The magic in magician : Contributions of phonological dimensions of morphological awareness to children's reading development

• Published in: Journal of research in reading 2024-02, Vol.47 (1), p.45-62
• Main Authors: Deacon, S. Hélène, Robertson, Erin K., Ryken, Alexandra, Levesque, Kyle
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Children & youth; Elementary school students; Language Skills; Longitudinal studies; Magic & magicians; Morphemes; Morphological complexity; Morphological processing; Morphology; Phonemes; Phonemics; Phonological awareness; Phonology; Prosody; Reading comprehension; Reading Skills; Secondary school students; Spoken language
• ISSN: 0141-0423; 1467-9817
• DOI: 10.1111/1467-9817.12439

What is already known about this topic Many of the words in children's texts are complex; they often include multiple units of meaning, or morphemes, as is the case for magician , made up of magic + ian . Children's awareness of morphemes has been shown to be related to their reading skill. Teachers and researchers alike have started to design ways to teach children about morphemes. What this paper adds Here, we identify how the sound, or phonological, dimensions of children's morphological awareness is related to the development of their reading skill. The need to do is demonstrated by the fact that morphologically complex words are also complex at the sound level; for example, shifting from magic to magician involves changes at the level of phonemes and prosody (i.e., /k/ changing to /ʃ/ and stress changing from the first to the second syllable). In a longitudinal study, performance on morphological awareness items involving phonemic changes predicted gains in word reading, and performance on morphological awareness involving both phonemic and prosodic changes predicted reading comprehension gains. Implications for theory, policy or practice These findings demonstrate the importance of considering the phonological aspects of morphological awareness in explaining children's reading development. In terms of theory, these findings demonstrate the need to include both prosody and morphology in models and to do so in an integrated manner. In terms of practice, these findings point to the value in instruction that embraces the phonological complexities that children encounter in multi‐morphemic words.