) by 2 (pre-, post-) by 2 (Change, No Change)analysis of variance showed that the three-way interactions were significant

( F (1,30) ¼ 4.51; p , .05 for adjectives; F (1, 29) ¼ 7.49; p , 0.5 for nouns), supportingthe conclusion that gains on Change items were weaker than for No Change items in thedyslexic group but more or less equivalent in the SA group.

Generalization effects

The generalization of learning was tested by comparing results for the Trained,Untrained 1, and Untrained 2 item sets. If the pre- versus post-test differences

reflect merely a general improvement occurring between the two test points, we would expect all three sets of items to show similar gains. If, alternatively, the gains were specific to the items that were directly taught in the intervention, then we would expect gains to occur for the Trained items but not for either of theUntrained sets. If the training generalizes across the wider set of morphologically complex words containing particular suffixes, then we expect the gains to extend

to Untrained 1 derivations but not to Untrained 2 items. Figures 2a and 2b show the pre- and post test accuracy scores for the three training sets for each group inthe two studies. Both data sets favour an account in which there is generalisation of

training from taught items to untaught items containing the same suffixes. The pre- versus post test gains were large for Trained items, intermediate for Untrained 1items, and small for Untrained 2 items.

These conclusions were tested in analyses of variance in which groups (dyslexics,CA-group, SA-group), test (pre-, post-), and training (Trained, Untrained 1, Untrained 2) were factors. There were significant effects of training set ( F (2, 86) ¼ 14.68; p , .001for adjectives; F (2, 84) ¼ 98.45; p , .001 for nouns) and a training by test interaction( F (2, 86) ¼ 20.21; p , .001 for adjectives; F (2, 84) ¼ 43.54; p , .001 for nouns). Thisinteraction indicates a significant variation in the size of the pre- versus post test

difference between the three word sets. Further analysis of Trained and Untrained 1 words showed significant training by test interactions ( F (1,43) ¼ 18.53; p , .001 for adjectives; F (1, 42) ¼ 23.15; p , .001 for nouns), confirming that each group gainedmore on Trained than on Untrained 1 words. The interaction training by test by group was not significant ( F (2, 43) , 1). Comparison of Untrained 1 and Untrained 2 wordssimilarly gave a significant training by test interaction ( F (1,43) ¼ 8.87; p , .01 for adjectives; F (1, 42) ¼ 31.32; p , .001 for nouns), indicating that each group performed

better on Untrained 1 than on Untrained 2 words. This demonstrates that the groupsgeneralized effectively from the Trained words to the analogous Untrained 1 words. Thepatterns of training effects were very similar in the dyslexic and SA-control groups





(group by training by test interaction, F (2,60) , 1 for the adjective study, and F (2,42) ¼ 1.16; ns for the Noun Study).

Long-term effects for the dyslexic group

Durability of training effects was explored by carrying out a delayed post test, after twomonths of the completion of the study, only with the dyslexic group. Comparisonsbetween the pre-test and the delayed post test, and between the post test and delayedpost test (see Tables 3 and 4) established that accuracy on the delayed post test wassignificantly higher than on the pre-test ( F (1,8) ¼ 25.67; p , .01 for the Adjective Study,

F (1,8) ¼ 12.51; p , .01 for the Noun Study). This effect was significant in an itemanalysis of the adjectives data ( F (1,387) ¼ 23.18; p , .001) but not in the nouns data

( F (1,399),

1). The reduction in accuracy between the post test and the delayed posttest in the Adjective Study was not significant ( F (1,8) , 1). However, there was a loss of about five percentage points in the Noun Study ( F (1,8) ¼ 8.06; p , .05). A separate

Figure 2. Training of derived words: (a) The Adjective Study; (b) The Noun Study.





analysis of the results for spelling derivations suggested significant retention in the Adjective Study (pre- vs. delayed post test difference, F (1,8) ¼ 21.92; p , .01 by

participants, F (1,193) ¼ 52.37; p , .001 by items) but not in the Noun Study ( F (1,8) ¼ 1.03 by participants, F (1,199) , 1 by items).

Quality of errors

Previous studies suggest that the spelling of a derivation depends on the accuracy of

spelling the base word (Arnbak & Elbro, 1998; Kemp, 2006). This issue was explored by ‘ post hoc ’ analyses classifying the word pairs according to whether the base word or thederivation was misspelled (B þ D- type: e.g. mist-mistie, and B 2 D- type: e.g. suczes-

suzessfol for success-successful ) and examining the location of errors in attempts atspelling derivations (the stem, the suffix, the orthographic change, or a combination of loci). The outcomes are summarized in Table 5.

The dyslexic students differed from the controls ( p , .001) by having the majority of their misspelled word pairs in the B 2 D- type. In the pre-tests, the preponderance of B þ D- errors affected either the suffix ( p , .001) or the critical letters which changeddue to derivational rules ( Rule errors). Training effects, especially for the dyslexic group,

involved a reduction in errors on the suffix of No Change derivations ( p , .001). This was also true of the Orthographic Change items, with the difference that the dyslexicgroup decreased their errors on the suffix (10.50%) but presented moderate losses on

the rule (2.70%), whereas the other groups made higher gains on the rule (about 8%)and lesser gains on the suffix (about 4%). Closer inspection showed that dyslexicstudents particularly confused the ‘magic –e’ with the ‘change -y- to -i- ’ rule (see alsoCarlisle, 1987). Given that these two rules apply to the majority of Orthographic Changeitems, this may explain the dyslexics’ failure to make progress on these items. Thisclarifies the contrasting pattern between the dyslexic and control groups which

emerged in relation to the morphological complexity factor. The dyslexic grouppresented an increase in accuracy on the No Change items, while the other two groupspresented more gains on Orthographic Change items.

The pre-test data for B 2 D- pairs showed that errors were located primarily on the stem or on additional parts of the word. A contrasting pattern between the dyslexicgroup and the older group again emerged. The dyslexic students, like the younger group(especially the children with the lowest spelling ages), presented errors scattered across

the entire word (Across Word errors) (42% for dyslexic group, 23% for SA-group) and at asmaller percentage on the stem (15 and 18%, respectively). By contrast, the older grouppresented errors mainly on the stem of the derived words (10%) (see Table 5). Thisreinforces the view that the dyslexic students were unable to produce the spellings of aderived word because they lacked essential information about the base form. Their

difficulty in spelling the base word was added to their insufficient knowledge of thesuffix, resulting in derived words which were particularly distorted in terms of their internal morphological organisation. Examination of the phonological regularity of these errors (Tsesmeli, 2002) by the dyslexic and the younger group showed quite

severe deviations from their target sound (about 20 and 10%, respectively for responsessuch as corerent-cinerg for co-operate/cooperation ). Intervention had a profound effecton these errors. Improved spelling of the suffix (9.50% for dyslexics) of the words was

accompanied by reduced errors on the stem or across the word (20 and 26% for dyslexics). There was also a reduction in severe deviations from the target (from 20 to2% for dyslexics), resulting in misspellings of improved quality (e.g. corerent-cinerg




Table 5. Pre-test error rate of the adjective and noun studies

Adjectives Nouns

Stem (%) Suffix (%) Word (%) Stem (%) Suffix (%) Word (%)

NC (B þ D-)

Dyslexics 1.48 (1.54) 21.48 (12.11) 3.33 (2.63) 3.14 (3.37) 8.51 (6.94) 2.59 ( 3.23)

CA-group 1.77 (1.83) 6.22 ( 5.25) 0.11 (0.43) 3.09 (3.38) 1.78 (1.90) 0.11 ( 0.44)

SA-group 1.88 (1.90) 13.18 ( 8.61) 1.95 (3.46) 2.95 (2.71) 8.63 (7.77) 1.96 ( 2.80)

NC (B 2 D-)

Dyslexics 18.14 (11.85) 1.11 ( 1.44) 21.29 (16.47) 18.70 (7.06) 2.22 (2.50) 26.29 (17.88)

CA-group 4.22 ( 3.26) 0.11 ( 0.43) 0.88 ( 1.76) 2.85 (2.72) 0.11 (0.44) 0.11 ( 0.44)

SA-group 17.60 ( 9.90) 0.36 ( 0.99) 11.73 (14.82) 12.42 (7.12) 0.22 (0.58) 12.50 (12.29)

Adjectives Nouns

Stem (%) Rule (%) Suffix (%) Word (%) Stem (%) Rule (%) Suffix (%) Wor

OC (B þ D-)

Dyslexics 0.00 (0.00) 4.34 (5.70) 12.24 (6.56) 2.48 ( 2.55) 1.48 ( 1.54) 6.48 (5.09) 6.11 (4.85) 0.74

CA-group 1.85 (2.66) 5.67 (6.11) 6.81 (7.57) 0.55 ( 1.49) 2.97 ( 4.98) 4.64 (6.64) 1.19 (1.65) 0.00

SA-group 1.15 (1.67) 8.72 (7.23) 9.70 (6.63) 1.00 ( 1.38) 1.51 ( 1.84) 7.27 (6.20) 7.87 (5.61) 0.90

OC (B2D-)

Dyslexics 15.07 ( 9.61) 0.83 (0.99) 8.20 (5.73) 42.61 (25.76) 22.22 ( 7.07) 1.66 (1.66) 4.44 (3.43) 31.1

CA-group 10.52 ( 4.16) 0.11 (0.43) 0.11 (0.43) 2.30 ( 3.16) 7.26 ( 5.49) 0.11 (0.44) 0.11 (0.44) 0.1

SA-group 18.89 (11.48) 0.76 (1.34) 3.41 (3.83) 23.29 (24.37) 21.81 (11.50) 0.75 (1.23) 2.95 (3.16) 13.33

Note. Groups’ means (in per cent) in terms of Morphological Complexity (NC, OC) and Error Pair-type (B þ D-, B-D-) (standard deviations in parent




resulted to coloprat-coloprative ). Arnbak and Elbro (2000) also reported that traineddyslexics gained more than untrained ones on phonetically acceptable misspellings

even though the two groups did not differ in terms of phonological skills. A reduction insevere deviations may be considered a significant consequence of the intervention,given that the phonetic re-organisation occurred on Trained and Untrained butanalogous (Untrained 1) items ( p , .001) but not on untrained and unrelated(Untrained 2) items. In any case, the intervention benefitted suffix spelling (also in Arnbak & Elbro, 2000) and this produced indirect effects on the overall orthographic

form of the word. For instance, when a student knew how to spell the base wordappropriately, gains on the suffix led to a completely accurate spelling ( luck-luckie toluck-lucky ). In cases where the student did not know the base word, there was a gain in

the quality of the response ( veery-veeryes to very-verious for the target vary-various ).

General discussion

This exploratory study aimed to determine how far explicit training of morphologicalstructurecould improve thespelling of derivedwordsby dyslexic adolescents. In general,the outcomes encourage the view that morphographic training of this type is a

potentially useful approach to the treatment of severe spelling difficulties. At the outset, the members of the dyslexic group were severely impaired in

spelling both base words and derivations and produced poorly structured responses

containing multiple errors. The intervention improved spelling accuracy, especially for complex derivations. Gains were relatively small in the CA group, due to theceiling effect, but substantial and of comparable magnitude in the dyslexic and SA control groups. This outcome reinforces the argument that the gains in spellingcame from the training of morphological structure and not simply from spellingpractise. Students received the same amount of practise on base and derived words

but improved more dramatically on the derived words which were explicitly targeted in the intervention. These results are consistent with other findings by Arnbak and Elbro (2000), and Nunes et al. (2003) who found that morphological

training effects were stronger on the spelling of morphologically complex words(i.e. derivations, compounds). In terms of morphological complexity factor, pre-testdata showed that each group was worse on words involving orthographic changes(cf. Leong, 1989, 2000; Leong & Parkinson, 1995; Moats, 2000), but only the CA-group improved spelling of these words after intervention. The dyslexic groupimproved more on the No Change items, while the SA-group achievedapproximately equal gains in spelling Change and No Change derivations. Learning was not item-specific but generalized to structurally analogous words which had notbeen taught, and this effect was present for each group (cf. Freyd & Baron, 1982;

Wysocki & Jenkins, 1987). There was evidence of long-term retention for thedyslexic group from the delayed post test, especially in the Adjective Study.

These results have implications for theoretical accounts of the way in which competence in spelling develops, especially the suggestion that phonographic andlexigraphic foundations precede the level of morphography. If this cumulative account was valid, we would expect to find that morphographic training was less effective atlower than at higher reading and spelling ages. This is not what was found,

since gain scores by the control participants were strongest at the lower age levels(see Figure 1a–d) and in the most severely impaired dyslexic individuals. Despite a lack of phonographic and lexigraphic foundations, as shown by the high error rates on both





base and derived words and by responses containing multiple phonetic deviations, thedyslexic adolescents improved their spelling following the intervention. The outcome

suggests a retroactive effect in which instruction targeted at the morphographic levelproduced improvements at the lower levels indexed by reductions in severely deviantresponses and multiple errors.

The most plausible explanation may be stated in terms of a process of unitisation.Learning to spell long and complex words is facilitated if it is possible to segment thephoneme–grapheme array into manageable and coherent units. These units might be

definedin terms of phonology, syllables forexample,or, as in thepresent study, in terms of morphology, as word stems and affixes. For English, the syllable may not be such a usefulstructure because syllable boundaries are often ambiguous and because of varying stressassignment. Further, the fundamental difficulty in dyslexia is held to focus on

phonological segmentation (Snowling, 2000). This opens the possibility that themorpheme may offer a viable alternative principle of unitisation for dyslexic individuals.For this to work, it seems necessary that morphological segmentation should berelatively unimpaired in dyslexia. Whether this is so is unclear since several studies haveindicated that performance on morphological awareness tasks is deficient relative tochronological age controls (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman, 1998; Carlisle, 1987; Elbro, 1990;Fowler & Liberman, 1995; Leong, 1989; Leong & Parkinson, 1995). However, Tsesmeliand Seymour (2006) recently reported an additional study with the present sample in which morphological awareness was assessed. The results for the dyslexic group were

well below those of the CA-control but exactly in line with reading and spelling age,implying that morphological awareness might be a product of orthographicdevelopment. This is consistent with a theory in which experience with written

language leads to the development of an ‘orthographic awareness’ of positionally constrained and recurrent letter sequences. In the normal course, these come to beperceived as corresponding to free and bound morphemes and this results in theemergence of explicit morphological awareness. This does not happen in individuals with dyslexia because the instability and imprecision of the spelling system prevents theisolation of recurring orthographic sequences. The effect of the intervention may be toprovide an alternative route to morphographic awareness through the use of colour coding and other techniques.

Morphographic training provides a basis for segmentation of long and difficult words

into units of manageable size, therefore, and this assists the understanding of thephonological basis of spelling and the learning of word- and morpheme-specificspellings. The additional aspect of rule-based alterations required for correct spelling of some derivations appeared to be more difficult to establish. Young normal spellersgained from instruction in these rules but this was less true of the dyslexic spellers whocontinued to find the application of the rules confusing and difficult. Possibly this rule-based aspect is the key feature of the morphographic level of spelling and one which remains somewhat beyond the reach of dyslexic individuals.

Although the main scope of this study is focused on the derivational morphology in a

deep orthographysuch as English, there is theassumption,despite the lack of appropriatecross-linguistic studies, that these processes might follow the same course in other moretransparent languages (i.e. German or Greek). Since it is now recognized that inconsistent orthographies phonological coding poses less difficulty (Wimmer, Landerl, &

Frith, 1999), the acquisition of morphography may be acquired earlier in thedevelopmental trajectory. For instance, Tsesmeli (2007) found that Greek data supportedan earlier acquisition of morphology in comparison with English. Spelling of derived





words was statistically lower than their bases also in Greek, but the discrepancy betweenbase and derived words were smaller than in English (13% vs. 22%). Qualitative analyses

showed that stem consistency indexes by students of lower reading/spelling ages weresignificantly higher in Greek than in English (70% vs. 50%). More importantly, English children presented a higher percentage of serious errors (47%) which were obscuring themorphological structure of words in comparison with Greek children (18%), for whomthe majority of errors appeared either on the stem (27%) or on the suffix (17%) thusretaining the inner word structure intact.

Some of the limitations of this study would be that all stages of this intervention wereimplemented by the same person and this may affect the validity of the results due to a‘teacher effect’. However, instruction led to a variation to the spelling performance of each group according to their reading and spelling ability across conditions, and these

results are consistent to experimental literature. The specificity of the morphologicaltraining effects also could be further verified by extraneous control groups, for example,groups which were not trained only to morphology (e.g. phonology or readingcomprehension) or even untrained dyslexic groups matched in terms of chronologicalage and cognitive measures as in other intervention studies (Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman,2000; Elbro & Arnbak, 1996). In addition, in future experimental designs of similar interventions would have to be controlled more tightly for factors that would affectthe results (i.e. word length or the phonological complexity of items) or to examine theco-occurrence of phonological andmorphological factors as different aspects of the same

words integrated in one experimental design, as suggested by Carlisle (1995). However, very few studies (Jones, 1991; Rubin, 1988) offered systematic comparisons of theawareness of phonological and morphological structure of different types of words and

more studies of this kind would be particularly important for the complex nature of thisarea. More interestingly, an investigation of morphophonology, referring to the discretechanges occurring between the morpheme boundaries within the word, would beparticularly revealing for the nature of the deficiencies of the dyslexic students.

Nonetheless, the study suggests that the training of morphological structure can be of general benefit to the spelling of dyslexic adolescents (see also Bryant et al., 1998; Elbro & Arnbak, 1996). The goal of such training is to provide the student with the skills necessary to carry out morphological decomposition of complex words. The important feature of thepresent procedurewas theadoption of a morphographic approach to decomposition

which aimed to encourage awareness of the division of written words into subsets of letters corresponding to free and bound morphemes.

Acknowledgements

We are most grateful to Perth & Kinross City Council and to the students and staff of Perth High

School and Caledonian Primary School in Scotland, UK for their generous assistance and time. The

research was part of a doctoral dissertation conducted by S. N. Tsesmeli and supported financially

by the Greek State Scholarships Foundation.

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Received 29 January 2007; revised version received 8 September 2008

Appendix A. Dyslexic participants

Dyslexics Sex C A B AS-RA Centiles B AS-SA Centiles Raven’s SPM Digit span

1 M 14.05 7.4 2 7.2 1 25 4

2 M 13.04 14.0 70 10.10 30 50–75 67

3 M 13.11 7.9 4 7.9 4 50 33

4 M 14.04 11.7 41 9.1 12 25–50 49

5 M 13.08 9.4 14 9.1 12 50–75 2

6 M 15.03 8.11 8 7.6 2 50–75 27

7 M 14.09 9.5 12 7.2 1 10–25 8

8 M 14.11 9.1 14 8.1 4 50–75 10

9 M 14.11 8.3 5 9.1 9 50 46

Note. Sex, chronological age (CA), BAS-reading age (RA)/spelling age (SA) and centiles, standard

progressive matrices (SPM) (percentiles) and digit span (centiles).




Appendix B. The Adjective Study: Items and design

No change items Orthographic change items

Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f l Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f

luck T 193 4 Lucky T H 166 5 fun T 695 3 funny T H 31

rain T 938 4 Rainy T H 122 5 sun T 1977 3 sunny T H 11

dust T 340 4 Dusty T H 79 5 noise T 411 5 noisy T H 9

rust U 39 4 Rusty U H 55 5 taste U 283 5 tasty U H 2

thirst U 33 6 Thirsty U H 55 7 fog U 212 3 foggy U H 3trust T 103 5 Trusty T L 4 6 wave T 318 4 wavy T L 2

mist T 57 4 Misty T L 19 5 rose T 461 4 rosy T L 2

crust U 160 5 Crusty U L 4 6 fat U 386 3 fatty U L 1

fault U 120 5 Faulty U L 10 6 spot U 403 4 spotty U L

mess U 57 4 Messy U L 12 5 breeze U 147 6 breezy U L

use T 7009 3 useful T H 430 6 beauty T 330 6 beautiful T H 104

help T 3875 4 helpful T H 209 7 plenty T 320 6 plentiful T H 5

success T 242 7 successful T H 236 10 pity T 56 4 pitiful T H 1

wonder U 445 6 wonderful U H 411 9 fancy U 103 5 fanciful U H 1

harm U 148 4 harmful U H 94 7 – –

thank T 301 5 thankful T L 45 8 bounty T 9 6 bountiful T L

pain T 198 4 painful T L 36 7 duty T 147 4 dutiful T L

truth U 215 5 truthful U L 9 8 mercy U 49 5 merciful U L

trust U 103 5 trustful U L 2 8 – – respect U 185 7 respectful U L 16 10 – –

danger T 359 6 dangerous T H 308 9 fame T 85 4 famous T H 71

mountain T 838 8 mountainous T H 87 11 vary T 108 4 various T H 62

poison T 76 6 poisonous T H 77 9 marvel T 23 6 marvellous T H 5

prosper U 11 7 prosperous U H 43 10 glory U 93 5 glorious U H 5

thunder U 140 7 thunderous U H 17 10 grace U 55 5 gracious U H 2

moment T 834 6 momentous T L 10 9 adventure T 152 9 adventurous T L 2

murder T 40 6 murderous T L 5 9 luxury T 25 6 luxurious T L 1

pomp U 13 4 pompous U L 5 7 space U 1499 5 spacious U L 1



Appendix B. (Continued )


Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f l Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f

rigor U 2 5 rigorous U L 3 8 desire U 129 6 desirous U L

ruin U 43 4 ruinous U L 0 7 envy U 24 4 envious U L

Act T 457 3 active T H 178 6 expense T 38 7 expensive T H 12

protect T 340 7 protective T H 70 10 create T 235 6 creative T H 5

effect T 399 6 effective T H 136 9 narrate T 2 7 narrative T H 3

attract U 101 7 attractive U H 128 10 execute U 13 7 executive U H 5

detect U 32 6 detective U H 67 9 decorate U 29 8 decorative U H 2

digest T 23 6 digestive T L 40 9 intense T 58 7 intensive T L 1

progress T 228 8 progressive T L 33 11 attribute T 14 9 attributive T L

collect U 189 7 collective U L 30 10 imitate U 51 7 imitative U L

connect U 92 7 connective U L 30 10 co-operate U 21 9 co-operative U L 2

select U 193 6 selective U L 10 9 manipulate U 4 10 manipulative U L

nation U 510 6 national U H 327 8 nature U 462 6 natural U H 73

coast U 594 5 coastal U H 114 7 arrive U 136 6 arrival U H 6profession U 31 10 professional U H 122 12 navy U 43 4 naval U H 5

tradition U 66 9 traditional U H 90 11 culture U 146 7 cultural U H 5

form U 2720 4 formal U H 85 6 survive U 87 7 survival U H 4

region U 825 6 regional U L 24 8 propose U 20 7 proposal U L 2

season U 370 6 seasonal U L 24 8 appraise U 3 8 appraisal U L

post U 253 4 postal U L 12 6 rehearse U 6 8 rehearsal U L 1

margin U 59 6 marginal U L 10 8 remove U 215 6 removal U L 2

rent U 71 4 rental U L 4 6 revive U 11 6 revival U L

Key: T for Trained items, U for Untrained items, f for Frequency, l for Letter-length, H for High Frequency, L for Low Frequency.

Note 1. Items in italics involve phonological changes (tone-shifts); The items nation-national, space-spacious, nature-natural involve vowel alternations.

Note 2. Mean frequencies and standard deviations: Bases: 358.39 (869.86), Derivations: 90.77 (170.17), (Carrol, Davies, & Richman, 1971).



Appendix C. The Noun Study: Items and design


Bases T/U f L Derives T/U fL f l Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f

dark T 19 4 Darkness T H 250 8 happy T 774 5 happiness T H 79

ill T 148 3 Illness T H 78 7 empty T 384 5 emptiness T H

sad T 309 3 Sadness T H 36 7 Ugly T 126 4 ugliness T H

sick U 334 4 Sickness U H 59 8 ready U 1207 5 readiness U H 12

weak U 245 4 Weakness U H 35 8 Lazy U 102 4 laziness U H 4Fit T 461 3 Fitness T L 10 7 steady T 243 6 steadiness T L 2

wild T 929 4 Wildness T L 10 8 dizzy T 11 5 dizziness T L 0

bitter U 103 6 Bitterness U L 11 10 fuzzy U 17 5 fuzziness U L

soft U 669 4 Softness U L 17 8 clumsy U 50 6 clumsiness U L 0

mad U 170 3 madness U L 14 7 fussy U 10 5 fussiness U L 0

perform T 168 7 performance T H 149 11 guide T 347 5 guidance T H 30

assist T 33 6 assistance T H 39 10 endure T 39 6 endurance T H 2

allow T 229 5 allowance T H 64 9 ignore T 28 6 ignorance T H 22

resist U 47 6 resistance U H 134 10 insure U 29 6 insurance U H

accept U 159 6 acceptance U H 32 10 apply U 192 5 appliance U H 14

attend T 105 6 attendance T L 10 10 admit T 74 5 admittance T L 2

avoid T 246 5 avoidance T L 0 9 rely T 42 4 reliance T L 12

disturb U 22 7 disturbance U L 10 11 observe U 349 7 observance U L 8

annoy U 13 5 annoyance U L 13 9 assure U 23 6 assurance U L 12accord U 12 6 accordance U L 12 10 comply U 2 6 compliance U L

personal T 255 8 personality T H 97 11 active T 178 6 activity T H 164

popular T 393 7 popularity T H 37 10 dense T 86 5 density T H 104

real T 910 4 reality T H 56 7 secure T 75 6 security T H 5

similar U 555 7 similarity U H 27 10 intense U 58 7 intensity U H 68

minor U 233 5 minority U H 27 8 diverse U 16 7 diversity U H 18

familiar T 406 8 familiarity T L 13 11 sensitive T 86 9 sensitivity T L 14

original T 403 8 originality T L 12 11 positive T 204 8 positivity T L 0

complex U 206 7 complexity U L 20 10 negative U 210 8 negativity U L 0



Appendix C. (Continued )


Bases T/U f L Derives T/U fL f l Bases T/U f l Derives T/U fL f

human U 710 5 humanity U L 22 8 pure U 202 4 purity U L 1

formal U 85 6 formality U L 8 9 rare U 126 4 rarity U L 4

act T 457 3 action T H 519 6 educate T 11 7 education T H 294

protect T 340 7 protection T H 153 10 relate T 38 6 relation T H 100

direct T 284 6 direction T H 651 9 imitate T 51 7 imitation T H 38

collect U 189 7 collection U H 197 10 communicate U 87 11 communication U H 140

invent U 73 6 invention U H 151 9 create U 235 6 creation U H 49

adapt T 25 5 adaption T L 27 8 promote T 25 7 promotion T L 19

suggest T 244 7 suggestion T L 40 10 narrate T 2 7 narration T L 10

digest U 23 6 digestion U L 45 9 tolerate U 5 8 toleration U L

prevent U 248 7 prevention U L 15 10 illustrate U 119 10 illustration U L 1

correct U 940 7 correction U L 11 10 separate U 416 8 separation U L 18

teach U 254 5 teacher U H 836 7 drive U 543 5 driver U H 30

farm U 900 4 farmer U H 414 6 write U 9846 5 writer U H 279lead U 520 4 leader U H 310 6 run U 1473 3 runner U H 50

read U 3057 4 reader U H 256 6 win U 340 3 winner U H 6

own U 3006 3 owner U H 172 5 manage U 88 6 manager U H 8

bank U 465 4 banker U L 14 6 dance U 608 5 dancer U L 3

clean U 521 5 cleaner U L 32 7 swim U 2990 4 swimmer U L 34

climb U 288 5 climber U L 14 7 produce U 586 7 producer U L 30

train U 556 5 trainer U L 18 7 examine U 190 7 examiner U L 4

publish U 23 7 publisher U L 17 9 travel U 814 6 traveller U L 2

Key: T for trained items, U for untrained items, f for frequency, l for letter-length, H for high frequency, L for low frequency.

Note 1. Items in italics involve phonological changes (tone-shifts).

Note 2. Mean frequencies and standard deviations: Bases: 447,47 (1096,74), 74,45 (134,57), (Carrol, Davies, & Richman, 1971).




Appendix D. Instructions for the workshop

(1) I’d like to introduce two words. Please, look at them carefully and tell me which

part is common between the two words. While the child finds it. Please, draw a

line to show me clearly the two different parts (use of pencil).

CARDS luck lucky (analysis of the word in 2 parts)

(2) Now, I’ll show you another pair of words. Please, look at them carefully and tell me which part is common. Then, please cut and separate the two parts (use of scissors).

CARDS rain rainy (analysis of the word in 2 parts)

(3) I’ll give you two cards. Please, copy exactly the word of the first card in the blank

space of the second card.

CARDS dust : : : : : : y (focus on the stem of the word)

(4) I’ll present you another set of cards. Do you remember which was the last part of

our words in previous pairs? Please, write it down in the blank space of the

second card.

CARDS trust trust : : : : : : (focus on the suffix of the word)

(5) Now, I’ll give you my last pair of cards. Please, write down a new word that

comes from the first one on the second blank card.

CARDS mist : : : : : : (creation of a new word)


tsesmeli1 & seymour, 2009

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