More Than Just Sounds: How Morphological Awareness Helps Students with Dyslexia Crack the Code

As educators, we're always looking for keys to unlock literacy for our students. We've explored the crucial role of decoding (sounding out words), encoding (spelling words), and even how etymology (word origins) can offer insights. Today, let's delve into another powerful tool in our literacy toolkit: Morphological Awareness.

This might sound a bit academic, but understanding it can profoundly shift how we support all readers, especially those with dyslexia.

First, Let's Define Our Terms:

• Morphology: This is simply the study of the structure of words. It’s about looking at words not just as strings of letters or sequences of sounds, but as constructions made up of meaningful parts.

• Morphemes: These are the smallest meaningful units in language. Think of them as the "building blocks" of words. A morpheme isn't just any group of letters; it has to carry meaning. Morphemes are used to add to a base word (or root word) to make a new word or change its grammatical function.

  • Consider the word "returnable." It’s made up of three morphemes:

    • re- (a prefix meaning "back" or "again")

    • turn (a base word meaning "to move around a point")

    • -able (a suffix meaning "can be done")Each part contributes to the overall meaning of "returnable" (can be turned back). Other examples include prefixes (like un-, pre-, dis-) and suffixes (like -ing, -ed, -ful, -ness).

• Morphological Awareness: This is the knowledge of and ability to recognise these morphemes (Goodwin and Ahn, 2013). It’s about students consciously noticing and understanding these word parts and how they work to create meaning and new words.

The Dyslexia Connection: Why Morphological Awareness is a Game-Changer

Students with dyslexia often have primary difficulties with phonological processing – the sound structure of language. This makes relying solely on phonics (sound-letter correspondence) for decoding and encoding incredibly challenging, especially as words get longer and more complex.

Morphological awareness offers a complementary, meaning-based route to literacy:

1. Breaking Down "Monster Words": Longer, multisyllabic words can be overwhelming. If a student can identify familiar morphemes (like "un-" "struct" "-ion" in "unstructional"), the word becomes less intimidating and more manageable. They can decode it in chunks rather than letter by letter.

2. Unlocking Meaning (and Aiding Comprehension): Knowing the meaning of common prefixes, suffixes, and roots gives students powerful clues to a word's overall meaning, even if they haven't encountered the exact word before. This directly supports reading comprehension.

3. Providing Predictable Patterns: While English phonics can seem inconsistent, morphemes often have stable spellings and meanings. Recognising these patterns can bring a sense of order to what might otherwise feel like spelling chaos. For example, the suffix "-tion" is almost always pronounced /ʃən/ and spelled the same way, indicating a noun.

4. Supporting Spelling (Encoding): If students understand that "jumped" is "jump + ed," they are more likely to spell both parts correctly. Awareness of morphemes helps them make more accurate spelling choices.

5. Boosting Vocabulary Development: Teaching one root can unlock a whole family of words. For instance, if students learn the root port (to carry), they can better understand and remember import, export, transport, portable, reporter. This is incredibly efficient for vocabulary growth.

6. Bridging to Academic Language: Much of the academic vocabulary students encounter in later grades is morphologically complex, often derived from Latin and Greek roots. Strong morphological awareness is crucial for accessing this higher-level text.

How to Foster Morphological Awareness in Your Classroom:

You don't need to be a linguist to bring morphological awareness into your teaching:

• Explicit Instruction: Directly teach common prefixes, suffixes, and a few high-utility base words/roots. Explain their meanings and how they change words.

• Word Building Activities: Give students a base word and a set of affixes (on cards, for example) and have them create new words. Discuss how the meaning changes.

• Word Sorts: Have students sort words based on a shared morpheme (e.g., all words with the prefix "un-", or all words with the suffix "-ology").

• "Morpheme of the Week": Introduce a new morpheme regularly. Create an anchor chart with examples.

• Deconstruct Words: When encountering new vocabulary, especially longer words, break them down into their morphemic parts with your students. Ask: "Do you see any parts in this word that you recognise?"

• Highlight Word Families: Explore groups of words that share a common root (e.g., act, action, actor, react, inactive).

• Connect to Reading and Writing: Encourage students to use their morphological knowledge when they are reading to figure out new words and when they are writing to spell and choose words effectively.

By helping students see words as meaningful constructions rather than just strings of letters, we empower them with another robust strategy for decoding, comprehending, and spelling. For students with dyslexia, who may find the phonological route particularly challenging, morphological awareness can be an especially powerful and accessible pathway to literacy success.