The magic in magician: Contributions of phonological dimensions of morphological awareness to children's reading development.

Background: Oral language has long been acknowledged as a prominent influence on children's reading development. Here, we examine the intersecting contribution of two prominent aspects of oral language – phonology and morphology. We explore this interface by examining contributions from the two dimensions of phonology – phonemic and prosodic – of morphological awareness on children's reading development. Methods: In a longitudinal study, we track the word reading and reading comprehension development of 175 children in Grades 3 and 4 (Time 1) over the course of 11 months into Grades 4 and 5 (Time 2), respectively. At Time 1, children also completed a measure of morphological awareness with items varying across the two intersecting phonological dimensions: phonemic and prosodic changes. Results: We found two unique effects accounting for gains in reading skill over 1 year after controlling for vocabulary, phonological awareness and nonverbal ability, and the appropriate auto‐regressor. Gains in word reading skill were predicted by performance on morphological awareness items with phonemic changes. Gains in reading comprehension skill were predicted by performance on morphological awareness items with both phonemic and prosodic changes. Conclusions: These findings point to key differences in the oral language skills that drive the development of word reading versus reading comprehension and encourage us to consider the rich intersection between features of oral language in understanding children's reading development. Highlights: What is already known about this topicMany of the words in children's texts are complex; they often include multiple units of meaning, or morphemes, as is the case for magician, made up of magic + ian.Children's awareness of morphemes has been shown to be related to their reading skill.Teachers and researchers alike have started to design ways to teach children about morphemes. What this paper addsHere, we identify how the sound, or phonological, dimensions of children's morphological awareness is related to the development of their reading skill.The need to do is demonstrated by the fact that morphologically complex words are also complex at the sound level; for example, shifting from magic to magician involves changes at the level of phonemes and prosody (i.e., /k/ changing to /ʃ/ and stress changing from the first to the second syllable).In a longitudinal study, performance on morphological awareness items involving phonemic changes predicted gains in word reading, and performance on morphological awareness involving both phonemic and prosodic changes predicted reading comprehension gains. Implications for theory, policy or practiceThese findings demonstrate the importance of considering the phonological aspects of morphological awareness in explaining children's reading development.In terms of theory, these findings demonstrate the need to include both prosody and morphology in models and to do so in an integrated manner.In terms of practice, these findings point to the value in instruction that embraces the phonological complexities that children encounter in multi‐morphemic words. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]