the role of morphological awareness in reading achievement ... · the role of morphological...

The role of morphological awareness in readingachievement among young Chinese-speakingEnglish language learners: a longitudinal study

Katie Lam • Xi Chen • Esther Geva •

Yang C. Luo • Hong Li

Published online: 24 June 2011

� Springer Science+Business Media B.V. 2011

Abstract The present study examined the development of morphological aware-

ness and its contribution to vocabulary and reading comprehension among young

Chinese-speaking English language learners (ELLs). We focused on two aspects of

morphological awareness: derivational awareness and compound awareness. Par-

ticipants included 46 kindergarteners (younger cohort) and 34 first graders (older

cohort) of Chinese descent in Canada at the beginning of the study. Children were

administered a battery of English measures including derivational awareness,

compound awareness, phonological awareness, receptive vocabulary, and reading

comprehension at two time points spaced 1 year apart. Results demonstrated a

steady growth in Chinese-speaking ELL children’s derivational and compound

awareness from kindergarten to Grade 2. Importantly, for the first graders, mor-

phological awareness accounted for unique variance in vocabulary concurrently,

and unique variance in both vocabulary and reading comprehension a year later.

Generally speaking, the variance explained by morphological awareness increased

with grade level, and derivational awareness accounted for more variance in

vocabulary and reading comprehension than did compound awareness. These results

underscore the emerging importance of morphological awareness, especially deri-

vational awareness, in young Chinese-speaking ELL children’s English reading

development.

Keywords Morphological awareness � Vocabulary � Reading comprehension �Chinese-speaking ELLs

K. Lam (&) � X. Chen � E. Geva � Y. C. Luo

Human Development and Applied Psychology, Ontario Institute of Studies in Education,

University of Toronto, 252 Bloor Street West, 9th Floor, Toronto, ON M5S 1V6, Canada

e-mail: [email protected]

H. Li

School of Psychology, Beijing Normal University, No. 19, Xin Jie Kou Wai St.,

Haidian, 100875 Beijing, China

123

Read Writ (2012) 25:1847–1872

DOI 10.1007/s11145-011-9329-4

Introduction

Recent years have seen a growing interest in morphological awareness, which refers

to the awareness of the morphemic structure of words and the ability to reflect on

and manipulate that structure (Carlisle, 1995). The resultant body of research has

shed light on the development of morphological awareness in monolingual children

and its increasing influence on reading with age (see Kuo & Anderson, 2006, for a

review). Fewer studies, however, have been conducted with English language

learners (ELLs). The present one-year longitudinal study investigated the devel-

opment of morphological awareness and its contribution to vocabulary and reading

comprehension among young ELLs who speak Chinese as their first language.

Development of morphological awareness

Across most languages, there are three types of morphology: inflection, derivation,

and compounding. Inflectional morphemes are word endings denoting meanings

such as case, verb tense, gender, or syntax without altering the meaning or the part

of speech of the root word. Derivation involves forming new words that have a

different meaning or word class from the base words by applying prefixes and

suffixes (e.g., un-, sub-, -ness, -ly). Finally, compounding involves the combination

of two or more words in forming new words (Katamba, 1993; Kuo & Anderson,

2006; McBride-Chang, 2004).

Children experience substantial growth in their knowledge and awareness of all

three types of morphological structures beginning at a young age. A number of

studies have observed that monolingual English-speaking children demonstrate

incipient knowledge of inflectional morphemes by age 2, and have acquired most of

the regular inflectional principles by the early elementary grades (e.g., Akhtar &

Tomasello, 1997; Anisfeld & Tucker, 1968; Berko, 2004; Carlisle, 1995). In

contrast, the understanding of derivational morphemes among native English

speakers emerges later and continues to develop over a longer period of time, with

the more advanced derivational awareness possibly not fully developed until early

adulthood (Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Carlisle & Nomanbhoy, 1993; Derwing &

Baker, 1979; 1986; Tyler & Nagy; 1989; Windsor, 1994). Relatively few studies

have examined English monolingual children’s development of compound aware-

ness. Clark and her colleagues (Clark, 1981; Clark, Gelman, & Lane, 1985) found

that children understand the modifier-head relation in compounds by 2 years of age.

Nonetheless, until they are in Grade 4, children may not be able to explicitly explain

that meanings of compound words are predicated upon the meanings of the

constituent morphemes (Silvestri & Silvestri, 1977). Ku and Anderson (2003)

observed a steady increase in compound awareness in English monolinguals from

Grade 2 to Grade 6.

While previous studies have yielded strong evidence that all three aspects of

morphological awareness increase with age in native speakers of English, much less

is known about ELLs. Several factors may influence the development of

morphological awareness in ELLs. First, it is possible that ELLs in general have

lower levels of morphological awareness than native speakers due to their reduced

1848 K. Lam et al.

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exposure to English. Carlo et al. (2004) found that Spanish-speaking ELLs in Grade

5 performed worse on a derivational awareness task than their native English-

speaking peers. It is important to note, however, that the Spanish-speaking ELLs in

that study came from lower SES backgrounds, which may have contributed to their

lower performance. Second, there is emerging evidence that ELLs’ development of

morphological awareness in English is influenced by the morphological structure of

their first language. In a recent study, Ramırez, Chen, Geva, and Luo (2011) found

that after controlling for maternal education, Spanish-speaking ELLs in Grades 4

and 7 outperformed Chinese-speaking ELLs on English derivational awareness. By

contrast, Chinese-speaking ELLs performed similarly to native English speakers in

compound awareness, while Spanish-speaking ELLs performed lower than the latter

group. These findings reflect the influence of morphological structures of Spanish

and Chinese—Spanish has a much more complex derivational system than Chinese,

while compounding is much more prominent in Chinese than in Spanish.

To our knowledge, none of the previous studies has specifically focused on

Chinese-speaking ELL children’s development of morphological awareness over

time. Intending to fill this gap, the present study examined the development of

derivational awareness and compound awareness in Chinese-speaking ELLs in the

early school years.

Morphological awareness, vocabulary, and reading comprehension

School-age children encounter up to 3,000 unfamiliar words each year when

reading, with an increasing percentage of the words being morphologically complex

as children advance in age (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Anglin (1993) has estimated

that while children’s knowledge of root words doubles from Grade 1 to Grade 5,

there is almost a tenfold increase in the number of multimorphemic words during

the same period. Therefore, it is not surprising that the ability to perform

morphological analysis facilitates vocabulary learning in monolingual English

speakers (e.g., Anglin, 1993; Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; McBride-

Chang, Wagner, Muse, Chow, & Shu, 2005). Carlisle and Fleming (2003) found that

children’s performance on derivational awareness tasks in Grade 3 predicted scores

on a vocabulary test 2 years later. McBride-Chang et al. (2005) showed that for

kindergarteners and second graders, awareness of morphological structures and of

homophonic morphemes became increasingly strong predictors of vocabulary

knowledge with grade, even after controlling for other reading-related skills. These

studies underscore the strengthening role of morphological awareness in English

monolingual children’s vocabulary development.

In addition to vocabulary, morphological awareness has been found to be

associated with reading comprehension in monolingual English-speaking children.

A series of studies conducted by Carlisle and her colleagues (Carlisle 1995, 2000;

Carlisle & Fleming, 2003) indicated that between kindergarten and Grade 5,

children’s morphological skills were significantly related to their concurrent and

subsequent reading comprehension and that these relations strengthened with time.

Likewise, Deacon and Kirby (2004) reported that the amount of variance in reading

comprehension explained by morphological awareness measured in Grade 2

Morphological awareness in Chinese-speaking ELLs 1849

123

increased in each of the three subsequent grades (i.e., Grades 3, 4, and 5). Nagy,

Berninger, and Abbott (2006) demonstrated that morphological awareness predicted

a significant amount of variance in reading comprehension over and above

vocabulary and other reading-related factors (e.g., phonological awareness) in

students between Grades 4 and 9. Taken together, this body of research offers

substantial support that among English monolinguals, morphological awareness

contributes to reading comprehension directly, as well as through the mediating

effects of vocabulary.

Only a small number of studies (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Siegel, 2008; Wang,

Cheng, & Chen, 2006) have examined the relation between English morphological

awareness and reading in ELL children. A cross-sectional study conducted by Wang

et al. (2006) involved Chinese-speaking ELL students in the US from Grade 1 to

Grade 5. The researchers observed that awareness of compounds predicted unique

variance in reading comprehension after taking into consideration age, vocabulary,

and phonological awareness. However, because children across all five grades were

pooled together, it was not possible to identify the changes in the relations between

morphological awareness and reading over time. Kieffer and Lesaux (2008)

conducted a 2-year longitudinal study involving Spanish-speaking ELLs. Results

showed that while in Grade 4 the unique contribution of derivational awareness to

concurrent reading comprehension only approached statistical significance, by

Grade 5, derivational awareness was a significant predictor of reading comprehen-

sion over and above several other reading-related skills. In this study, however,

performance on the morphological awareness tasks in Grade 4 did not significantly

predict reading comprehension in Grade 5.

Although the studies described above provide preliminary evidence that different

aspects of English morphological awareness predict reading in ELL children, there

are several limitations. First, most research has focused on middle and upper

elementary grades. As a result, little is known about the relation between

morphological awareness and reading in the early school years. Second, almost all

studies focused on reading comprehension. The extent to which morphological

awareness contributes to vocabulary learning remains unclear. Finally, research to

date is limited in its consideration of the various aspects of morphological

awareness. Two of the studies (i.e., Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Siegel, 2008) focused

exclusively on derivational morphology. Wang et al. (2006) was the only study that

explored compound and derivational awareness; however, the design was cross-

sectional and analyses were conducted with children spanning five grades.

Universal and language-specific processes in reading

A theoretical notion guiding the present study is the ‘‘universal’’ view on

understanding the relations between underlying cognitive processes and reading.

According to this hypothesis, the same cognitive and linguistic component skills

may account for children’s reading in a given language, irrespective of their

language background or oral proficiency (Geva, 2008; Muter & Diethelm, 2001).

For example, research comparing monolingual English-speaking children and ELLs

from various linguistic backgrounds has found that phonological awareness and

1850 K. Lam et al.

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lexical access are important for reading in both groups (e.g., Chiappe, Glaeser, &

Ferko, 2007; Chiappe, Siegel, & Wade-Woolley, 2002; da Fontoura & Siegel, 1995;

Jongejan, Verhoeven, & Siegel, 2007; Lesaux & Siegel, 2003; Lipka & Siegel,

2007). In the same vein, morphological awareness may also be important for

reading in both English-speaking monolinguals and ELL children.

At the same time, children’s language and reading development are influenced by

the characteristics of the language and writing system that they are learning (Wang

& Koda, 2007). For example, monolingual children’s phonological awareness

develops as a function of the phonological structure of their native language

(Caravolas & Bruck, 1993; Cheung, Chen, Lai, Wong, & Hills, 2001; Cossu,

Shankweiler, Liberman, Katz, & Tola, 1988; Durgunoglu & Oney, 1999, 2002). For

bilinguals, language and reading development in the second language is influenced

by the characteristics of the first language. As described earlier, Ramırez et al.

(2011) observed that Spanish-speaking ELLs outperformed Chinese-speaking ELLs

on derivational awareness, while the Chinese-speaking ELLs showed more

advanced compound awareness. Taken together, there is evidence to show that

learning to read a second language involves both universal and language-specific

processes.

The present study

The primary goal of the present study was to examine the contribution of

morphological awareness to vocabulary and reading comprehension in Chinese-

speaking ELL children. We focused on two aspects of morphological awareness:

awareness of derivations and awareness of compounds. Since the correct use of

derived words draws on a greater understanding of phonological relations, syntactic

roles, and semantic relations than that of inflections, derivational awareness may be

a stronger longitudinal predictor of children’s vocabulary and reading comprehen-

sion than inflectional awareness (Carlisle, 1995). For this reason, and out of

practical constraints on testing time, we decided to examine derivational awareness

rather than inflectional awareness. Given the importance of compound awareness in

Chinese reading (e.g., Ku & Anderson, 2003; Li, Anderson, Nagy, & Zhang, 2002;

McBride-Chang, Shu, Ng, Meng, & Penney, 2007; Shu, McBride-Chang, Wu, &

Liu, 2006), we were also interested in determining whether compound awareness

was also important for English reading for the Chinese-speaking ELLs.

We conducted our study among kindergarten and Grade 1 children, an ELL

sample that was younger than those previously studied. This age range is of

particular interest because children start to shift from an implicit to a more explicit

understanding of language use and language structures during this time (Carlisle,

1995). Past research among native English speakers indicates an emerging

association between morphological awareness and reading in beginning readers

(e.g., Carlisle, 1995; McBride-Chang et al., 2005). It is important to examine

whether a similar association exists in ELLs. Considering the contributions of

derivational and compound awareness separately can elucidate the differential role

of each in English reading. The longitudinal design enabled us to observe the


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change in the strength of the relations between morphological awareness and

vocabulary/reading comprehension over time.

We aimed to determine the unique contributions of morphological awareness to

vocabulary and reading comprehension after taking into account several reading-

related variables. Phonological awareness was controlled for in our analyses given its

important role in reading (e.g., Carlisle, Beeman, Davis, & Spharim, 1999; Low &

Siegel, 2005; McBride-Chang et al., 2005; McBride-Chang, Cheung, Chow, Chow,

& Choi, 2006). We also controlled for age and nonverbal reasoning in alternative

regression models1 to ensure that the relations observed between morphological

awareness and the outcome variables were not merely a function of general ability. In

predicting reading comprehension, we additionally controlled for word reading and

oral receptive vocabulary because according to the Simple View of Reading model

(SVR; Gough & Tunmer, 1986; Kirby & Savage, 2008), both variables are important

contributors to reading comprehension. Based on the universal view of reading

acquisition and the results of previous research among monolingual English-

speaking children (e.g., Carlisle, 1995; 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Deacon &

Kirby, 2004; Nagy et al., 2006), we hypothesized that the contributions of

morphological awareness to vocabulary and reading comprehension would increase

as children become more experienced readers.

A secondary goal of the study was to evaluate the developmental changes of

derivational awareness and compound awareness in Chinese-speaking ELL children

with a longitudinal design, which has not been done in previous research. Based on

previous findings reporting the influence of first language characteristics on second

language reading (e.g., Ramırez et al., 2011), and considering that compounding is

the most important word formation process in Chinese (Taylor & Taylor, 1995), we

expected that Chinese-speaking ELLs would demonstrate a relatively high level of

English compound awareness in comparison to their English monolingual peers

even in the early elementary grades. On the other hand, it may be challenging for

young Chinese-speaking ELL children to develop sufficient derivational awareness

at this age, given that they have little experience with derived words in their first

language.

Method

Participants

Participants of the study were Chinese-speaking ELLs recruited primarily from one

public Chinese heritage language school located in a working class neighbourhood

in a large metropolitan area in Canada as part of a larger research project. They

were tested in the fall semester immediately after recruitment and were tested

again a year later. At Time 1, 46 kindergarteners (52% males) and 34 first graders

(62% males) participated in the study. The average age was 5 years 5 months

1 Due to our small sample size, age and nonverbal reasoning were entered as control variables in separate

regression models.

1852 K. Lam et al.

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(SD = 5.70 months) and 6 years 7 months (SD = 4.35 months), respectively. All

children attended public schools and received instruction in English. Because this

was a longitudinal study, we refer to the children recruited in kindergarten as the

‘‘younger cohort’’, and those recruited in the first grade as the ‘‘older cohort’’. At

Time 2, 12 children from the younger cohort and 10 children from the older cohort

dropped out due to family relocation. The relocation rate was high because

the majority of the participants came from first generation immigrant families, who

tend to move out of the neighbourhood once they become more established

economically.

Demographic information was collected through a family questionnaire designed

by the researchers. Sixty-one percent of the children in the younger cohort and 33%

of the children in the older cohort were born in Canada. For children born outside of

Canada, the average age of immigration was 1 year and 7 months

(SD = 19.68 months) for the younger cohort, and 10 months (SD = 17.82 months)

for the older cohort. All participants attended Chinese heritage language classes for

an average of 2.5 h a week, where they received instruction in both oral language and

literacy. Approximately 74% of the children read Chinese books at home. All but one

child spoke Chinese at home to varying extents. This child was included in the data

analysis due to regular exposure to oral and written Chinese through attending

Chinese heritage language classes.2 Maternal education was used as a proxy for

family socioeconomic status (Gottfried, Gottfried, Bathurst, Guerin, & Parramore,

2003). The average level of maternal education in our sample was university.

Measures

Children were tested at two measurement points spaced 1 year apart. At both

measurement points (Time 1 and Time 2, respectively), participants received a

battery of tests in English including phonological awareness, morphological

awareness, word reading, and receptive vocabulary. A nonverbal reasoning measure

was administered to all participants at Time 1 only. Reading comprehension was

only assessed in the older cohort at Time 1; at Time 2, the test was given to both

cohorts. Instructions for all tests were given in English. A questionnaire on family

background and home literacy activities was filled out by parents of the

participating children at Time 1.

Measures of morphological awareness

Derivational awareness. The Derivational Awareness task was adapted from

Carlisle (2000). Children were orally presented with a root word and a sentence with

a word missing, and were asked to produce a derived form of the root word to

complete the sentence. For example, Experimenter: ‘‘Farm [root word]. My uncle isa __________.’’ (correct response: farmer). The derivational suffixes targeted

include -th, -ity, -tion, -er, -ian, -ist, -y, -ly, -ance, -able, -ous, and -ious. Children

2 The child’s Chinese proficiency level was similar to that of peers when assessed as part of our larger

research project.


123

were given three practice trials with feedback to verify that they have understood

the task. After reviewing the performance at Time 1, the task was modified at Time

2 to better capture children’s variance in derivational awareness. This test contained

24 items at Time 1 and 27 items at Time 2. Eighteen items were common to both

testing times. Reliability coefficients for this task were .87 at Time 1 and .90 at

Time 2.

Compound awareness. The Compound Awareness task was adapted from the test

used by McBride-Chang et al. (2005). In each trial, children were orally presented

with the definition of a compound word, and were then asked to create a compound

of similar structure using newly presented concepts. For example, Experimenter:‘‘Early in the morning, we can see the sun rising. This is called a sunrise. At night,we might also see the moon rising. What could we call this?’’ (correct response:moonrise). There were two practice trials and 15 test items. The reliability

coefficient for this task was .83.

Literacy outcome measures

Vocabulary. A shortened version of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third

Edition, Form IIIA (PPVT-III A) (Dunn & Dunn, 1997) was administered to

measure children’s receptive vocabulary. To maintain the same progression of item

difficulty as the original test, every third item from the original test was selected to

create the shortened version, for a total of 60 items. The modifications were made to

allow for group administration and to reduce administration time. The experimenter

read each item twice and the children circled the picture that best described the

word presented in response booklets. The reliability coefficient for this shortened

test was .61.

Reading comprehension. Reading comprehension was assessed using the

Reading Comprehension subtest of the Peabody Individual Achievement Test—

Revised (PIAT-R) (Markwardt, 1998). To facilitate group administration and to

reduce administration time, we created a shortened version of the original test by

including every other item. This selection method was used to maintain the same

progression of item difficulty of the original test. The shortened task had 36 items.

Each child received a booklet containing sentences and short paragraphs of

increasing difficulty, along with stimulus pictures. Children were asked to silently

read each sentence or short paragraph once and select out of four stimulus pictures

the one that best represented the text previously read. The reliability coefficient for

this shortened task was .90.

Control measures

Nonverbal reasoning. Nonverbal reasoning ability was measured using the Raven’s

Standard Progressive Matrices (Raven, Raven, & Court, 1998). To reduce

administration time, only the first three sets, sets A to C, were administered. There

were 12 items in each set, with a total of 36 items. For each item children were

asked to complete a visual-spatial matrix by choosing the missing piece from six or

eight patterned segments.

1854 K. Lam et al.

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Phonological awareness. Children’s phonological awareness was assessed using

the Elision subtest from the Comprehensive Test of Phonological Processing

(CTOPP) (Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999). Children were asked to delete

individual sounds from words and to give the remaining part (e.g., ‘‘cat’’, say it

without ‘‘/k/’’). The 20 items in this test included initial, middle and last phoneme

deletion. The reliability coefficient for this task was .93.

Word reading. Children’s word reading ability in English was assessed using the

Letter-Word Identification subtest from the Woodcock Language Proficiency

Battery (WLPB) (Woodcock, 1984). This test required children to identify 14 letters

and to read 62 words of increasing difficulty. The test was discontinued if the child

read 6 consecutive words incorrectly. The score was the total number of letters and

words read correctly. The reliability coefficient for this task was .96.

Procedure

Participants were assessed in a quiet room at their schools within school hours.

Experimenters were trained undergraduate and graduate research assistants. Two

60-min testing sessions were administered on different days at each testing time,

with short breaks within each session. At Time 1, first graders completed vocabulary

and reading comprehension in small groups (2–10 students); other tests were

administered individually. At Time 2, vocabulary and reading comprehension were

administered in small groups to all children; the remaining tests were given

individually. The order of individual tests was counterbalanced across participants.

Results

We first screened the data for univariate and bivariate outliers. There were no

univariate outliers in the sample. One child in Grade 1 was identified to be a

bivariate outlier when the relation between derivational awareness and reading

comprehension at Time 2 was considered. This child was excluded from all

subsequent analyses.3 Because the attrition rate was high from Time 1 to Time 2, to

test for selective attrition, we compared Time 1 test scores on all important reading-

related skills between participants who participated at both time points and those

who only participated at Time 1. No significant main effects or interactions were

found. Thus, there was no evidence for selective attrition.

The mean percentage scores and standard deviations of each measure admin-

istered at Time 1 and Time 2 are presented in Table 1. For the Derivational

Awareness task, scores were reported on all the items used at Time 1 and Time 2, as

well as on the 18 common items administered at the two testing times. Across

groups, there was adequate variability on all measures. However, there was a

possible ceiling effect for the older cohort on the Compound Awareness task at

Time 2, where approximately 30% of the children achieved a perfect score.

3 The removal of this child did not change the pattern of results reported below.


123

Development in morphological awareness

We first examined children’s development in derivational and compound awareness

from kindergarten to Grade 2. Figure 1 depicts children’s performance on the two

morphological awareness tasks at the two time points. To represent more clearly the

developmental changes in children’s performance on the Derivational Awareness

task, the graph presents percentage scores calculated from the 18 common items

administered across the two time points. As shown in Fig. 1, on the Derivational

Awareness task, kindergarteners (younger cohort, Time 1) scored only 20% correct,

while first graders’ performance was between 35% (older cohort, Time 1) and 51%

correct (younger cohort, Time 2). The second graders (older cohort, Time 2)

achieved 61% correct on this task. On the Compound Awareness task, kindergar-

teners (younger cohort, Time 1) scored 37% correct. The first graders performed

between 59% (older cohort, Time 1) to 67% (younger cohort, Time 2) correct. By

the second grade, students reached 81% correct (older cohort, Time 2).

Table 1 Descriptive statistics of measures

Time 1 Time 2

M SD M SD

Younger cohort (n = 46) (n = 34)

Age (in months) 65.36 5.70 76.55 8.32

Non-verbal reasoning (Raven’s matrices) .44 .12 – –

Phonological awareness (Elision) .23 .21 .49 .24

Derivational awarenessa .23 .14 .50 .20

Derivational awareness (18 items)b .20 .13 .51 .21

Compound awareness .37 .27 .67 .24

Word reading .31 .13 .48 .14

Receptive vocabulary (PPVT) .54 .07 .52 .07

Reading comprehension – – .38 .20

Older cohort (n = 34) (n = 23)

Age (in months) 79.15 4.28 90.97 4.22

Non-verbal reasoning (Raven’s matrices) .60 .16 – –

Phonological awareness (Elision) .48 .27 .61 .24

Derivational awarenessa .37 .20 .62 .19

Derivational awareness (18 items)b .35 .19 .61 .19

Compound awareness .59 .31 .81 .20

Word reading .49 .16 .58 .14

Receptive vocabulary (PPVT) .56 .09 .57 .09

Reading comprehension .41 .19 .53 .17

a The mean percentage scores and standard deviations calculated using all items administered at each

time pointb The mean percentage scores and standard deviations for the 18 common items in the task administered

at Time 1 and Time 2

1856 K. Lam et al.

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A 2 9 2 (Cohort [older, younger] 9 Time [time 1, time 2]) repeated measures

analysis of variance (ANOVA) was conducted for each morphological measure to

further examine children’s morphological awareness development over time. In

each model, testing time was entered as the within-subject factor, and cohort as the

between-subject factor. For the Derivational Awareness task, only total scores

calculated for the 18 common items were used in the ANOVA. On both measures,

significant main effects were found for cohort, F(1, 52) = 8.04, p = .007 for

Derivational Awareness; and F(1, 52) = 6.21, p = .016 for Compound Awareness.

Thus, averaging across time, children in the older cohort performed significantly

better on the morphological measures than their younger counterparts. Main effects

of time were also significant, F(1, 52) = 208.47, p \ .001, for Derivational

Awareness, and F(1, 52) = 81.60, p \ .001, for Compound Awareness. The

Cohort 9 Time interaction was not significant for either task (both ps [ .05),

indicating that the two cohorts improved similarly with time.

Since our study did not include a sample of monolingual English-speaking

children, we used the monolinguals in McBride-Chang et al.’s (2005) study as a

comparison group in determining whether Chinese-speaking ELL children’s level of

English compound awareness is different from that of their English monolingual

peers. In both studies, similar compound awareness items were administered to

kindergarteners and second graders. The English monolinguals in McBride-Chang

et al.’s study achieved 41% correct on the compound awareness task in

kindergarten, and 64% in Grade 2. When these percentage scores were compared

to those achieved by the ELL children in our study, one-way ANOVAs revealed that

the ELLs performed at a similar level as the native English speakers in kindergarten,

F(1, 159) = 1.35, p = .25. By Grade 2, the ELLs scored significantly higher than

the English monolinguals, F(1, 126) = 23.54, p \ .001.

0%

10%

20%

30%

40%

50%

60%

70%

80%

90%

100%

Time 1 Time 2

Younger Cohort Compound Awareness

Older Cohort Compound AwarenessYounger Cohort DerivationalAwarenessOlder Cohort Derivational Awareness

Fig. 1 Children’s performance on the Derivational Awareness and the Compound Awareness tasks atTime 1 and Time 2. The mean percentage scores for the Derivational Awareness task were calculatedfrom the 18 common task items administered in Time 1 and Time 2


123

Correlations between morphological awareness, vocabulary,

and reading comprehension

Intercorrelations among all measures included in the present study are displayed in

Table 2 for the younger and older cohorts. Across groups and measurement points,

the two morphological awareness measures were strongly associated with one

another (rs ranged from .49 to .76, all ps \ .01). For the younger cohort, correlations

between the morphological awareness tasks and vocabulary were not significant at

Time 1, but were robust at Time 2 (for derivational awareness, r = .51, p = .002; for

compound awareness, r = .64, p \ .001). Longitudinal correlations between the

morphological awareness measures at Time 1 and vocabulary at Time 2 were

significant (for derivational awareness, r = .44, p = .013; for compound awareness,

r = .44, p = .014). For the older cohort, derivational awareness was significantly

correlated with vocabulary concurrently at both time points (Time 1, r = .55,

p = .001; Time 2, r = .43, p = .040) and longitudinally (r = .65, p = .001),

whereas the correlations between compound awareness and vocabulary were not

significant either concurrently or longitudinally.

For the younger cohort, correlations between measures of morphological aware-

ness and reading comprehension were robust and significant at Time 2 (for

derivational awareness, r = .58, p \ .001; for compound awareness, r = .38,

p = .027). Longitudinally, compound awareness measured at Time 1 was strongly

correlated with Time 2 reading comprehension (r = .38, p = .038), while the

correlation between Time 1 derivational awareness and Time 2 reading comprehen-

sion approached significance (r = .34, p = .061). For the older cohort, the

associations between the two morphological measures and reading comprehension

were significant at Time 1 (for derivational awareness, r = .64, p \ .001; for

compound awareness, r = .56, p = .001), and at Time 2 (for derivational awareness,

r = .84, p \ .001; for compound awareness, r = .75, p \ .001). Time 1 morpholog-

ical awareness measures were also significantly related to reading comprehension

tested at Time 2 (for derivational awareness, r = .74, p \ .001; for compound

awareness, r = .58, p = .004).

The role of morphological awareness in vocabulary

Hierarchical linear regression analyses were carried out separately for each cohort to

examine the concurrent and subsequent contributions of morphological awareness

to vocabulary. In each concurrent regression analysis, children’s age was entered in

step one,4 followed by phonological awareness. Derivational awareness and

compound awareness were entered separately in the final step to explore the

unique variance explained by each type of morphology.

Results from the concurrent models are summarized in Table 3. The models

evaluating the unique contribution of derivational awareness and compound

awareness to vocabulary are presented as Model A and Model B, respectively. As

4 The patterns of results were largely the same when nonverbal reasoning or maternal education was

entered in the first step.

1858 K. Lam et al.

123

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123

shown in the upper half of the table, neither derivational awareness nor compound

awareness explained unique variance in vocabulary for the younger cohort at Time

1, though the contribution of derivational awareness was nearly significant. At Time

2, both derivational and compound awareness were significant unique predictors of

vocabulary, explaining 14 and 17% of the variance, respectively. The lower half of

Table 3 presents the results for the older cohort. At Time 1, derivational awareness

was a unique predictor of vocabulary, accounting for 18% of the variance.

Compound awareness did not contribute to vocabulary significantly at this time. At

Time 2, neither derivational awareness nor compound awareness made a unique

contribution to vocabulary.

Table 4 presents the longitudinal regression models for the younger and older

cohorts. Children’s age (see footnote 4) and receptive vocabulary measured at Time 1

(i.e., the autoregressor) were entered in the first two steps, respectively, in both Model

A and Model B. Time 1 phonological awareness was entered in the subsequent step,

and Time 1 derivational awareness and Time 1 compound awareness were entered

separately in the last step. For the younger cohort, neither aspect of morphological

awareness was a significant longitudinal predictor of vocabulary. For the older cohort,

Time 1 derivational awareness significantly predicted over 27% of unique variance in

Time 2 vocabulary, and was the only unique predictor in the model.

The role of morphological awareness in reading comprehension

Similar hierarchical regression analyses were carried out to examine the concurrent

and longitudinal contributions of morphological awareness to reading comprehen-

sion. In each concurrent model, age (see footnote 4) was entered first, followed by

Table 3 Hierarchical linear regressions predicting concurrent English receptive vocabulary

Step and predictors Time 1 Time 2

General

model

summary

Model A Model B General

model

summary

Model A Model B

DR2 b b DR2 b b

Younger cohort (n = 46) (n = 34)

1. Age .049 .150 .182 .013 -.115 -.045

2. Phonological awareness .008 -.132 .061 .176* .174 .098

3. Derivational awareness .101* .400* .140* .492*

3. Compound awareness .005 .080 .170** .543**


1. Age .032 .004 .139 .155* .415* .398*

2. Phonological awareness .140* .100 .347 .155* .247 .306

3. Derivational awareness .178* .530* .098 .346

3. Compound awareness .002 .053 .021 .169

T1 = Time 1; Model A = Derivational Awareness task only; Model B = Compound Awareness task

only* p \ .10; * p \ .05; ** p \ .01

1860 K. Lam et al.

123

receptive vocabulary, word reading, and phonological awareness. Derivational

awareness and compound awareness were entered in the last step in Model A and

Model B, respectively.

Table 5 summarizes the concurrent regression analyses. Because reading

comprehension was not evaluated at Time 1 for the younger cohort, the contribution

of morphological awareness to reading comprehension was only assessed at Time 2

for this group (i.e., when they were in Grade 1). As shown in the upper half of

Table 5, vocabulary and word reading were significant predictors of reading

comprehension when entered in step two and step three, explaining approximately

19 and 32% of the variance, respectively. Final beta weights indicate that word

reading was a unique predictor in both Model A and Model B, while vocabulary

approached significance in Model B. Neither derivational awareness nor compound

awareness significantly explained additional variance in reading comprehension.

All together, variables entered in each model explained close to 70% of the total

variance.

Concurrent models for the older cohort are displayed in the lower half of

Table 5. Word reading explained significant variance in reading comprehension at

Time 1 (59%), and was the only unique predictor of reading comprehension in the

two models. Neither aspect of morphological awareness was significantly

predictive of reading comprehension. Together, the variables entered explained

close to 80% of the total variance in each model. Similarly, at Time 2, vocabulary

and word reading predicted significant portions of variance in reading compre-

hension (45 and 44%, respectively), whereas derivational awareness and compound

awareness were not significant predictors. Final beta weights revealed that word

reading was the only unique predictor of reading comprehension in both models at

Time 2, while vocabulary approached significance in Model B. In each of the

models, variables included accounted for approximately 90% of the variance in

reading comprehension.

Table 4 Longitudinal hierarchical linear regressions predicting Time 2 English receptive vocabulary

Step and predictors Younger cohort (n = 34) Older cohort (n = 23)

General

model

summary


model

summary

Model A Model B

DR2 b b DR2 b b

1. Age .019 .001 -.036 .057 .176 .233

2. T1 Receptive vocabulary .031 .161 .168 .029 -.176 .172

3. T1 Phonological awareness .127* .282 .257 .064 -.008 .031

4. T1 Derivational awareness .007 .124 .275* .681*

4. T1 Compound awareness .031 .217 .081 .364

Model A = Derivational Awareness task only; Model B = Compound Awareness task only* p \ .10; * p \ .05; ** p \ .01


123

Results from the longitudinal regression models are displayed in Table 6. In each

model, age (see footnote 4) was entered in step one. Time 1 vocabulary was then

entered in step two for the younger cohort. For the older cohort, the autoregressor

(i.e., Time 1 reading comprehension) was entered in step two; vocabulary was

entered in the subsequent step. For both cohorts, Time 1 word reading and Time 1

phonological awareness were entered following Time 1 vocabulary. Time 1

derivational awareness and Time 1 compound awareness were entered in the final

step of Model A and Model B, respectively. For the younger cohort, word reading

measured at Time 1 significantly predicted 35% of the variance in Time 2 reading

comprehension, and was a unique predictor in both models. Neither aspect of

morphological awareness was a significant predictor. In each of the two models, the

Time 1 variables in combination explained about 55% of the variance in Time 2

reading comprehension.

For the older cohort, reading comprehension measured at Time 1 explained a

significant portion of variance in reading comprehension measured at Time 2 (38%).

Importantly, derivational awareness emerged as the sole significant predictor of

reading comprehension over time, predicting 24% of the variance in Time 2 reading

comprehension after controlling for all other variables. By contrast, compound

awareness was not a significant longitudinal predictor of reading comprehension.

The Time 1 variables included explained over 75% of the variance in reading

comprehension in Model A, and over 65% of the variance in Model B.

Table 5 Hierarchical linear regressions predicting concurrent English reading comprehension

Step and predictors Time 1 Time 2

General

model

summary


model

summary

Model A Model B

DR2 b b DR2 b b

Younger cohort (n = 34)

1. Age .156* .236* .265*

2. Receptive vocabulary .187** .209 .271*

3. Word reading .317** .758** .760**

4. Phonological awareness .022 -.220 -.152

5. Derivational awareness .000 .031

5. Compound awareness .008 -.133


1. Age .081 .108 .105 .000 .001 -.018

2. Receptive vocabulary .116* -.004 .032 .450** .194 .228*

3. Word reading .590** .742** .762** .438** .659** .644**

4. Phonological awareness .003 .074 .060 .003 .070 .029

5. Derivational awareness .004 .100 .005 .150

5. Compound awareness .003 .074 .013 .192

Model A = Derivational Awareness task only; Model B = Compound Awareness task only* p \ .10; * p \ .05; ** p \ . 01

1862 K. Lam et al.

123

Power analysis for the regression models

To determine the power of our regression models in detecting small, medium, and

large effects of morphological awareness, we performed power analyses using the

G*Power 3.1 power analysis program (Faul, Erdfelder, Lang, & Buchner, 2007),

following the procedures outlined by Faul, Erdfelder, Buchner and Lang (2009) for

multiple linear regression models. Because there were differences in cohort size as

well as in the number of predictors entered for predicting vocabulary and reading

comprehension, power analyses were conducted separately for each regression

model reported above. For multiple regression and correlation analyses, Cohen

(1988) has proposed the values for small, medium and large effects to be f2 = .02,

.15, and .35, respectively. With the significance criterion being a = .05, the power

to detect large effects of morphological awareness for all the regression models

reported in our study is above the desired value of .80 suggested by Cohen (1988).

However, for all models, the power to detect small and medium effects is below .80.

That is, our models were sensitive to large effects, but not to medium or small

effects.

Discussion

The results of the present research fill in some gaps in our understanding of the role

of morphological awareness in literacy outcomes among ELL children. Previous

research has provided preliminary evidence for a relation between morphological

awareness and reading development in ELL children (i.e., Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008;

Siegel, 2008; Wang et al., 2006). However, most of these studies have examined

students in the middle and upper elementary years, for whom morphological

Table 6 Longitudinal hierarchical linear regression predicting Time 2 English reading comprehension

Step and predictors Younger cohort (n = 34) Older cohort (n = 23)

General

model

summary


model

summary

Model A Model B

DR2 b b DR2 b b

1. Age .181* .270* .247 .056 -.220 -.210

2. T1 Reading comprehension – – – .376** -.217 .013

3. T1 Receptive vocabulary .016 .120 .078 .019 -.149 .204

4. T1 Word reading .352** .653** .617** .045 .417 .375

5. T1 Phonological awareness .000 .143 .025 .033 .142 .010

6. T1 Derivational awareness .028 -.246 .240** .698**

6. T1 Compound awareness .001 -.037 .116* .451*

T1 = Time 1; Model A = Derivational Awareness task only; Model B = Compound Awareness task

only* p \ .10; * p \ .05; ** p \ .01


123

awareness may be particularly important because of the increasing number of

multimorphemic words they read (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). The current findings

add to this body of research by showing that even in Grade 1, when basic reading

skills are still being acquired, morphological awareness contributes to concurrent

and subsequent reading achievement in Chinese-speaking ELL children after taking

into account the effects of other reading-related variables. This finding underscores

the importance of morphological awareness in children’s reading development.

Development of morphological awareness

By examining the results across two cohorts in a longitudinal design, our study was

the first to track the developmental changes of derivational awareness and

compound awareness from kindergarten to Grade 2 in Chinese-speaking ELL

children. Previous research has found that derivational awareness emerges around

age 3 among native English speakers, and continues to develop through elementary

and high school years (see Kuo & Anderson, 2006, for a review). Consistent with

our expectation, the Chinese-speaking ELL children in our study improved from

kindergarten to Grade 2 on the derivational awareness task. However, because there

were some cohort effects, it remains to be seen whether these findings can be

replicated by future studies. Nonetheless, our study clearly shows that Chinese-

speaking ELL children start at a low level of derivational awareness in kindergarten

and experience a steady increase in Grade 1 and Grade 2.

Children in our study demonstrated substantial growth in their compound

awareness between kindergarten and Grade 2. Given the fact that there are relatively

few compound words in English, this steep increase in compound awareness likely

reflects the influence of Chinese, the children’s first language. Indeed, when

compared to their native English-speaking peers reported in McBride-Chang et al.’s

(2005) study, we found that the Chinese-speaking ELL children outperformed the

English monolinguals by Grade 2. Compounding is the most prominent word

formation process in Chinese—over 75% of the words in Modern Chinese are

compounds (Sun, Sun, Huang, Li, & Xing, 1996; Taylor & Taylor, 1995). Further,

most Chinese compounds are semantically transparent such that the meaning of

each morpheme contributes directly to the meaning of the word. It has been shown

that the salient compounding features in Chinese lead to a high level of compound

awareness in monolingual Chinese speakers in the early grades (Chen, Hao, Geva,

Zhu, & Shu, 2009). It seems that for bilingual Chinese children, English compound

awareness development is facilitated by their exposure to the compounding

structure of Chinese, reflecting the influence of first language characteristics.

Relations between morphological awareness and vocabulary

Our study shows that morphological awareness, especially derivational awareness,

plays an increasingly important role in vocabulary over time. This is most clearly

demonstrated in our longitudinal regression models, which, compared to concurrent

1864 K. Lam et al.

123

analyses, offer more stringent tests of the relation between two variables by the

inclusion of the autoregressor (Deacon & Kirby, 2004), and provide stronger

evidence in delineating the directionality of the relation. We found that while

derivational awareness assessed in kindergarten explained minimal variance in

Grade 1 vocabulary, derivational awareness assessed in Grade 1 significantly

explained close to 28% of the unique variance in Grade 2 vocabulary, even after

taking into account earlier vocabulary knowledge. Considering the relatively small

sample size in our study, especially in Grade 2, the finding that derivational

awareness emerged as the only significant longitudinal predictor of vocabulary

underscores its significance in ELL children’s early vocabulary development.

Morphological awareness also accounts for proportions of variance in concurrent

vocabulary among the ELL children in the early elementary grades. Derivational

awareness was a marginally significant concurrent predictor of vocabulary in

kindergarteners, explaining slightly over 10% of the variance after controlling for

age and phonological awareness. In Grade 1, derivational awareness became a

significant predictor across the two cohorts, explaining approximately 14–18% of

the variance in vocabulary. It was somewhat unexpected, however, that whilst

derivational awareness accounted for close to 10% of the second graders’ variance

in vocabulary, the contribution was not statistically significant. One possible reason

was that the sample size was quite small at this time; hence, there was insufficient

power to detect significant results. Compound awareness was only significantly

related to concurrent vocabulary in Grade 1 (the younger cohort at Time 2),

explaining about 17% of the variance. Taken together, our results suggest that

morphological awareness is closely associated with vocabulary development in

Chinese-speaking ELLs in the early school years.

Several reasons may account for the emerging influence of morphological

awareness on vocabulary observed in our study. First, a certain threshold of

morphological awareness may be required before children can use morphological

skills for word learning (e.g., Carlisle, 1995; 2000; Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008). While

children’s morphological awareness was too low to have any facilitating effects in

kindergarten, this required threshold was achieved and surpassed by the first grade,

as increasing exposure to multimorphemic words through academic learning

(Anglin, 1993; Nagy & Anderson, 1984) offers more opportunities to develop the

ability to conduct morphological analysis. In turn, increased morphological

awareness leads to vocabulary growth by enabling children to synthesize the

meaning of unfamiliar words from familiar morphemes.

To summarize, previous studies have shown that morphological awareness is

related to vocabulary growth in monolingual English-speaking children (e.g.,

Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; McBride-Chang et al., 2005). The present

study adds to the extant body of research by delineating a similar developmental

pattern among Chinese-speaking ELL children. Our findings using a relatively small

sample size represent a notable first step in substantiating the importance of

morphological awareness in vocabulary among young ELL children. At the same

time, they point to the need for future studies to further understand the contribution

of morphological awareness to vocabulary among young ELL readers.


123

Relations between morphological awareness and reading comprehension

This study also examined the contribution of morphological awareness to reading

comprehension in Chinese-speaking ELLs. It seems that the effects of morpholog-

ical awareness on reading comprehension emerged with time. Derivational

awareness measured in Grade 1 uniquely predicted about 24% of the variance in

Grade 2 reading comprehension after controlling for several reading-related

variables and children’s reading comprehension measured in Grade 1. By contrast,

the longitudinal prediction from kindergarten to Grade 1 was not significant, nor

was any of the concurrent predictions in the two senior grade levels. Such change in

the contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension over time is

rather remarkable, especially considering that our sample size has become quite

small by Grade 2.

The limited effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension

observed in our study resemble the finding of Carlisle (1995) involving native

English speakers in the early elementary grades. Thus, for both native English

speakers and Chinese-speaking ELL children, morphological awareness makes a

relatively small contribution to reading comprehension at the beginning stage. Over

time, however, the ability to conduct morphological analysis provides an adaptable

tool to acquire complex new words across different contexts. This ability becomes

more important when children encounter more multimorphemic words. In addition,

morphological awareness, particularly awareness of the syntactic and distributional

properties of derivational affixes, plays a more important role in sentence parsing as

children encounter increasingly more complex texts.

The SVR model conceptualizes reading comprehension as the product of

listening comprehension (i.e., oral language proficiency) and word reading (Gough

& Tunmer, 1986; Kirby & Savage, 2008). In the early grades, word recognition

takes precedence over oral language proficiency in contributing to reading

comprehension, given that reading instruction focuses mostly on decoding (Catts,

Hogan, & Adlof, 2005; Torgesen, Wagner, & Rashotte, 1997). As children become

more experienced readers, the variance in reading comprehension explained by

word reading is expected to decrease (e.g., Tilstra, McMaster, van den Broek,

Kendeou, & Rapp, 2009). Consistent with the predictions made by the SVR model,

in our study, word reading was the most powerful predictor of reading compre-

hension among children from kindergarten to Grade 2.

Interestingly, we found that morphological awareness emerged as a significant

longitudinal predictor of reading comprehension for the first graders. Morphological

awareness is a metalinguistic skill. While closely related to vocabulary, it taps the

general understanding of word structure rather than knowledge of specific words

(Kieffer & Lesaux, 2010). Thus, our finding seems to suggest that this metalinguistc

ability becomes a critical aspect of oral language proficiency once children reach a

certain stage of reading development. This possibility needs to be further

investigated.

Overall, our results concerning the contribution of morphological awareness to

vocabulary and reading comprehension among Chinese-speaking ELL beginner

readers parallel those previously found among English monolinguals (e.g., Carlisle,

1866 K. Lam et al.

123

1995; 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nagy et al., 2006),

thus lending support to the universal view of reading (Geva, 2008; Muter &

Diethelm, 2001). Furthermore, given that Chinese uses a logographic writing system

that is fundamentally different from the alphabetic writing system used in English,

our findings suggest that the universal perspective is relevant even for second

language learners whose first and second languages are typologically distant.

Derivational and compound awareness

Including both derivational awareness and compound awareness in the same study

enabled us to examine the relations between these two aspects of morphological

awareness, as well as their differential contributions to reading outcomes in

Chinese-speaking ELL children. The significant correlations observed between

derivational awareness and compound awareness in both cohorts across different

testing times suggest that they are likely to represent different facets of a single

underlying construct. This is consistent with the view that distinct aspects of

morphological structures are all mental representations resulting from an interaction

of phonological, semantic, and orthographic information in a given language

(Gonnerman, Seidenberg, & Andersen, 2007; McBride-Chang et al., 2005).

Among the two aspects of morphological awareness, derivational awareness was

a stronger predictor of vocabulary and reading comprehension in most models.

These results suggest that the sensitivity to the prefixes and suffixes in derivational

words plays a greater role in English reading than the sensitivity to compound

structures. This is consistent with the fact that in English, derivations constitute a

much larger share of multimorphemic words than compounds (Anglin, 1993; Nagy

& Anderson, 1984; Tyler & Nagy, 1989). Derivational awareness may also

contribute to reading comprehension through its role in syntactic parsing. As

derivational suffixes often explicitly mark parts of speech (e.g., -ness often denotes

a noun while -ful usually signifies an adjective), knowledge of derivational

morphemes provides clues to readers in determining the syntactic structure of a

written sentence (Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Mahony, Singson, & Mann, 2000; Tyler

& Nagy, 1990). Thus, the differences in the contributions of the two aspects of

morphological awareness to reading reflect the morphological structure of English.

Limitations and directions for future research

While the results of the present study increase our understanding of the importance

of morphological processing in Chinese-speaking ELL children, they must be

interpreted in the light of several caveats. First, there was attrition in both cohorts,

leading to smaller sample sizes at testing time 2. This problem was particularly

serious for the older cohort. Relatedly, we only had power to detect large, but not

medium or small, effects of morphological awareness on the young ELLs’ reading

achievement. It remains possible that with a larger sample, some of our

nonsignificant results could become significant. Another limitation is the relatively

restricted range of SES in our sample. Most children in our study came from middle

or high SES families; over 60% of the mothers have completed at least a university


123

degree. To the extent that this sample is representative of the demographics of the

more recent Chinese immigrants in Canada,5 it may prevent us from generalizing

our findings to children raised in low SES families. Children from low SES families

are less likely to be exposed to highly stimulating home literacy environments, and

may therefore be at a disadvantage in their vocabulary knowledge and reading

comprehension (Hart & Risley, 1995; van Steensel, 2006). Future studies should

consider ELL children from a broader range of SES backgrounds.

The derivational awareness measure used in our study seemed to be slightly

above the ability level of the Chinese-speaking ELL kindergartners. For this group,

the correct percentage on the Derivational Awareness task was low. While there was

sufficient variance among children’s performance and tests for skewness of

distribution did not reveal any floor effect, it will be important for future studies to

develop measures that can better capture children’s derivational awareness at the

kindergarten level. Also, we have chosen to focus on derivational awareness and

compound awareness among ELL children in the present study because of their

prominent roles in English and Chinese, respectively. Nonetheless, inflectional

awareness may play an important role in reading development in English, especially

in young ELL readers who are only beginning to learn the morphological structures

of their second language. This will need to be explored in future studies.

Finally, the association between morphological awareness and reading is likely to

be reciprocal rather than unidirectional. Results from our study and others (e.g.,

Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003) have shown that morphological

awareness can predict vocabulary growth and reading comprehension over time.

Yet, it is also likely that the exposure to oral and printed words facilitates the

development of morphological awareness (Katz, 2004; McBride-Chang et al.,

2008). Although our study was longitudinal in nature, the small sample size did not

allow us to use more powerful statistical techniques to examine reciprocal relations.

Future research should explore the bidirectionality of the associations between

different aspects of morphological awareness and reading outcomes.

Morphological instruction has been incorporated into reading intervention

programs in the recent years, and there is a small but growing body of research

among monolingual English speakers supporting the effectiveness of such approach

at enhancing children’s growth in reading, spelling, and vocabulary across various

reading levels (see Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Reed, 2008, for reviews).

Notably, Lesaux, Kieffer, Faller and Kelley (2010) reported that an academic

vocabulary instruction program that explicitly taught morphology similarly

benefitted ELL students and their native English-speaking classmates at the

middle-school level. Our study points to the possibility that morphological

instruction may even benefit ELL children who are beginning readers. Specifically,

providing more opportunities for children to learn and practice morphological

strategies from a young age may facilitate growth in vocabulary and reading

5 According to analyses conducted using data from the Landed Immigrant Data System in Canada, 60.5%

of the adult Chinese immigrants arriving in Canada between 1996 and 2001 have a post-secondary degree

(Guo & DeVoretz, 2007).

1868 K. Lam et al.

123

comprehension over time. More research evaluating the effectiveness of morpho-

logical instruction among young ELL children is clearly needed.

In conclusion, our study suggest that Chinese-speaking ELL children continuously

develop English derivational and compound awareness over the early school years;

they also become increasingly more adept in using these insights to facilitate their

English vocabulary and reading comprehension. While children’s level of morpho-

logical awareness may not be sufficient to influence literacy skills in kindergarten, by

Grade 1, morphological awareness is significantly related to vocabulary. Around the

same time or soon after, the effects of morphological awareness extend to reading

comprehension. These findings are consistent with those observed among monolin-

gual English speakers (e.g., Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003), and ELL

students from other linguistic backgrounds (e.g., Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Siegel,

2008), thus substantiating the universal processes in second language reading for

children from different language backgrounds. At the same time, our findings suggest

that Chinese-speaking ELL children develop a relatively high level of compound

awareness, which reflects the characteristics of their first language.

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