Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Morphological Awareness Skills of Second and Third Grade Students with and without Speech Sound Disorders
Abstract
Purpose: Morphological awareness is the ability to consciously manipulate the smallest units of meaning in language. Morphological awareness contributes to success with literacy skills for children with typical language and those with language impairment. However, little research has focused on the morphological awareness skills of children with speech sound disorders (SSD), who may be at risk for literacy impairments. No researcher has examined the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD and compared their skills to children with typical speech using tasks representing a comprehensive definition of morphological awareness, which was the main purpose of this study.
Method: Thirty 2nd and 3rd grade students with SSD and 30 with typical speech skills, matched on age and receptive vocabulary, completed four morphological awareness tasks, and measures of receptive vocabulary, real-word reading, pseudoword reading, and word-level spelling.
Results: Results indicated there was no difference between the morphological awareness skills of students with and without SSD. Although morphological awareness was moderately to strongly related to the students’ literacy skills, performance on the morphological awareness tasks contributed little to no additional variance to the children’s real-word reading and spelling skills beyond what was accounted for by pseudoword reading.
Conclusions: Findings suggest that early elementary-age students with SSD may not present with concomitant morphological awareness difficulties and that the morphological awareness skills of these students may not play a unique role in their word-level literacy skills. Limitations and suggestions for future research on the morphological awareness skills of children with SSD are discussed.
Publication Date
2020
Recommended Citation
Apel, Kenn and Henbest, Victoria, "Morphological Awareness Skills of Second and Third Grade Students with and without Speech Sound Disorders" (2020). Victoria S. Henbest Publications. 13.
https://jagworks.southalabama.edu/henbest_pubs/13
Included in
Language and Literacy Education Commons, Reading and Language Commons, Speech Pathology and Audiology Commons
Comments
This is the peer-reviewed version of the following article: Apel, K. & Henbest, V.S. (2020). Morphological awareness skills of second and third grade students with and without speech sound disorders. Language, Speech, and Hearing Services in Schools, 51(3), 603-616 which is published in its final form at https://doi.org/10.1044/2019_LSHSS-19-00045. This article may not be used commercially or be enhanced, enriched, or transformed in any way without permission from the authors and publishers.