Australian Catholic University (ACU)

How can teaching morphology improve children's reading and spelling skills?

Practical Advice/Tips for Practitioners

Teach students about morphology to improve reading and spelling
Teaching word parts and how they fit together can help improve students’ ability to read and spell the words they are taught.

Focus on teaching morphology during spelling instruction
The effects of morphology instruction were largest for spelling, suggesting that it is important to focus on teaching morphology during spelling instruction.

Carefully choose the words and word parts that students will be taught
Effects of morphology instruction were largest for words that were seen during instruction, so choose words that students will need to read or spell often.

Teach morphology alongside other literacy skills
Morphology is one part of a comprehensive approach to literacy instruction – not a complete approach on its own.

Basics before application
Teach the basics of morphology explicitly; then provide the students with plenty of opportunities to revise, practice and apply this knowledge.

Abstract

In this pre-registered meta-analysis, we investigated the effectiveness of morphology instruction on literacy outcomes for primary school children in English-speaking countries. We were interested in overall reading and spelling outcomes, but we also looked separately at results for trained and untrained words in order to determine whether there was evidence of transfer to untrained words. Further, we were interested in whether results transferred beyond the word level to reading comprehension outcomes. Our screening process revealed 28 eligible studies, which contributed 177 effect sizes to the analyses. Robust variance estimation methods were used to account for dependence between effect sizes. Overall, effect sizes on reading and spelling outcomes were small to moderate. Effect sizes were larger for trained words than untrained words. There was evidence of transfer to untrained words for spelling outcomes, but not for reading outcomes. There was also no clear evidence of effects on reading comprehension outcomes. In general, the evidence was characterised by large amounts of heterogeneity and imprecision, which was reflective of the wide variety within and between studies in terms of intervention content, outcome measures, intervention dosage and type of control group. We discuss the limitations of the current literature and make recommendations for future research and practice in the field of morphology instruction.

Full paper access

Colenbrander, Danielle, von Hagen, Alexa, Kohnen, Saskia Regina, Wegener, Signy, Ko, Katherine, Beyersmann, Elisabeth, Behzadnia, Ali, Parrila, Rauno and Castles, Anne. (2024). The effects of morphological instruction on literacy outcomes for children in English-speaking countries : A systematic review and meta-analysis. Educational Psychology Review. 36, p. Article 119.