Affix Meaning Knowledge in First Through Third Grade Students
Publication: Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
Volume 47, Number 2
Pages 148-156
Abstract
Purpose
We examined grade-level differences in 1st- through 3rd-grade students' performance on an experimenter-developed affix meaning task (AMT) and determined whether AMT performance explained unique variance in word-level reading and reading comprehension, beyond other known contributors to reading development.
Method
Forty students at each grade level completed an assessment battery that included measures of phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, word-level reading, reading comprehension, and affix meaning knowledge.
Results
On the AMT, 1st-grade students were significantly less accurate than 2nd- and 3rd-grade students; there was no significant difference in performance between the 2nd- and 3rd-grade students. Regression analyses revealed that the AMT accounted for 8% unique variance of students' performance on word-level reading measures and 6% unique variance of students' performance on the reading comprehension measure, after age, phonological awareness, and receptive vocabulary were explained.
Conclusion
These results provide initial information on the development of affix meaning knowledge via an explicit measure in 1st- through 3rd-grade students and demonstrate that affix meaning knowledge uniquely contributes to the development of reading abilities above other known literacy predictors. These findings provide empirical support for how students might use morphological problem solving to read unknown multimorphemic words successfully.
Get full access to this article
View all available purchase options and get full access to this article.
References
Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10), 1–166.
Apel, K. (2011). What is orthographic knowledge? Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 42, 592–603.
Apel, K., Brimo, D., Diehm, E., & Apel, L. (2013). Morphological awareness intervention with kindergartners and first- and second-grade students from low socioeconomic status homes: A feasibility study. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 44, 161–173.
Apel, K., & Diehm, E. (2013). Morphological awareness intervention with kindergarteners and first and second grade students from low SES homes: A small efficacy study. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 47, 65–75.
Apel, K., Diehm, E., & Apel, L. (2013). Using multiple measures of morphological awareness to assess its relation to reading. Topics in Language Disorders, 33, 42–56.
Apel, K., & Lawrence, J. (2011). Contributions of morphological awareness skills to word-level reading and spelling in first-grade children with and without speech sound disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 1312–1327.
Apel, K., Wilson-Fowler, E. B., Brimo, D., & Perrin, N. A. (2012). Metalinguistic contributions to reading and spelling in second and third grade students. Reading and Writing, 25, 1283–1305.
Baumann, J. F., Edwards, E. C., Font, G., Tereshinski, C. A., Kame'enui, E. J., & Olejnik, S. (2002). Teaching morphemic and contextual analysis to fifth-grade students. Reading Research Quarterly, 37, 150–176.
Berko, J. (1958). The child's learning of English morphology (Doctoral dissertation). Radcliffe College, Cambridge, MA . Retrieved from http://childes.talkbank.org/topics/wugs/wugs.pdf
Berninger, V., & Abbott, S. (2003). PAL research-based reading and writing lessons. San Antonio, TX: The Psychological Corporation.
Berninger, V. W., Abbott, R. D., Nagy, W., & Carlisle, J. (2010). Growth in phonological, orthographic, and morphological awareness in grades 1 to 6. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 39, 141–163.
Carlisle, J. F., & Nomanbhoy, D. M. (1993). Phonological and morphological awareness in first graders. Applied Psycholinguistics, 14, 177–195.
Champion, T. B. (1997). Tell me somethin' good: A description of narrative structures among African American children. Linguistics and Education, 9, 251–286.
Deacon, S. H., Benere, J., & Pasquarella, A. (2013). Reciprocal relationship: Children's morphological awareness and their reading accuracy across grades 2 to 3. Developmental Psychology, 49, 1113–1126.
Deacon, S. H., & Kirby, J. R. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just “more phonological”? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223–238.
Dunn, L. M., & Dunn, L. M. (2007). Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test–Fourth Edition. Circle Pines, MN: American Guidance Service.
Ehri, L. C., Nunes, S. R., Willows, D. M., Schuster, B. V., Yaghoub-Zadeh, Z., & Shanahan, T. (2001). Phonemic awareness instruction helps children learn to read: Evidence from the National Reading Panel's meta-analysis. Reading Research Quarterly, 36, 250–287.
Katz, L. A., & Carlisle, J. F. (2009). Teaching students with reading difficulties to be close readers: A feasibility study. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 325–340.
Kirby, J. R., Deacon, S. H., Bowers, P. N., Izenberg, L., Wade-Woolley, L., & Parrila, R. (2012). Children's morphological awareness and reading ability. Reading and Writing, 25, 389–410.
Kruk, R. S., & Bergman, K. (2013). The reciprocal relations between morphological processes and reading. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 114, 10–34.
Kuo, L. J., & Anderson, R. C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161–180.
Larsen, J. A., & Nippold, M. A. (2007). Morphological analysis in school-age children: Dynamic assessment of a word learning strategy. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 38, 201–212.
Lewis, D. J., & Windsor, J. (1996). Children's analysis of derivational suffix meanings. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 39, 209–216.
McCutchen, D., Green, L., & Abbott, R. D. (2008). Children's morphological knowledge: Links to literacy. Reading Psychology, 29, 289–314.
McCutchen, D., & Logan, B. (2011). Inside incidental word learning: Children's strategic use of morphological information to infer word meanings. Reading Research Quarterly, 46, 334–349.
McLeod, A. N., & Apel, K. (2015). Morphological awareness intervention: Study of a child with a history of speech and language impairment. Communication Disorders Quarterly, 36, 208–218.
Mitchell, A. M., & Brady, S. A. (2014). Assessing affix knowledge using both pseudoword and real-word measures. Topics in Language Disorders, 34, 210–227.
Moats, L. (2009). Still wanted: Teachers with knowledge of language. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 42, 387–391.
Myers, J. L., Well, A. D., & Lorch, R. F., Jr. (2010). Research design and statistical analysis (3rd ed.). New York, NY: Routledge.
Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304–330.
Nagy, W., Berninger, V. W., & Abbott, R. D. (2006). Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134–147.
Nagy, W. E., Diakidoy, I. A. N., & Anderson, R. C. (1993). The acquisition of morphology: Learning the contribution of suffixes to the meanings of derivatives. Journal of Literacy Research, 25, 155–170.
Nation, K., & Snowling, M. J. (2004). Beyond phonological skills: Broader language skills contribute to the development of reading. Journal of Research in Reading, 27, 342–356.
Nippold, M. A., & Sun, L. (2008). Knowledge of morphologically complex words: A developmental study of older children and young adolescents. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 39, 365–373.
Pacheco, M. B., & Goodwin, A. P. (2013). Putting two and two together: Middle school students' morphological problem-solving strategies for unknown words. Journal of Adolescent & Adult Literacy, 56, 541–553.
Parel, R. (2006). The impact of training in morphological analysis on literacy in the primary grades. The International Journal of Learning, 13, 119–128.
Perfetti, C., & Stafura, J. (2014). Word knowledge in a theory of reading comprehension. Scientific Studies of Reading, 18, 22–37.
Roman, A. A., Kirby, J. R., Parrila, R. K., Wade-Woolley, L., & Deacon, S. H. (2009). Toward a comprehensive view of the skills involved in word reading in grades 4, 6, and 8. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102, 96–113.
Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V. (2000). The relation between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing, 12, 219–252.
SPELL-Links Word List Maker [Computer software]. (2010). Evanston, IL: Learning By Design.
Suggate, S., Reese, E., Lenhard, W., & Schneider, W. (2014). The relative contributions of vocabulary, decoding, and phonemic awareness to word reading in English versus German. Reading and Writing, 27, 1395–1412.
Torgesen, J. K., Wagner, R., & Rashotte, C. (2012). Test of Word Reading Efficiency–Second Edition. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Treiman, R., & Cassar, M. (1996). Effects of morphology on children's spelling of final consonant clusters. Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 63, 141–170.
Tunmer, W. E., & Chapman, J. W. (2012). The simple view of reading redux vocabulary knowledge and the independent components hypothesis. Journal of Learning Disabilities, 45, 453–466.
Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1994). Development of reading-related phonological processing abilities: New evidence of bidirectional causality from a latent variable longitudinal study. Developmental Psychology, 30, 73–87.
Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., & Rashotte, C. A. (1999). Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Wagner, R. K., Torgesen, J. K., Rashotte, C. A., & Pearson, N. (2010). Test of Silent Reading Efficiency and Comprehension. Austin, TX: Pro-Ed.
Wilson-Fowler, E. B., & Apel, K. (2015). Influence of morphological awareness on college students' literacy skills: A path analytic approach. Journal of Literacy Research. Advance online publication. doi:10.1177/1086296X15619730
Wolter, J. A., Wood, A., & D'zatko, K. W. (2009). The influence of morphological awareness on the literacy development of first-grade children. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 40, 286–298.
Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools
Volume 47 • Number 2 • April 2016
Pages: 148-156
PubMed: 27096323
Copyright
Copyright © 2016 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association.
History
- Received: Jul 6, 2015
- Revised: Oct 7, 2015
- Accepted: Dec 20, 2015
- Published in issue: Apr 1, 2016
Authors
Metrics & Citations
Metrics
Article Metrics
View all metricsCitations
If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download.
For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.
Citing Literature
- Dalia Martinez, Danielle Colenbrander, Tomohiro Inoue, George K. Georgiou, How well do schoolchildren and adolescents know the form and meaning of different derivational suffixes? Evidence from a cross-sectional study, Applied Psycholinguistics, 10.1017/S0142716424000043, 45, 2, (299-321), (2024).
- Junko Yamashita, Kunihiro Kusanagi, Direct and Indirect Contributions of Three Aspects of Morphological Knowledge to Second Language Reading Comprehension, Education Sciences, 10.3390/educsci14030270, 14, 3, (270), (2024).
- Yazhi Liu, Margriet Anna Groen, Kate Cain, The association between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in children: A systematic review and meta-analysis, Educational Research Review, 10.1016/j.edurev.2023.100571, 42, (100571), (2024).
- Erin Sparks, Jamie L. Metsala, Morphological awareness predicts reading comprehension in first grade students, Frontiers in Education, 10.3389/feduc.2023.1304688, 8, (2023).
- Paola Ramírez-Martinell, Alejandra Auza, Morphological Analysis and Its Impact on Written Language Development in Children With and Without Language Disorders, Development of Writing Skills in Children in Diverse Cultural Contexts, 10.1007/978-3-031-29286-6_9, (197-222), (2023).
- Stacie Brady, Linda H. Mason, A Literature Review of Morphological Awareness Interventions and the Effects on Literacy Outcomes, Learning Disability Quarterly, 10.1177/07319487231171388, 47, 1, (16-29), (2023).
- Basiliki Passaretti, Lyn S. Turkstra, Tiffany Gallagher, Annie Jiang, Peter Cahill, Wenonah Campbell, Reporting of Classroom-Based Morphological Awareness Instruction and Intervention for Kindergarten to Grade 3 Students in the Literature: A Scoping Review, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 10.1044/2022_LSHSS-22-00090, 54, 2, (648-669), (2023).
- Kenn Apel, Victoria S. Henbest, Yaacov Petscher, Morphological Awareness Performance Profiles of First- Through Sixth-Grade Students, Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 10.1044/2021_JSLHR-21-00282, 65, 3, (1070-1086), (2022).
- Kenn Apel, A Different View on the Simple View of Reading, Remedial and Special Education, 10.1177/07419325211063487, 43, 6, (434-447), (2021).
- Kenn Apel, Victoria S. Henbest, Morphological Awareness Skills of Second- and Third-Grade Students With and Without Speech Sound Disorders, Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 10.1044/2019_LSHSS-19-00045, 51, 3, (603-616), (2020).
View Options
Sign In Options
ASHA member? If so, log in with your ASHA website credentials for full access.
Member Login