Top Lang Disorders
Vol. 34, No. 3, pp. 197–209
c 2014 Wolters Kluwer Health | Lippincott Williams & Wilkins
Copyright A Comprehensive Definition
of Morphological Awareness
Implications for Assessment
Kenn Apel
Purpose: Although there is an increasing body of evidence for the important role morphological
awareness plays in written language development, there is little consensus on a fully specified
definition of this linguistic awareness ability. Without agreement on a definition, several problems
arise, at least one of which impacts researchers’ and practitioners’ ability to fully and consistently
assess students’ morphological awareness abilities. Method: In the first portion of this article, I
discuss insufficiencies with current definitions of morphological awareness and propose a more
comprehensive definition. Following this, I relate the implications of this new definition for
assessment: the inability of current norm-referenced tests and experimenter-designed tasks to meet
the definition and considerations from the research to keep in mind about stimuli on morphological
awareness tasks. Conclusion: In the final segment of the article, I provide implications and
suggestions for practitioners who wish to assess morphological awareness in a comprehensive
manner, using the new definition as a guide to measure students’ morphological awareness abilities.
Key words: assessment, morphological awareness, reading, spelling, written language
F
OR decades, researchers and practitioners have focused predominantly on
phonemic awareness when assessing the potential impact of linguistic awareness on students’ reading and spelling abilities (e.g., Ehri
et al., 2001; Griffith & Olson, 1992). A uniform and mutually agreed upon definition of
phonemic awareness is that it is a conscious
awareness of the sounds of language and the
ability to talk about and manipulate those
sounds. This definition is accepted by researchers and practitioners alike, and several
norm-referenced phonemic awareness measures that align with the definition are avail-
Author Affiliation: Department of Communication
Sciences and Disorders, University of South
Carolina, Columbia.
The author has indicated that he has no financial and
no nonfinancial relationships to disclose.
Corresponding Author: Kenn Apel, Department of
Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of
South Carolina, 124 Sumter St, Suite 300, Columbia, SC
29201 ([email protected]).
DOI: 10.1097/TLD.0000000000000019
able for use in research studies and in clinical
and school settings (e.g., Wagner & Torgesen,
1987; Wagner, Torgesen, & Rashotte, 1999;
Yopp, 1992).
More recently, morphological awareness
has begun to receive attention as another
linguistic awareness skill that impacts
written language abilities. Multiple investigations have demonstrated the powerful influence it has on word-level reading, reading comprehension, and spelling
development (e.g., Apel, Wilson-Fowler,
Brimo, & Perrin, 2012; McCutchen, Green,
& Abbott, 2008; Nagy, Berninger, Abbott,
Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003; Roman, Kirby,
Parrila, Wade-Woolley, & Deacon, 2009;
Walker & Hauerwas, 2006; Wolter, Wood, &
D’zatko, 2009). Furthermore, recent reviews
of morphological awareness interventions
have demonstrated that instruction in morphological awareness can lead to improvement in students’ written language abilities
(Bowers, Kirby, & Deacon, 2010; Goodwin
& Ahn, 2013). Collectively, these findings
suggest that morphological awareness is an
important linguistic awareness ability that
197
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY–SEPTEMBER 2014
deserves as much attention for the role it plays
in reading and spelling development as does
phonemic awareness (e.g., Berninger, Abbott,
Nagy, & Carlisle, 2010).
Given the importance of morphological
awareness for written language development,
it would seem that a consensus definition
of morphological awareness must exist; however, this is not the case. Without agreement
on a definition, several problems arise, some
of which impact the assessment of morphological awareness, as well as the scientific reporting of researchers’ findings of this skill. In
the first portion of this article, I discuss insufficiencies with current definitions of morphological awareness and propose a more comprehensive definition. Then, in the second
portion of this article, I relate the implications
of this new definition for assessment. Specifically, in the second section, I discuss the inability of current norm-referenced tests and
experimenter-developed tasks to assess the
construct represented by the proposed definition. I also offer considerations on the basis
of the research to keep in mind about stimuli on morphological awareness tasks. I conclude the article with implications and suggestions for practitioners who wish to assess
morphological awareness in a comprehensive
manner.
DEFINING MORPHOLOGICAL
AWARENESS
Morphemes are the smallest units of
meaning in our language. Thus, the term
“morphological awareness” implies an
awareness of these small units of meaning.
Given that morphemes occur in spoken and
written language, morphological awareness
necessarily involves an awareness of both
spoken and written morphemes, including
an understanding of what written affixes
(i.e., prefixes and suffixes) look like orthographically and the rules that govern
how affixes attach to base words or roots.
Unfortunately, current definitions used by
researchers and authors come up short in
defining morphological awareness at this
level of detail (see Table 1 for examples).
Although many definitions involve some variation of the notion of the conscious awareness
of, or an ability to manipulate, morphemes,
they differ in whether they specify modality
(i.e., some specify spoken only), vary in
emphasis on individuals’ ability to reflect on
morphemes, and, as a whole, do not address
all aspects of morphological awareness.
What is missing from all current definitions
is the full level of specificity that might guide
researchers and practitioners in evaluating
students’ morphological awareness abilities
comprehensively. Indeed, without an inclusive definition of a skill such as morphological
awareness, one cannot comprehensively assess that skill. Furthermore, because of
the lack of specificity in these definitions,
incomplete and, in some cases, incorrect data
have been used to draw conclusions about
students’ morphological awareness abilities.
For example, most researchers who have
assessed students’ morphological awareness
abilities have administered tasks in the spoken
mode. When researchers have used tasks that
involved written language, they frequently
have read the items to the students and asked
the students to respond orally. This is apparently based on the rationale that any written
responses would be affected by the students’
(potential lack of) orthographic knowledge,
confounding the assessment of students’ morphological awareness. This is an interesting
perspective, given that, as mentioned previously, part of morphological awareness necessarily involves an understanding of written
morphemes, what they look like orthographically, how they are spelled, and how they
attach to base words and roots. When this
aspect of morphological awareness is not assessed, then a complete picture of students’
morphological awareness abilities is lacking.
There also has been some confusion
between the concepts of morphological
awareness and morphological production,
sometimes referred to as morphological
knowledge. Morphological awareness is a
conscious reflection on morphemes. Morphological production involves the unconscious
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A Comprehensive Definition of Morphological Awareness
199
Table 1. Sample definitions of morphological awareness
Definition of
Morphological Awareness
Researchers
Berninger et al. (2010)
Carlisle (2000)
Deacon, Kirby, and Casselman-Bell
(2009)
Deacon, Benere, and Pasquarella
(2013)
Guo, Roehrig, and Williams (2011)
Kirby et al. (2012)
Kuo and Anderson (2006)
Tong, Deacon, Kirby, Cain, and
Parrila (2011)
“ . . . judgments about semantic or semantic-syntactic
relationships that depend upon the form of the word
or its parts” (p. 142).
“ . . . the ability to parse words and analyze constituent
morphemes for the purpose of constructing meaning”
(p. 170).
“ . . . the awareness of and ability to manipulate the
minimal units of meaning . . . ” (p. 301).
“ . . . the awareness of and the ability to manipulate
morphemes in the oral language . . . ” (p. 1113).
“ . . . explicit knowledge of the way in which words are
built up by combining smaller meaningful units, such
as prefixes, roots, and suffixes . . . ” (p. 160).
“ . . . conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of
words and (their) ability to reflect on and manipulate
that structure . . . ” (p. 389).
“The ability to reflect upon and manipulate morphemes
and employ word formation rules in one’s
language . . . ” (p. 161).
“ . . . conscious awareness of the morphemic structure of
words and (individuals’) ability to reflect on and
manipulate that structure . . . ” (p. 523).
use of morphemes, typically during spontaneous spoken language. When individuals
converse, they produce morphemes but typically do not think actively about the morphemes they are producing. Mature writers
also may write without thinking actively about
the specific morphemes they are writing, particularly when engaged in less formal writing
situations, such as notes, e-mails, and the like.
In the past, however, researchers have not
always kept these two notions distinct. For
example, two investigations by Tyler, Lewis,
Haskill, and Tolbert (2002, 2003) were incorporated into separate recent syntheses of morphological awareness interventions—a systematic review (Bowers et al., 2010) and a
meta-analysis (Goodwin & Ahn, 2013); however, the two studies conducted by Tyler
et al. (2002, 2003) were focused on interventions to increase the production of spoken
morphemes in preschoolers with speech and
language impairments and not on morphological awareness (i.e., with the goal to increase
the children’s ability to consciously consider
or think about morphemes). An inconsistent
definition, then, led to introduction of data
into both systematic syntheses that was inconsistent with the purposes of the reviews.
Including them thus had the potential to alter the outcomes of the reviews and related
conclusions. An agreed upon comprehensive
definition of morphological awareness may reduce such problems in the future.
Assessment of morphological awareness
also hinges on a complete and unified definition. The definitions used by others have
been incomplete. I recommend that a more
comprehensive definition of morphological
awareness is needed that acknowledges morphology in both spoken and written modalities. Such an all-encompassing definition
would allow researchers and practitioners the
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY–SEPTEMBER 2014
specificity to address all aspects of morphological awareness when they assess students’
morphological awareness. I propose that such
a definition should take the following form:
Morphological awareness includes: (a) awareness
of spoken and written forms of morphemes; (b)
the meaning of affixes and the alterations in meaning and grammatical class they bring to base
words/roots (e.g., -ed causes a verb to refer to the
past as in walked; -er can change a verb to a noun,
as in teach to teacher); (c) the manner in which
written affixes connect to base words/roots, including changes to those base words/roots (e.g.,
some suffixes require a consonant to be doubled
or dropped when attached to a base word/root
in written form, such as in hop to hopping and
hope to hoped); and (d) the relation between base
words/roots and their inflected or derived forms
(e.g., knowing that a variety of words are related
because they share the same base word/root, such
as act, action, react, and activity).
Applying this definition to current measures can reveal whether they provide adequate coverage of the key components of this
definition, either solely or in combination, to
constitute a comprehensive assessment of students’ morphological awareness. In the following section, I provide a review of several
current norm-referenced assessments that potentially assess morphological awareness, in
which I examine their consistency with the
proposed definition. I follow this with a similar review of experimenter-developed tasks
that have been used in the research literature
to examine students’ morphological awareness skills.
CURRENT TASKS USED TO ASSESS
MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS
Morphological awareness has received less
attention than phonemic awareness, both in
the research literature and in everyday assessment and intervention practice. Thus, it
is not surprising that there are fewer examples of norm-referenced measures that assess
students’ morphological awareness than there
are experimenter-developed tasks.
Norm-referenced morphological
awareness measures
No norm-referenced measures dedicated
solely to assessing morphological awareness
have been published. One norm-referenced
test, the Process Assessment of the Learner—
Second Edition (PALS-2; Berninger, 2007),
contains a few subtests that are identified as
morphological awareness tasks (e.g., students
view printed words and identify those containing affixes, students determine whether
two presented words share the same root).
The PALS-2 thus far has not been used widely
in the field of speech–language pathology and
may not be familiar to language specialists.
Additionally, there are a few norm-referenced
measures, or subtests of norm-referenced
measures, that assess some aspect of morphological awareness (see Table 2 for examples), at least indirectly. These tasks, however,
are not identified as measures of morphological awareness and never have been used in
any research study as a measure of morphological awareness. Furthermore, they tend to
assess awareness of inflectional morphology
more than derivational morphology, which is
a limitation because inflectional morphological awareness is less predictive of reading
in students beyond the early primary grades
(e.g., Kuo & Anderson, 2006). In addition, the
range of affixes is highly constrained in number and types.
The norm-referenced measures reviewed in
Table 2, therefore, assess only a limited portion of the construct encompassed by the
proposed definition. Among other limitations,
they all are measures of students’ awareness
of spoken morphology only. They do not assess students’ awareness of written morphology, including students’ awareness of what
written morphemes look like orthographically, the manner in which written affixes
connect to base words, and the changes that
can occur to base words because of those
affix additions. In addition, they assess students’ awareness of the relation between base
words and their derived forms only minimally.
Thus, even in combination, they would fail to
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A Comprehensive Definition of Morphological Awareness
201
Table 2. Examples of norm-referenced measures that assess aspects of morphological
awareness
Measure
Mode
Test for Examining
Expressive Morphology
(Shipley, Stone, & Sue,
1983)
Spoken
Test of Language
Development—Primary:
4 (Hammill & Newcomer,
2008a)
Subtest: Morphological
Completion
Spoken
Test of Language
Development—
Intermediate: 4 (Hammill
& Newcomer, 2008b)
Spoken
Subtest: Morphological
Comprehension
Illinois Test of
Psycholinguistic Abilities:
3 (Hammill, Mather, &
Roberts, 2001)
Spoken
Description
Aspect of Proposed
Morphological
Awareness
Definition Assessed
Assesses awareness of five
Awareness of the
inflections (present
relation of base words
progressive—ing, plurals,
to their inflected and
possessives, third person
derived forms
singular, past tense) and two
derivational forms (the
comparative —er and the
superlative—est).
Students complete a sentence
with an affixed word (e.g.,
here is one boat, here are
two _____ [boats]).
Assesses awareness of 13
Awareness of the
inflections (seven plurals,
relation of base words
four possessives, and two
to their inflected and
past tense) and five
derived forms
derivational forms (three
agentive and two
comparative).
Students complete a
sentence with an
affixed word (e.g.,
“Carla has a dress,
Denise has a dress. They
have two ____[dresses]).
Some of the target items tap Awareness of the
into inflectional and
meaning of affixes and
derivational knowledge,
the alterations in
whereas others rely more on meaning they bring to
syntactic awareness.
base words
Students read a sentence and
must judge whether the
sentence sounds
grammatically correct (e.g.,
“Those boys is happy”).
Assesses awareness of 13
Awareness of the
inflections (six plurals and
relation of base words
seven past tense) and 13
to their inflected and
derivational forms (four
derived forms
superlatives, three
comparative, and six others).
(Continues)
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY–SEPTEMBER 2014
Table 2. Examples of norm-referenced measures that assess aspects of morphological
awareness (Continued)
Measure
Mode
Subtest: Morphological
Closure
Clinical Evaluation of
Language Fundamentals:
4 (Semel, Wiig, & Secord,
2006)
Subtest: Word Structure
Spoken
Description
Aspect of Proposed
Morphological
Awareness
Definition Assessed
Students asked to fill in a final
missing part (e.g., “big,
bigger, ____[biggest]).
Assesses awareness of 12
Awareness of the
inflections (two plurals, two relation of base words
third person singular, three
to their inflected and
possessives, four present
derived forms
progressive—ing, and one
past tense) and four
derivational forms (one
superlative, two
comparative, and one other).
Students complete a sentence
with an affixed word (e.g.,
“This man sings. He is called
a _______[singer]).
cover all of the components of the proposed
definition. Partially in response to these limitations, researchers have constructed tasks
that fill some of the gaps in assessing the key
components of the proposed, comprehensive
definition.
Experimenter-designed morphological
awareness tasks
Different researchers have used different
experimenter-designed morphological awareness tasks, and often just one or two tasks,
to assess students’ morphological awareness
skills. Because the focus in the literature has
been on the more general definition of morphological awareness, it is not surprising that
experimenter-designed tasks have not covered the range of abilities identified in the
proposed comprehensive definition. I would
argue, then, that researchers should discuss
their findings in a manner that acknowledges that students’ morphological awareness
skills have been measured in an incomplete
manner.
The tasks that researchers have administered have taken various forms, including
production tasks, judgment tasks, blending/
segmenting tasks, and analogy tasks, each
with several subvarieties. In addition, in one
investigation, my colleagues and I included a
measure of children’s awareness of written affixes (Apel, Diehm, & Apel, 2013). I provide a
brief overview of each of these categories of
tasks below.
Productive morphological awareness
tasks
Some researchers have used productive
morphological awareness tasks to assess
students’ morphological awareness skills;
these tasks have varied in their requirements.
The cloze procedure has been a typical
means for assessing students’ productive
morphological awareness abilities (e.g., Apel
et al., 2013; Apel & Lawrence, 2011; Casalis
& Cole, 2009; McCutchen et al., 2008; Wolter
et al., 2009). For example, a common task
involves providing a word, such as a base
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A Comprehensive Definition of Morphological Awareness
203
word (e.g., help), and then requiring the
student to use an inflected or derived form of
the word to complete a sentence (e.g., The
Girl Scout was a great _____[helper]). The
target response has varied by researchers.
Sometimes, the student changes a multimorphemic word into a base word (farmer. Bill
works on a ____[farm]). Other times, the student changes a base word into an inflected or
derived word (as in the aforementioned example with helper). When the response involves
a change into a derived word, the response
may be a transparent form (tall–taller) or one
that involves either a phonological (magic–
magician) and/or an orthographic shift
(silly–silliness). Other cloze tasks have been
similar to norm-referenced tasks discussed
earlier (e.g., Here is one dress; Here are two
____[dresses]; e.g., Berninger et al., 2010).
Fluency tasks offer a different approach.
These require students to name as many
inflected or derived forms of a base word as
possible (e.g., act could yield action, acting,
react, etc.). Some researcher-developed production tasks have included definition tasks
(e.g., Apel et al., 2013; Casalis, Cole, & Sopo,
2004; Jeon, 2011; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006).
To elicit productions of definitions, for example, Casalis et al. required their 8- 12-year-old
students to finish sentences with a derived
form that completed a definition (e.g., “a
person who paints is a . . . ..painter”). Finally,
some experimenter-designed production
tasks require students to read (e.g., Carlisle,
2000) or spell multimorphemic words (e.g.,
Apel et al., 2012; Kirk & Gillon, 2009).
about the semantic and/or syntactic accuracy
of a word, often within a multiple choice
paradigm (e.g., “When Ali Baba’s wife saw
the gold coins, she was _______ speechified, specialized, speechmaker, speechless”;
Berninger et al., 2010; Nagy et al., 2003; Nagy
et al., 2006; Nippold & Sun, 2008). These
types of judgment tasks have varied additionally in their presentation mode (some were
spoken-only, some were spoken but also provided in print) as well as stimulus type (i.e.,
inflectional and/or derivational items). Derivational items varied in whether they were transparent or involved a phonological and/or orthographic shift. Finally, as can be seen in the
aforementioned example of speechified, on
some tasks, pseudowords were used with real
affixes.
Morphological awareness judgment
tasks
Morphological awareness tasks based
on word analogy
Some investigators have constructed judgment tasks to measure morphological awareness. Judgment tasks often require students
to make decisions about the semantic relationship between two words (e.g., “Does
ban come from banana?”; Berninger et al.,
2010; Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Mahony,
Singson, & Mann, 2000; Nagy, Berninger,
& Abbott, 2006). Students simply respond
yes or no. Others have involved a judgment
Word analogy tasks also have been used
to assess students’ morphological awareness skills (e.g., Bryant, Nunes, & Bindman,
1997; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Kirby et al.,
2012; Roman, Kirby, Parrila, Wade-Woolley, &
Deacon, 2009; Tsesmeli & Seymour, 2006).
These tasks, which commonly are presented
via spoken language, follow the typical format for an analogy: A is to B as C is to D.
For morphological awareness tasks, students
Morphological awareness tasks
involving blending or segmenting
A few researchers have used blending
or segmenting tasks to assess students’
morphological awareness skills (e.g., Casalis
et al., 2004; Lyster, 2002). For example,
Casalis et al. required their 8- to 12-year-old
students to blend and segment base words
and their affixes to either create or decompose, respectively, a multimorphemic word.
An example was blending the French base
word nettoie and the suffix age to produce
nettoyage. In another segmenting task, they
required their students to pronounce the base
portions of multimorphemic words produced
by the experimenters (e.g., producing the
base jour from the French word journeée).
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TOPICS IN LANGUAGE DISORDERS/JULY–SEPTEMBER 2014
are asked to complete the fourth component
of the analogy after hearing either three
words (e.g., mess: messy, fun: _____) or three
sentences (e.g., Peter plays at school: Peter played at school; Peter works at home:
_____________). The studies using word
analogies have varied in whether the response
required an inflected or derived word (e.g.,
Kirby et al., 2012; Roman et al., 2009); all
investigations using sentence analogies have
required only inflected words (e.g., Bryant
et al., 1997).
A task involving identification
of written affixes
Finally, my colleagues and I conducted an
investigation of children’s identification of
written affixes (Apel et al., 2013). In our
study, we provided first- and second-grade
children from low SES homes, with a paper
containing a list of pseudowords with real affixes (e.g., rinning). The children were given
3 min to circle all affixes (i.e., “add-ons”) they
saw. The task allowed us to examine the students’ recognition of written prefixes and suffixes.
Morphological awareness assessment
challenges
Overall, quite a range of tasks have been
used by researchers to assess students’ morphological awareness abilities. As mentioned
previously, with few exceptions (e.g., Apel
et al., 2013), most researchers have used
only one, or perhaps two, of these tasks to
assess students’ morphological awareness
skills. Even when some researchers have used
multiple measures, albeit an incomplete set of
tasks, to represent morphological awareness,
they then combined responses from those
tasks into one composite measure (e.g., Clin,
Wade-Woolley, & Heggie, 2009; Tong et al.,
2011). This can make it difficult to understand
patterns of strengths and weaknesses. Thus,
for both researchers and practitioners, it is
unknown whether the variety of morphological awareness tasks used across investigations
measure the same underlying construct and
can be used interchangeably or whether
they may be measuring different aspects of
morphological awareness that constitute a
multifactorial construct. Some indirect evidence suggests that the latter is true; that is,
that the different tasks used actually may be
measuring different aspects of morphological
awareness.
For example, two research teams examined
whether the morphological awareness tasks
they used in their study related to one another and found only moderate correlations
(r values ranged from .46 to .58; Deacon
et al., 2013; Ramı́rez, Chen, & Pasquarella,
2013). In addition, in the study by Apel
et al., we found that certain morphological
awareness tasks predicted early elementary
grade students’ reading abilities better than
other morphological awareness tasks, and
that some tasks discriminated between grades
better than others. These findings suggest
that not all morphological awareness tasks
measure the same aspects of morphological awareness, and that some tasks may
relate to students’ written language skills
differently.
At the very least, no one type of task
(i.e., judgment task, production task, blending/segmentation task, analogy task, affix
identification task) adequately assesses all of
the components of the proposed morphological awareness definition. Before discussing implications for researchers and practitioners, I
first discuss other factors that impact students’
performances on these types of measures.
When researchers have examined students’
morphological awareness abilities, they have
found that several specific item features affect task performance, including morpheme
type and transparency between base words
and their inflected or derived forms. For example, in general, children in the primary elementary grades demonstrate greater awareness of inflectional forms than derivational
forms; it is around third grade that children
typically demonstrate greater awareness of
derivational morphology (e.g., Kuo & Anderson, 2006). Not surprisingly, then, inflectional
morphological awareness is mostly associated
with literacy abilities in younger elementary
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A Comprehensive Definition of Morphological Awareness
school students rather than upper-grade elementary school students (e.g., Carlisle &
Nomanbhoy, 1993). Task items that represent
transparent relations between base words and
their derived forms are typically easier to complete than items that represent a shift phonologically and/or orthographically (e.g., Apel
& Thomas-Tate, 2009; Carlisle, 2000). However, both of these item feature issues, morpheme type and transparency, may be confounded by morpheme and word frequency
issues.
Word frequency issues can function on multiple levels. There are far fewer inflectional
affixes than derivational affixes, and those
inflectional affixes are more frequent in occurrence and shorter in letter length, which may
lead to ease in performance on tasks. Nontransparent forms also may be confounded
by word frequency; many multimorphemic
words that involve shifts are lower in word
frequency counts than transparent forms.
Across previous investigations, researchers
have not always accounted for these itemspecific features on a complete, consistent
basis.
Another factor to consider is students’
prior vocabulary knowledge. Some researchers have discussed whether morphological awareness is actually another measure of vocabulary, supported by findings
on the strong relation between vocabulary
and morphological awareness (e.g., Kuo &
Anderson, 2006). However, in studies that
have examined the associations of morphological awareness and vocabulary simultaneously, with reading as an outcome (e.g., Apel
et al., 2012; Nagy et al., 2003), morphological awareness has uniquely predicted reading
beyond vocabulary knowledge. Thus, there
appear to be distinct aspects of morphological awareness that separate it from general
vocabulary abilities. Finally, with additional
studies, such as the investigation conducted
by Mitchell and Brady (2014), more information about specific affixes and when they are
acquired will provide needed developmental
information for assessment and hierarchy of
stimuli.
205
CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS AND
SUGGESTIONS
Additional research is required to inform
assessment practices. Investigators will need
to determine whether different morphological awareness tasks measure the same or different aspects of morphological awareness.
By determining whether multiple measures
are needed to capture the full range of components contained in the recommended definition, researchers and practitioners will be
better prepared to assess students’ morphological awareness abilities. In the meantime,
the important role of morphological awareness in the development of students’ written
language abilities necessitates that practitioners consider how they can best assess their
students’ morphological awareness abilities
now.
Although practitioners await the needed research, they have several options available to
them. My first suggestion is to use the proposed definition as a guide for assessment.
Using this definition will guide practitioners
in their use of different tasks that tap into
the different components of the definition
(see Table 3 for suggestions). For example,
to assess students’ awareness of spoken morphemes, a segmenting or blending task can
be used on which students are asked to either
break up multimorphemic words into their
component morphemes or, conversely, blend
morphemes into multimorphemic words
(e.g., see Casalis et al., 2004). An affix identification task, such as the timed task that required students to circle affixes within written pseudowords (i.e., Apel et al., 2013),
can be used to assess awareness of written
morphemes.
Awareness of the meaning of affixes and
the alterations in meaning they bring to base
words can be assessed by using spoken and
written production and judgment tasks (e.g.,
see Apel et al., 2013; Berninger et al., 2010).
On these tasks, students may be asked to complete cloze tasks with appropriate morphologically related words or to make decisions
about the semantic relation between two
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Table 3. Examples of morphological awareness tasks aligned with proposed definition
Aspect of Proposed
Morphological Awareness
Definition Assessed
Awareness of the morphemes
in words and what they
“sound like”
Awareness of the morphemes
in words and what they
“look like”
Awareness of the meaning of
affixes and the alterations in
meaning they bring to base
words
Awareness of the meaning of
affixes and the alterations in
grammatical class they bring
to base words
Mode
Potential
Assessment Tasks
Spoken
Segmenting task
Written
Affix identification
task
Spoken
Definition task
Written
Suffix choice task
Awareness of spelling of
written affixes
Written
Awareness of how the addition
of morphemes can affect
base word spellings
Written
Awareness of the relation of
base words to their inflected
and derived forms
Awareness of the relation of
base words to their inflected
and derived forms
Spoken
Written
words. Students’ awareness of the spelling of
written affixes and the consequences (rule
affects base word changes) when attached
to base words or roots can be assessed using multimorphemic spelling tasks (e.g., see
Apel et al., 2013). Finally, awareness of the
relationship of base words to their inflected
and derived forms also may be assessed using
spoken and written cloze tasks (e.g., teach.
Mrs. Smith is my favorite ______[teacher]).
By using the whole range of tasks representing
the comprehensive definition proposed, practitioners will have a clearer idea of students’
possible strengths and weaknesses in morpho-
Sample Item
“Tap out how many ‘parts’
you hear in recyclable”
(see Casalis et al., 2004).
“Circle all the ‘add-ons” you
see in this list of words”
(e.g., rinning; see Apel
et al., 2013).
“A person who makes art is
an . . . artist”; see Casalis
et al., 2004).
“Matthew was not known
for being overly [friendly,
friendship, friendliness,
friends] to others” (see
Nagy et al., 2003).
Spelling
“Spell dresses. Spell
multimorphemic
plainest . . . ..” (see Apel
words
et al., 2013).
Derivational spelling “Which ending goes with
task
luck to make lucky: —y,
ie, —ey” (see Sangster
and Deacon, 2011).
Spoken relatives task “Farm. My uncle is a ____
farmer. (See Apel et al.,
2013).
Written relatives task “Shine. The boy’s bike was
very ____shiny. (See Apel
et al., 2013).
logical awareness, which then will lead to specific targeted intervention goals.
As practitioners are using researcherdesigned tasks, they should keep in mind the
potential factors that may influence students’
performance on those tasks. As mentioned,
derivational items likely will be more challenging than inflectional items. Furthermore,
derivational items that involve a shift away
from the base word, either a phonological
shift or an orthographic shift, may be more
challenging than one in which the base word
is transparent within the derived word. Practitioners can be aware of these effects, noting
Copyright © 2014 Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Unauthorized reproduction of this article is prohibited.
A Comprehensive Definition of Morphological Awareness
their impact on students’ performance and using that information to inform intervention
(i.e., if a phonological or orthographic shift
response was more challenging for a student,
then intervention would start with stimuli
that involved only transparent forms). Furthermore, as Mitchell and Brady (2014) point
out, students appear to be aware of prefixes
earlier than suffixes. Should this developmental sequence be found in assessment, practitioners would use this information to guide
intervention practices as well.
Finally, practitioners should be aware of
norm-referenced measures they are using that
may be assessing aspects of their students’
morphological awareness abilities although
the tasks are not labeled as such. Although
an assessment test may state that it measures
one skill, practitioners should be conscious of
what the task truly measures. Furthermore, if
the practitioner’s work setting requires standard scores for students to receive direct services, these assessment tasks can be used
to assess morphological awareness even if
the name assigned to the measure suggests
207
something different. As long as the practitioner follows the procedures outlined by the
publisher, the scores obtained still may be
compared with the normative database and
standard scores obtained. The results then
may be interpreted qualitatively with respect
to what they indicate about a student’s morphological awareness. As with the suggestions
for the experimenter-designed tasks, practitioners will need to determine whether the
items on the norm-referenced task are impacted by morpheme type (i.e., inflected or
derived forms) and transparency of the base
word or root (i.e., transparent or shift form).
Morphological awareness is an important
linguistic awareness skill that impacts the development of written language: reading and
spelling. With a comprehensive definition, researchers and practitioners will be prepared
to assess students’ morphological awareness
skills more completely. This may enable them
to form a more complete and inclusive picture
of students’ morphological awareness abilities
and, if needed, develop a prescriptive, optimal
plan for intervention.
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