Learning Morphological and Phonological Spelling Rules: An ...

SCIENTIFIC STUDIES OF READING, 7(3), 289–307 Copyright © 2003, Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.

Learning Morphological and Phonological Spelling Rules: An Intervention Study Terezinha Nunes Department of Psychology Oxford Brookes University

Peter Bryant and Jenny Olsson Department of Experimental Psychology Oxford University

We looked at the effects of teaching 7- and 8-year-old children morphological and phonological distinctions. Some of those given morphological training and some of those given phonological training were also taught how to represent these distinctions in writing. All 4 intervention groups did better than the control group in a standardized test of reading after the intervention. There were gains in children’s use of morphological spelling rules but not in their use of conditional phonologically based spelling rules. The improvement in the use of morphological rules in spelling was confined to groups trained in morphology. Training in phonology also had a beneficial effect on the use of morphology in reading. The results are interpreted within the framework of a dual-route model of learning to read and spell.

Theories about learning to read necessarily involve ideas about causal links and intervention provides us with a rigorous tool for testing such causal hypotheses. Intervention studies are also important because a recommendation for a change in teaching practice will be stronger if supported by evidence from a successful intervention study.

Requests for reprints should be sent to Terezinha Nunes, Department of Psychology, Oxford Brookes University, Gypsy Lane, Oxford OX3 United Kingdom. E-mail: [email protected]

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Despite mounting interest in the importance of morphology in learning to read (Feldman, 1995; Harris & Hatano, 1999; Mann, 2000), little research on helping children to learn morphological spelling rules is available yet. We know from work on priming that adults parse written words into morphemes (Caramazza, Laudana, & Romani, 1988), and there is much research on children’s difficulties in learning conventional spellings for inflectional morphemes (Brissaud & Bessonnat 2001; Elbro, 1989; Fayol, Thenevin, Jarousse, & Totereau, 1999; Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman, 1997; Bryant, Nunes, & Snaith, 2000). Children’s performance in morphological awareness tasks has been thoroughly investigated (Bryant, Nunes, & Aidinis, 1999; Carlisle, 1995, 2000; Levin, Ravid, & Rapaport, 1999; Rubin, 1988; Rubin, Kantor, & Macnab, 1990). Yet, there is a dearth of intervention studies that test causal hypotheses about the link between children’s morphological knowledge and their reading. We report an intervention study that dealt with children’s morphological knowledge and their phonological knowledge. Our theoretical framework was a dual-route model containing both a phonological route and a lexical route to reading. The lexical route parses words into morphemes in addition to providing direct access to the meaning of one-morpheme words. The evidence for this kind of lexical route is research by Caramazza (see Chialanti & Caramazza, 1995, for a review) and by Taft (1991), which shows that lexical access involves analysis of the morphemic structure of written words as well as direct access to one-morpheme written words. Dual-route models are about adult reading, but they imply that children must acquire a version of these two ways of processing written words to read and to spell and thus that morphological and phonological interventions should both improve reading and spelling. In reading, the effects of the two types of intervention may to some extent be general ones because phonology and morphology both play a role in parsing words during the word recognition process. However, specific effects of morphological intervention in reading are possible too. For example, morpheme boundaries sometimes determine the pronunciation of particular letter sequences. In the words misheard and disheartened, the letter sequence sh, which often appears as a digraph, does not form an orthographic unit representing a sound—the boundaries of the morphemes mis and heard and dis and heartened are maintained in pronunciation. Morpheme boundaries can also affect decisions about how to pronounce the letter sequence uni at the beginning of a word. This sequence has one pronunciation when the morpheme boundary immediately follows the last letter in the sequence, as in uniform, and another when the boundary falls between the n and the i, as in uninformed. Morphological intervention should help children to learn about these boundaries. Another case where morphological intervention may help is the conditional rule that describes the pronunciation of the sequence ive at the end of words. This sequence has one pronunciation as a derivational suffix, for example, detective or

AN INTERVENTION STUDY

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effective, but it normally has a different pronunciation when it does not represent a whole suffix (e.g., arrive or contrive). We predict that intervention that concentrates exclusively on children’s awareness of the morphemic structure of spoken and written words will improve children’s learning of morphologically based spelling rules. It should have little effect on phonologically based rules such as the conditional rule about the final e (e.g., a signifies one vowel sound in mat and another in mate). We also predict that phonological interventions will help children with phonologically based rules but should not affect their learning—for example, how to spell the ending of words like emotion. The last consonant sound in emotion is regularly represented by sh; this is followed by a schwa vowel, and children cannot know that this vowel sound should be represented by io from a phonological analysis. English-speaking children usually do not begin to learn conventional spellings for morphemes, particularly when these flout or go beyond rules based on grapheme–phoneme correspondences, until the age of 7 or 8 years (Carlisle, 1995; Nunes et al., 1997). By this age most children are thoroughly familiar with basic grapheme–phoneme correspondences and start to learn conditional spelling rules like the split digraphs (a–e, i–e, o–e, u–e; Marsh, Friedman, Welch, & Desberg, 1980). Thus the interventions that we planned and carried out were either about the phonological relations and distinctions between different vowel sounds or about the morphological structure of words.

METHODS Participants The children were recruited from eight London state schools; four schools provided the experimental groups, and four provided the control group. The experimental groups included 222 children (112 boys and 110 girls), and the control group included 246 children (121 girls and 125 boys). There was a loss of 13 participants (2.8%), 4 from the experimental groups and 9 from the control group, between pretests and posttests. Six schools contained children from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. In the other two schools the children were mainly from middle-class backgrounds. Those from one of these two schools were assigned to the experimental groups and from the other to the control group. Each of the six other schools was assigned to the control or the experimental groups. In each school providing the experimental groups, one Year 3 and one Year 4 class participated. When children reach Year 3 in London, they are about 7½ years old. In each class, the children were randomly assigned to one of the four intervention groups, with the restriction that at least two children of the same sex were part

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of each group. In the intervention sessions, these children were seen in groups varying in number from 5 to 8. The project included 32 sets of children, 4 sets in Years 3 and in Year 4 in each of the four schools. There were five groups: 1. 2. 3. 4. 5.

Morphological training alone (n = 55), mean age of 8 years, 3 months Morphological training with writing (n = 55), mean age of 8 years, 2 months Phonological training alone (n = 55), mean age of 8 years, 3 months Phonological training with writing (n = 55), mean age of 8 years, 3 months Control (n = 237), mean age of 8 years, 4 months

Procedure

Pretest and posttest assessment. The pretest assessment tests were administered in the autumn and at the beginning of the spring term before the intervention (which was carried out in the spring term and the summer term). The posttest assessment tests were administered at the end of the summer term. The pretest and posttest assessments contained reading and spelling measures, for which we predicted specific intervention effects, and a mathematical reasoning test, where we expected no intervention effects. If there are genuine intervention effects, all the gains should be in literacy; there should be no gains in mathematics. A shortened version of the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children–Third Edition (Wechsler, 1991) was also administered at pretest to be used as a covariate in the analyses of treatment effects. All children were pretested and posttested in reading, spelling, and mathematical reasoning with measures designed for this study. The reading and spelling measures investigated separately children’s use of advanced phonological rules (such as the split digraphs) and of morphological rules (such as spelling inflectional and derivational suffixes). At posttest we repeated the pretest measures and used (in the posttest assessments only) two standardized assessments of reading and spelling: the Schonell Word Reading and Spelling tests (Schonell & Goodacre, 1971). The assessments at pretest and posttest were given by researchers blind to children’s group.

Assessment of reading. The reading assessment in the pretest and posttest (see the Appendix, Assessment of Reading) was administered in two separately presented parts, with word and pseudoword sections in each part. If a short vowel word was presented in one part (e.g., cut), its long vowel equivalent (cute) was presented in the other. Before the pseudoword sections the children were told that they


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would read “made-up” words and should try to read these using their knowledge of how to read real words. The reading assessment contained 48 words and 36 pseudowords whose reading involved conditional phonological or morphological rules. The responses were scored as correct only if they respected the conditional rules involved—for example, reading sofe as sof or pive as piv was scored as wrong; failure to separate the sh in the pronunciation of mishope was also scored as incorrect. Small departures, such as reading mishandle as mishandled, which did not violate the relevant rule, were scored as correct. We computed a total word reading score by adding the number of correct responses for each word, a specific score for reading words with phonological rules, and a specific score for reading words with morphological rules. Each specific score was also divided into separate scores for words and pseudowords. The words and pseudowords that involved morphological rules included examples where there was a need to identify morphemes to obtain the correct pronunciation (e.g., mishandle requires splitting the s and h rather than treating these as a digraph; the letter sequence un in uniform and unusual is pronounced differently because uni and un are different morphological units; protective is not read according to the split digraph rules because it ends in the morpheme ive, which has a fixed pronunciation). We assessed phonological rules with words and pseudowords in four phonological categories: (a) short regular words (e.g., hop, sit) and pseudowords (tok, dut); (b) words (hope, site) and pseudowords (dape, sofe) where a long vowel is marked by the final e or a morpheme containing an e plus another letter (cuter, fated); (c) words (fatter, tapped) and pseudowords (dutter, smapped) where the short vowel is preserved by doubling the consonant when a morpheme with e is added at the end; and (d) words (dishwasher) and pseudowords (mished) containing sh as digraph. The words with the split digraph were chosen so that, if the children mispronounced them, they would end with another English word (e.g., misreading fate should result in reading fat). A specific score for reading words with conditional phonological rules was obtained by adding the number of correct responses to stimuli in category (b)—that is, words containing a long vowel. A similar score was obtained by adding the pseudowords of the same category.

Assessment of spelling. The spelling assessment in the pretest and posttest was also designed to include words and pseudowords that involve conditional phonological and morphological rules. A total of 31 words and 10 pseudowords was used in the spelling measure. The spelling assessment provided an overall score, where a point was given for each word spelled correctly. A specific score for the use of conditional phonological and morphological rules was also obtained. This score

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was more analytical than treating words simply as pass or fail. If, for example, the child spelled the word statement as statment, missing out the e, the overall score for the word was zero; the specific score for the use of phonological rules was zero because the child did not use the e at the end of state; the child received one point for the correct spelling of the suffix ment in the specific morphological score. Pseudowords were included to provide information about children’s conservation of the stem when there is a phonological change due to the addition of a suffix. With pseudowords we provided children with a written sentence, where a word was missing; the child was told the word and was asked to spell it: For example, in the item A person who does lagic is a (lagician), the pseudoword lagician is missing; preserving the stem lagic means that the sound /∫/, normally spelled with sh, is here spelled with a c. The scoring for this pseudoword assessment was a pass if the child reproduced the stem exactly in the pseudoword. Thus word spelling produced information on the correct use of suffixes, and pseudoword spelling produced information on conservation of the stem across related stimuli. The conditional phonological rules in word spelling included vowel changes marked by an internal r (dark, party) or a final e (guide, smoke), followed or not by another morpheme (statement, graceful). We used no pseudowords to investigate the use of conditional phonological rules in spelling.

Assessment of mathematics. A group-administered mathematics assessment with 27 items on additive and multiplicative reasoning was included as a check that the intervention effects were specific to reading and spelling. The children worked on booklets with pictures giving the basic numerical information needed to minimize effects of memory (Nunes, Campos, Magina, & Bryant, 2001). The assessment was given orally by the teacher.

THE INTERVENTION The Overall Design and Aims of the Intervention We taught small groups of 4 to 8 children in 12 weekly interventions sessions, which consisted of group games. The aim was to promote explicit understanding either of morphological rules (the two morphological intervention groups: morphological training alone and morphological training with writing) or of phonological rules (the two phonological intervention groups: phonological training alone and phonological training with writing). The procedures were purely oral for children in the morphological training alone and phonological training alone groups.


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The children in the with writing groups were taught to instantiate the rules in writing. The main activities in the games were classification, segmenting, blending, and analogy. Spoonerisms were also used as a game in which segments were removed from one word and blended with another word; these segments could be phonological or morphological (prefixes). Thus, we made the task demands of the morphological and phonological training precisely equivalent. When in one session the children in the morphological groups were given a classification of morphemes game and then a morpheme-blending game, the children in the phonological groups engaged in classification of sounds and sound blending tasks in the same session. This precise control of task demands also applied to the activities of the two groups trained with writing and the two groups that received only oral training. They were given exactly the same games in the same sessions. The only difference was that the first two groups had to write many of the words down as well, whereas the second two groups had no writing to do.

The Twelve Intervention Sessions: Methods Common to the Four Intervention Groups The group games differed in terms of the pace of each game. In some activities, where the aim was to introduce a new rule, the pace of work was relatively slow. At the end of the activity the children were asked to explain the rule that they had used, working in pairs or trios. Other activities were designed to promote fast processing—the children were encouraged to answer quickly and could miss their turn if they did not respond within a short period. When these fast-paced tasks involved writing, the groups worked against the clock by attempting to complete a task before an egg timer showed that the time was finished. In the slower activities, feedback was offered item by item, with a discussion with the children about why certain answers were correct or incorrect. If the aim was fast processing, feedback was offered at the end of the task. The 12 intervention sessions were designed to maximize the similarity of the cognitive operations for all four intervention groups. For example, in a session that involved classification, the children in the phonological groups classified words in terms of similarity of phonemes (e.g., short vs. long a sounds), whereas the children in the morphological groups classified words into grammatical categories (e.g., verbs, nouns, and adjectives). Similarly, analogies were used with both types of training: Whereas the children in the phonological groups made phonological transformations to words that were analogous to those made by the researcher (e.g., hat : hate, cap : ?), the children in the morphological groups produced morphological analogies (e.g., sing : singer; magic : ?).

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Blending activities were also created for both types of training. In the phonological group the children had to blend onsets with rimes that contained either long or short vowels and assess whether they had formed a word; if they had difficulty, a further clue was given to the meaning. In the morphological groups, the children had to use stems and affixes to form a word (e.g., they had to choose either the prefix un or the prefix dis to form a negative). Each session lasted for approximately 30 min. Because different sets of children progressed at varying speeds, the amount of time spent with each set varied, but the quantity of material covered was held constant across groups receiving the same treatment. In each activity, the researcher sat with the children around a table and asked each child a question in turn. Each child in the group had at least one turn in each activity. Feedback was always provided, usually by the researcher passing the question on to the next child when a response was incorrect until a correct response was obtained. Various means were used to maintain the children’s motivation throughout the sessions: A buzzer was used to give positive feedback in the initial sessions; in the later sessions, the children were awarded points for each correct response. The points were added at the end of the program, and the children were allowed to choose and keep a picture used in the intervention. The order of choice was determined by the number of points accumulated. Many of the tasks involved pictures, which helped to keep the children’s attention more focused. Morphological Training The morphological groups were taught about word stems and grammatical categories in relation to inflectional affixes (e.g., the past verb ending) and derivational affixes (e.g., abstract words ending in -ion, and agentive endings like the -ian in magician and the -er in teacher). In the morphology training with writing group, where the intervention was connected with writing, the children were instructed on how to use this information to produce spellings. For example, we used sentences like “A person who does magic is a what?” to introduce the children to agentives. The children completed the sentence orally and wrote the word magic plus the ending that made it into magician. They also learned how to use this information to analyse long words that they wanted to decode. In the morphology training alone group, the children identified the agent and completed the sentence but did not write down the words. Phonological Training The phonological groups were taught mainly about more difficult phonological awareness tasks (such as spoonerisms) and long and short vowels combined with a


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variety of operations (e.g., changing words by analogy, classification, blending). The instruction contained games that could be responded to orally and in writing (e.g., “I am thinking of a word, it starts with L: it either rhymes with hat or with hate”). In the phonology training alone group, where instruction was only oral, the children would produce oral answers. In the phonology training with writing group, where instruction was combined with writing, the children had a model of both rimes (at–ate) on cards in front of them and had to say and write their answer. In this group the children were also taught how to use information from these phonological rules in decoding words.

RESULTS Overall and Specific Scores in the Pretest and Posttest Assessment of Reading and Spelling Our first aim in the pretest and posttest assessments of reading and spelling was to provide three different scores each for reading and spelling: one score for the use of morphological rules, one for the use of phonological rules and an overall score for reading or for spelling as a whole. We produced these three scores in slightly different ways for reading and spelling.

Assessing reading. In assessing reading, we gave the children a pass or fail score for reading each word and pseudoword read correctly or incorrectly. The overall score was the total number of words read correctly. The specific morphological scores were based on the children’s success in reading the words, such as mishandle, uniform, unusual, and detective, which were in the test to assess children’s use of morphological rules in reading. We divided the specific morphological scores in reading into two scores: One was for reading real words, and the other for reading pseudowords, whose spelling was determined by morphological rules. The specific phonological scores were derived from their success in reading words such as taped, cute, and hive, which were included to test the children’s knowledge of conditional phonological rules. We also divided our specific phonological scores in reading into two scores: One was for correctly reading real words, and the other for correctly reading pseudowords with phonological rules.

Assessing spelling. In the assessment of spelling we adopted two different ways of scoring. One was to assign a point for each word spelled correctly. This simple scoring system provided the overall score of children’s spelling.

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The second way of scoring the children’s spelling was to score their success in following specific rules—phonological, morphological, or both—exemplified in each word. For example, a child who wrote pavemunt for pavement would receive no points according to the criterion for the overall score but would receive 1 point according to the specific scoring system for obeying a phonological rule because the child had spelled the split a–e digraph correctly. Similarly, if a child wrote destnation for destination, the child would receive a zero overall score but would receive 1 point for the correct use of a morphological spelling rule, which would contribute to the specific score in spelling with morphological rules because the spelling of the derivational affix -ation at the end of the word was correct. We divided the specific morphological spelling scores into two scores: One was for success in spelling derivational affixes, and the other for preserving the stem morpheme in spelling pseudowords. The specific phonological spelling scores were all for spelling words with long vowels in the correct way, some of which were marked by an r in the coda and others marked by split digraphs.

Reliability and validity. The reliability (Cronbach’s alpha) of the different components in the reading tasks was high at pretest and posttest. Reliability for the phonological items, including words and pseudowords, was .9; the separate indices for words and pseudowords were also .9. Reliability for the morphological items was .9 with both words and pseudowords included; reliability for words only was also .9, but for pseudowords it only reached .7, which is still acceptable according to Kline (1995). The score for reading words with phonological rules in our assessment correlates with the Schonell Reading Test at r = .83 (p < .001) and with the Schonell Spelling Test at r = .84 (p < .001). The overall score for spelling correlated with the Schonell Reading Test at r = .87 (p < .001) and with the Schonell Spelling Test at r = .91 (p < .001). The test–retest correlations for these separate scores were all high (all above .7) and significant as well as their correlations with the Schonell Word Reading and Spelling Tests (also all above .7). Thus the assessments show strong internal consistency, are reliable over time, and are valid (highly correlated with a standardized measure).

The Intervention Results

Standardized test results and the overall pretest reading and spelling scores. In spite of our attempt to distribute schools of similar socioeconomic backgrounds to the intervention and control group and in spite of the random assignment of children within each class to one of the four intervention groups, the groups differed significantly at pretest on several measures.


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Because of this we assessed intervention effects by means of one-way analyses of covariance in each of which the dependent variable was one of the postintervention scores, and the covariates were the equivalent preintervention score as well as IQ and age. In the case of the standardized tests, which were only given at the time of the posttest, we used the overall score in the Assessment of Reading Complex Words at pretest as a covariate. This pretest score correlated highly with the standardized reading scores and with the standardized spelling score. Table 1 shows that all four intervention groups did better than the control group in standardized reading and spelling. The group effect was significant in the analysis of the standardized reading scores, F(4, 394) = 6.46, p < .001. Post hoc least significant pairwise comparisons established that all four intervention groups significantly outperformed the control group (p < .001 for the phonology training alone group and p < .01 for the other three intervention groups). The group difference was not significant in the analysis of the standardized spelling scores, F(4, 385) = 1.71, p = .146. In post hoc least significant pairwise comparisons the phonology with writing and the morphology with writing groups came close to a significant superiority over the control group (p = .052 and p = .053, respectively).

Analysis of specific effects in spelling—morphology. Table 2 presents the means for the spelling of words and pseudowords where morphology played a part. The posttest scores for our specific measures of the use of morphology in spelling showed definite signs of the effects of intervention. There was a significant group difference in the analysis of the number of correct spellings for derivational morphemes, F(4, 394) = 4.71, p < .001, and post hoc least significant pairwise comparisons established that the morphology with writing group significantly outperformed the control group (p < .001) and that there were no other specific group differences for this measure. TABLE 1 Adjusted Means for the Standardized Scores in the Schonell Spelling and Reading Tests and Standard Error by Group Spelling Test Intervention Group Phonology alone Phonology with writing Morphology alone Morphology with writing Control

Reading Test

M

SE

M

SE

111.42 112.38 111.17 112.26 109.25

1.39 1.43 1.37 1.37 .70

119.47 118.45 117.23 117.73 113.26

1.38 1.44 1.38 1.36 .68

Note. Means are adjusted for IQ, age at Spelling test, and pretest scores in the Assessment for Reading Words designed for this study.

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TABLE 2 Adjusted Mean Scores in the Assessments of Spelling Derivational Suffixes and Spelling Stems in Pseudowords and Standard Error by Group Spelling Derivational Suffixesa Intervention Group Phonology alone Phonology with writing Morphology alone Morphology with writing Control

Spelling Stems in Pseudowordsb

Pretest M (SE)

Posttest M (SE)

Pretest M (SE)

Posttest M (SE)

1.76 (.34) 2.35 (.35) 2.63 (.34) 2.77 (.34) 2.96 (.17)

3.78 (.30) 4.71 (.30) 3.96 (.29) 5.46 (.28) 4.21 (.14)

3.69 (.34) 4.01 (.35) 3.63 (.34) 4.11 (.34) 4.01 (.17)

4.30 (.30) 4.70 (.31) 5.14 (.30) 5.05 (.29) 4.45 (.15)

Note. Differences at pretest were significantly different for Spelling Derivational Suffixes (F = 2.61, p = .03) but did not reach significance for Spelling Stems in Pseudowords (F = 1.74, p = .14); means are adjusted for age and IQ at pretest and for pretest differences at posttest. aMaximum score is 8. bMaximum score is 9.

There was no significant group difference in the analysis of the score for preservation of the stem spelling in pseudowords, F(4, 389) = 1.95, p = .102. However post hoc least significant pairwise comparisons established that the morphology alone group significantly outperformed the control group (p < .04) in this measure; no other differences were significant. Thus the effects on children’s use of morphological spelling rules were specific because only the morphological groups appeared to benefit from the intervention when compared to the control group. The picture is a little less clear when it comes to the effects of intervention on the use of morphological rules in reading. Table 3 shows that there was no sign of an intervention effect on the correct use of morphological rules in reading real words because the control group’s performance was similar to that of the intervention groups. There were no significant effects in the analysis of these results. Table 3 also shows that all four intervention groups did better than the control group in the correct use of morphological rules in reading pseudowords. The group term just failed to reach significance in the analysis of these results, F(4, 367) = 1.95, p = .078. Nevertheless in post hoc least significant pairwise comparisons both the morphology intervention groups significantly outperformed the control group (p < .05) and so did the phonology with writing intervention group (p < .001). Thus the effects of intervention on the use of morphological rules in reading were weaker and less specific than on the use of these rules in spelling.

Analysis of specific effects in spelling—phonology. We could find no effects of intervention on the use of phonological rules in spelling or in reading. The means and standard error for all the posttest scores are presented in Table 4. This was a surprising result because in previous research phonological training has usually had beneficial effects. Most phonological studies, however, have concentrated


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TABLE 3 Adjusted Mean Scores (out of 19) in the Assessments of Reading Words and Pseudowords With Morphological Rules and Standard Error by Group Reading Words With Morphological Rulesa Intervention Group Phonology alone Phonology with writing Morphology alone Morphology with writing Control

Reading Pseudowords With Morphological Rulesb

Pretest M (SE)

Posttest M (SE)

Pretest M (SE)

Posttest M (SE)

7.35 (.61) 7.60 (.63) 7.79 (.61) 7.95 (.61) 8.89 (.31)

11.44 (.42) 11.83 (.43) 11.15 (.41) 11.85 (.40) 11.20 (.20)

2.70 (.33) 3.23 (.34) 3.52 (.33) 3.21 (.33) 3.96 (.16)

5.38 (.32) 5.76 (.32) 5.65 (.31) 5.76 (.30) 5.04 (.15)

Note. Differences at pretest almost reached significance for the Assessment of Reading Words with Morphological Rules (F = 2.05, p = .08); for the Assessment of Reading Pseudowords with Morphological Rules there was a significant main effect of group (F = 3.64, p = .006). Means are adjusted for age and IQ at pretest and for pretest differences at posttest. aMaximum score is 19. bMaximum score is 12. TABLE 4 Adjusted Mean Scores for Performance in the Assessments of Spelling Words With Long Vowels (Marked by “r in Coda” or Split Digraph) and of Reading Words and Pseudowords With the Split Digraph and Standard Error in the Posttest by Intervention Group

Intervention Group Phonology alone Phonology with writing Morphology alone Morphology with writing Control

Spelling Words With Long Vowelsa M (SE)

Reading Words With Split Digraphb M (SE)

Reading Pseudowords With Split Digraphc M (SE)

8.08 (.29) 8.52 (.29) 8.54 (.29) 8.46 (.27) 8.67 (.13)

9.35 (.28) 9.08 (.28) 9.15 (.27) 9.03 (.26) 9.06 (.13)

7.39 (.31) 7.61 (.31) 8.07 (.30) 7.83 (.30) 7.76 (.14)

Note. At pretest, groups differed significantly in Spelling Words with Long Vowels (F = 2.47, p = .04), Reading Words with Long Vowels (F = 4.48, p = .001), and Reading Pseudowords with Long Vowels (F = 4.80, p = .001); posttest means are adjusted for pretest scores. aMaximum score is 13. bMaximum score is 14. cMaximum score is 12.

on learning about simple grapheme–phoneme correspondences, whereas our concern was with phonologically based conditional rules. These more sophisticated rules might be less amenable to training over such a short number of sessions. We found no effects of the intervention on the measure of mathematical reasoning. Thus the observed effects of the intervention on reading and spelling cannot be attributed to the intervention children receiving more attention than the control children.

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Summary of the Intervention Results 1. Intervention led to higher performance by all four intervention groups in a standardized test of reading. 2. Morphological intervention affected progress in the use of morphological rules in spelling. The effects of intervention on the use of morphological rules in reading were weaker and less specific. 3. Intervention had no discernible effect on the use of phonologically based conditional spelling rules.

DISCUSSION In this project we looked at the nature and causes of children’s literacy learning after they have completed the initial stages of learning to read and to spell. Our hypothesis was that training in morphological awareness would help children to learn about spelling patterns based on morphemes, whereas training in phonological awareness should help them to learn phonologically based conditional rules. Thus, we predicted specific effects of each type of training in spelling. We also predicted that both types of training could lead to general improvement in reading because words can be analyzed according to their phonological or morphological units. This hypothesis was based on the widely, but not universally, accepted dual-route theory of reading, which claims that there are two separate routes to word identification—a phonological and a lexical route—and that the lexical route involves both direct access and access through morpheme recognition. Training in morphological and in phonological awareness, either associated with writing or not, had a positive effect on word identification as measured by the Schonell Word Reading Test. In this test children are asked to read words increasingly long and less familiar to them. This is one way to test the dual-route model: Longer and less familiar words should draw on analytical strategies that involve parsing in either phonological units, morphological units, or both. We found much weaker and less convincing effects of intervention on the standardized spelling scores. In the Schonell Word Spelling test, only the groups that received an intervention where language awareness instruction was combined with writing showed any sign of making more progress than the control group. With respect to the specific effects of the interventions, some support was obtained for the connection between morphological awareness and the spelling of word endings (derivational suffixes) that cannot be predicted from phonology. However, the children in the intervention groups were no more likely to preserve a stem’s spelling in a derived pseudoword when the base form was given than the control children were. The positive result with word endings is of theoretical and


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educational value. At the moment we cannot explain why the intervention was successful with word endings and not with the stems. Our negative result with the phonological rules is puzzling. In spite of general effects of phonological intervention on the standardized reading test, we were not able to produce any significant improvement in the phonological groups when compared to the control group in measures specifically designed to test children’s use of the split digraph in reading and spelling. This lack of effect cannot be brushed aside by invoking unreliable measures or ceiling effects: The specific scores assessing the use of complex phonological rules showed high internal consistency, showed good test–retest reliability, and correlated highly and significantly with the Schonell Word Reading and Spelling Tests. There were no signs of a ceiling effect in any of the measures as the distributions were normal, not skewed. There are two possible explanations here, and we cannot tell which is more plausible. The first is that the main phonological distinction that we worked with was related to long versus short vowels and may be too difficult for children 7 and 8 years of age. The second possibility is that we did not find effects because the control children were also receiving similar teaching in the classroom. The study was carried out in the 1st year of the implementation of the National Literacy Strategy in England, an initiative that emphasizes phonological awareness instruction in the classroom. Because split digraphs are well known to teachers, they may have spent considerable time teaching children about them in the classroom, thus providing the control group with an experience similar to that which we provided in the phonological training groups. The results of our project are a step toward providing the basis for an effective bridge between research on children’s reading and the study of methods of teaching children about morphological and phonological structures. The fact that our interventions did not work as consistently as we predicted should not be a discouragement. Our negative results, in many ways, are as important as our positive ones. They suggest to us that we spread our net too wide. Interventions that concentrate specifically on particular morphological or conditional phonological rules might have a bigger effect. We are currently testing this hypothesis in other intervention studies. In the meantime we think it important that we have established, for the first time, that it is possible in a relatively short intervention to improve children’s knowledge and use of some important morphologically based spelling rules.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS The support of the ESRC through Grant R000237752, without which the investigation could not have been carried out, is thankfully acknowledged. We express their

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gratitude to the schools, teachers, and children who generously gave their time to the study and made the work greatly enjoyable.

REFERENCES Bradley, L., & Bryant, P. E. (1983). Categorising sounds and learning to read—a causal connection. Nature, 301, 419–521. Brissaud, C., & Bessonnat, D. (2001). L'orthographe au collége. Pour une autre approche [The orthography at college. A different approach]. Genoble: CDRP de l'académie de Grenoble et Éditions Delagrave. Bryant, P., Nunes, T., & Aidinis, A. (1999). Different morphemes, same spelling problems: cross-linguistic developmental studies. In M. Harris & G. Hatano (Eds), Learning to read and write A cross linguistic perspective (pp. 112–133). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Bryant, P., Nunes, T., & Snaith, R. (2000). Children learn an untaught rule of spelling. Nature, 403, 157–158. Caramazza, A., Laudana, A., & Romani, C. (1988). Lexical access and inflectional morphology. Cognition, 28, 297–332. Carlisle, J. F. (1995). Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: impact on reading. Reading and Writing, 12, 169–190. Chialanti, D., & Caramazza, A. (1995). Where is morphology and how is it processes? The case of written word recognition. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 55–76). Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Elbro, C. (1989). Morphological awareness in dyslexia. In C. von Euler, I. Lundberg, & G. Lennerstrand (Eds.), Brain and reading: Structural and functional anomalies in developmental dyslexia (pp. 279–291). Hampshire, England: M. Stockton Press. Fayol, M., Thenevin, M. G., Jarousse, J. P., & Totereau, C. (1999). From Learning to Teaching to Learn French written morphology. In T. Nunes (Ed.), Learning to read: An integrated view from research and practice (pp. 43–64). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Feldman, L. B. (1995). Morphological aspects of language processing. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Eralbaum Associates, Inc. Harris, M., & Hatano, G. (Eds.). (1999). Learning to read and write: A cross-linguistic perspective. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Kline, P. (1995). Handbook of psychological testing (2nd ed.). London: Routledge. Levin, I., Ravid, D., & Rapaport, S. (1999). Developing morphological awareness and learning to write: a two-way street. In T. Nunes (Ed.), Learning to read: An integrated view from research and practice (pp. 77–104). Dordrecht, The Netherlands: Kluwer. Mann, V. A. (2000). Introduction to special issue on morphology and the acquisition of alphabetic writing systems. Reading and Writing, 12, 143–147. Marsh, G., Friedman, M. P., Welch, V., & Desberg, P. (1980). The development of strategies in spelling. In U. Frith (Ed.), Cognitive processes in spelling (pp. 299–354). London: Academic. Nunes, T., Bryant, P., & Bindman, M. (1997). Morphological spelling strategies: Developmental stages and processes. Developmental Psychology, 33, 637–649. Nunes, T., Campos, T. M. M., Magina, S., & Bryant, P. (2001). Introduçãoã Educação Matemática. Os números e as operações numúricas [An introduction to mathematics education. Numbers and operations]. São Paulo, Brazil: PROEM Editora, PUC São Paulo.


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Rubin, H. (1988). Morphological knowledge and early writing ability. Language and Speech, 31, 337–355. Rubin, H., Kantor, M., & Macnab, J. (1990). Grammatical awareness in the spoken and written language of language disabled children. Canadian Journal of Psychology, 44, 483–500. Schonell, F., & Goodacre, E. (1971). The psychology and teaching of reading. London: Oliver and Boyd. Taft, M. (1991). Reading and the mental lexicon. Hove, England: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc. Wechsler, D. (1991). Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children (3rd ed.). Sidcup, UK: Psychological Corporation.

Manuscript received May 24, 2002 Final revision received November 21, 2002 Accepted December 19, 2002

APPENDIX Assessment of Reading Copyright © 1999, T. Nunes

The assessment is divided into two parts, given on separate occasions. The words are presented in isolation in three columns, and the child reads each row at a time. When the word-reading task is finished, the children are told that they are going to read invented words: These are not real English words, but the children should try to read them as if they were words that they were reading for the first time in their lives.

Part 1: Words hop cuter finished positive universe alive captive dishwasher uninterested

unity unusual huge mishap hopped tap sitter cute hugger

sit fate union taped mishandle dashing arrive fatter protective

Part 1: Pseudowords smaped duter

sofe amazive

kished uninverted

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misheaded unisided mishammer smap

pive dut sof

boker dape uninset

Part 2: Words cut fated native dishonest hive uninvolved misheard

site detective wives dive unilateral uniform tapped

unimportant hope hug uninvited fat cuter dished

Part 2: Pseudowords retreative duter unimatch dute soffer uningest mive

smaped amazive loker disheaded boke mished duter

lishing uninverted fap unishaped dancive smapped mishope

Assessment of Spelling Copyright © 1999, T. Nunes

The words are presented in sentences. The tester first says the word, then says the word in a sentence, then repeats the word by itself. The child has a page with the sentences written on it and a gap, marked by a line, where the target word is missing. The child writes the word above the line. In this list, the target words are italicized. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9. 10. 11. 12.

I am afraid of the dark. I have a white cat. Every Sunday I go to church. The policeman asked me to make a statement. To tease a gorilla is complete madness. I found the book I had lost. She opened the door and went in. Walk on the pavement, John! I kissed my baby sister good night. Baseball is a popular game in America. Imagine you are flying in the sky. The richness of the colors made the picture attractive.


13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31.

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He covered his face with his hands. He was overcome by emotion and began to cry. Tom’s party was great. The bus stopped outside the cinema. Tim was our guide for the tour. Politeness is important when you ask for something. We will hear a combination of sounds. I have nearly finished. George laughed a lot at my joke. We slept in a tent on holiday. I had to prepare for the exams. The smoke came out of the chimney. He is a graceful dancer. When he won the lottery, he cried with happiness. Our destination is Athens. Sam told a funny joke. Everyone voted in the election. We heard a huge bang. The kittens felt very soft.

Assessment of Spelling Pseudoword Stems The children are told that they will be asked to spell some invented words and that they should spell them as well as they can. 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6. 7. 8. 9.

We usually deave in the morning but yesterday we deaved in the afternoon. A dinosaur with a knot in his tail is called knotosaurus. A saughty baby is full of saughtiness. He is going to nell my book just like he nelled my brother’s book. A person who does lagic is a lagician. This cat likes to kring; he kringed a lot when I was here. A person who soams is a soamer. He feeps very well and yesterday he fept all day. That man showed me how to proll and last week a prolled all the time.