The Role of Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary and Reading development

The Role of Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary and Reading development
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The Role of Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary and Reading development
Due to the high rate of worldwide migrations, the number of students whose native language differs from the language of instruction, in the learning institution they enroll has increased at an alarming rate. These students encounter a double challenge of conceptualizing academic content, and learning their second language concurrently. As result, students whose native language differs from the language of instruction perform poorly because they cannot comprehend text easily as the native speakers do (Stone, 2006). This paper explores the role of morphological awareness in vocabulary acquisition.
Morphological awareness entails the ability to identify or recognize the smallest units of meaning of words, and includes knowledge of derivational and inflectional morphemes. Research has revealed that approximately 60 percent of all new words encountered by children in academic reading materials might be morphologically complex. Training students to enhance their morphological sensitivity is one of the ways that can be effective in increasing their vocabulary knowledge, and their reading skills. Vocabulary knowledge plays an integral part in fluent use of a language. Vocabulary size determines how well students can perform in different academic language skills such as writing, listening, and reading. Having inadequate vocabulary knowledge acts as an obstacle to students’ reading comprehension in such a way that the student will find it difficult to maneuver through the path of academic achievement (In O'Connor & Vadasy, 2013).
As a result, vocabulary learning should be a central activity in students whose native language differs from the instructional language. Morphological awareness is one of the strategies that can be adopted as a potential strategy in enriching students’ vocabulary. Morphological awareness enable students to learn morphemes and morphemic boundaries by breaking down complex words into less complex words whose meaning can be easily understood. Nowadays, morphological awareness is embraced as a dimension of vocabulary knowledge. Morphemes have phonological, semantic, and syntax properties, which explain the role of specific words in the reading context. In addition, Morphological knowledge enables students to detect spelling, and any sort of phonological irregularities (Vadasy & Nelson, 2012).
Morphological processing is bound to play a significant role in the acquisition of reading skills for the simple reason that it is essential to language comprehension. Readers who are unaware of morphological components of written words are at a particular disadvantage in decoding, vocabulary and reading comprehension. Efficiency of processing and ease of recall are thought to be benefits of morphological awareness (Cheung et al., 2010). .
The ability to analyze morphological structure enhances the fluency, and accuracy when reading long and complex words, in cases where the ‘sounding out’ strategy is not effective. Moreover, morphological awareness enables students to reflect on and manipulate the structure of compound words and the morphemes within it, serving as a guiding principle for understanding and producing compound words. Research has also revealed that a deeper understanding of morpheme meaning in various oral languages assists in strengthening the correspondence between characters and morphemes that in turn enhances character reading. Head morpheme helps in categorization of a compound word. According to previous studies, head of a compound noun is always the last morpheme in languages such as English and Chinese. With awareness of head morpheme, children can easily extract the meaning of compound nouns, which contain familiar head (Liu, 2009).
Morphological awareness also assists student to learn new words by generalizing from those sharing a root morpheme. Morphine analysis can provide essential insights into the processes, sequences, and input relevant to second language acquisition. Moreover, application of morphology in education helps teachers, especially English first language teachers to comprehend the nature of the language system. This is because study of morphology entails studying how the system of language works. Unlike phonology, whose core focus is only in on the element of sound, Morphology is extensive in that it deals with how words are formed and structured. With knowledge of various types of morpheme in English language, teachers can develop new words, which result from derivation. For instance, the word crucifixion can be derived by first finding the base morpheme, which is "Crucify" and adding suffix "ion" (Stone, 2006).
Morphology encompasses the rules that enable a person to enhance his/her linguistic competence through their application. Psychologists, teachers and linguists, are particularly interested in morphology because they find it as the best way to find out more about the strategies adopted by various speakers to increase their lexical capacity. Using morphology, speakers continually coin in new words to express their thoughts. The knowledge of morphology plays an integral part in knowing how the human brain works, and how it processes language. Morphology also provides new alternatives of learning languages, which may be more economical in time and effort (Vadasy & Nelson, 2012).
Some morphological awareness seems to be necessary for children to be successful in reading. The relationship between awareness of morphology and progress in reading acquisition can be perceived as reciprocal and mutually facilitative because morphological awareness develops as a consequence of reading instruction. Research has shown that different types of morphological awareness measured at different ages appear to have different effects on various aspect of literacy development. For instance, measures of inflectional grammar were associated with a stage model of spelling in a study conducted on children between 6-10 years. In that study, it was demonstrated that children’s knowledge of spelling of inflectional morphemes was perceived to progress from having no clear association with grammatical category (for example kist for kissed) to an overgeneralization of morphemes across verbs (for example sleped for slept) to a clear comprehension of regular versus irregular endings (Cain, 2011). Therefore, morphological awareness progressed in a clear developmental pattern in relation to spelling of morphemes indicating past tense.
In another study aimed at demonstrating the skill of morphology, it was demonstrated that a child understood flower from the word flowerpot (Plant with petals), instead of flour (sack of white powder). This aspect of morphological awareness assists young language learners to differentiate among meaning of syllables with similar sounds, facilitating language analysis, and vocabulary growth. In this case, morphological awareness entails comprehending that various meanings can concurrently be attributable to phonologically similar words. Research has also revealed that through morphological structure awareness (the ability to develop new meanings using familiar morphemes), a child who understands that greater than one (wag) is represented by the word (wags), involving two morphemes demonstrates morphological structure awareness skill (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012). .
Through morphological awareness, learners can decompose words into component morphemes, and then use that information to extract meaning or demonstrate awareness of the suffixes, which change grammatical roles. With the proliferation of morphologically complex vocabulary that children encounter, and are learning over elementary school years, various researchers have provided evidence that suggests that the ability to decompose morphologically complex words down to its constituent morphemes, and develop meanings of the word from the morphemes is an essential mechanism that facilitates vocabulary learning (In O'Connor & Vadasy, 2013).
The already conducted studies have shown that young readers demonstrate morphemic abilities as they learn how to read. A research conducted with phonological and orthographical abilities controlled, revealed that morphemic knowledge made a significant contribution to reading achievement. Students commonly use morphology as a word-recognition strategy. In cases where students have poor morphological awareness, decoding skills tend to be poor (Cain, 2011).
In one of the current studies that investigated the growth of orthographic, phonological, and morphological awareness from grades one to six, the authors found that word-level orthographic and phonological awareness had greatest growth during the primary grades, and some additional growth afterwards. On the other hand, the three kinds of morphological awareness had greatest growth in 1, 3, 4 ...