Author : Kendall Kolne
Publisher :
ISBN 13 :
Total Pages : pages
Book Rating : 4.:/5 (119 download)
Book Synopsis Disambiguating the Benefits of Morphology and Vocabulary Instruction for Improving Spelling Among English-speaking Children by : Kendall Kolne
Download or read book Disambiguating the Benefits of Morphology and Vocabulary Instruction for Improving Spelling Among English-speaking Children written by Kendall Kolne and published by . This book was released on 2020 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "This dissertation sought to isolate and examine the benefit of morphologically-focused instruction for improving spelling skill among English-speaking, elementary-school aged children. There is a growing body of evidence which suggests that morphological knowledge makes an important contribution to literacy development, and that instruction on morphological structure benefits word reading, reading comprehension, and spelling. However, in previous intervention studies examining the benefits of morphological instruction for literacy outcomes, morphological instruction was confounded by discussion of word meaning, as morphologically complex words are related to other words in the same word family both in their meaning and in their form. Thus, there is uncertainty with respect to the relative benefits of morphological and vocabulary instruction for literacy development. This study addressed the overlap between morphology and vocabulary instruction, by intentionally extricating instruction on morphological structure from instruction on word meaning, and comparing the relative effectiveness for improving children’s spelling of morphologically complex words. Children in Grades 3 and 5 were randomly assigned to one of two intervention groups, and were taught to spell the same set of morphologically-complex words. In one group (the Morphology group), the children were taught about morphological structure, including root words and suffixes, while any discussion of the meanings of the words or word parts was deliberately avoided. In the second group (the Vocabulary group), children were taught the meanings of the complex words, while carefully avoiding any discussion of the root words or suffixes. Chapter one provides a literature review and description of the theoretical basis for the present study. The intervention is described in chapter two, including a description of the participants, and an overview of the intervention procedure and group selection process. This chapter also describes the outcome measures assessing spelling, morphological knowledge and word meaning knowledge. Chapter 3 presents the results of the study, including changes in spelling performance, morphological knowledge, and word meaning knowledge. Across grade and intervention group, children’s spelling improved after the intervention, and a relative benefit of morphological instruction over-and-above word meaning instruction was observed among children in Grade 3 in their spelling of complex words taught in the intervention. On the measure of morphological knowledge, children in both grades improved after the intervention, however this improvement was not differentiated by intervention group. Children also improved on the measure of word meaning knowledge, and a differential benefit was observed for the children in Grade 3, with the children in the Vocabulary group improving significantly more than the children in the Morphology group. Finally, Chapter 4 synthesizes the findings from Chapter 3, providing a cohesive discussion of the relative benefits of morphology and word meaning instruction, with emphasis on the practical and theoretical findings from this study. Overall, this work provides further indication that literacy instruction that is focused on morphology has benefits for spelling development in English-speaking children, with a unique benefit of morphological instruction particularly evident among children in Grade 3"--