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. 2024 Aug;44(4):327-344.
doi: 10.1177/01427237241245500. Epub 2024 Apr 23.

Evaluating English-language morphological awareness assessments

Carla L Hudson Kam, Emily Sadlier-Brown  1 , Shannon Clark  2 , Chelsea Jang  1 , Carrie Demmans Epp  2 , Jenny Thomson  3
Affiliations

Evaluating English-language morphological awareness assessments

Carla L Hudson Kam et al. First Lang. 2024 Aug.

Abstract

Many studies have shown that morphological knowledge has effects on reading comprehension separate from other aspects of language knowledge. This has implications for reading instruction and assessment: it suggests that children could have reading comprehension difficulties that are due to a lack of morphological knowledge, and thus, that explicit instruction of morphology might be helpful for them, indeed for all children. To find children who might especially benefit from specific instruction in morphology, we would need good tests of morphological knowledge. We evaluated a set of morphological awareness assessments to determine whether they conclusively tapped into morphological knowledge, and found that it was not possible to be certain that they were accurately targeting morphological knowledge.

Keywords: Morphological awareness; assessment; methodology; morphology; reading comprehension.

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Conflict of interest statement

The author(s) declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship and/or publication of this article.

Figures

Figure 1.
Figure 1.
Frequency of target and foil words per 1,000 words by paper.
Figure 2.
Figure 2.
Frequency of target words per 1,000 words by paper.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

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