Why is word structure knowledge important for reading comprehension?

What is it about?

English is characterized by an abundance of morphologically complex words, that is, words with two or more meaningful components such as affixes and roots. This means children’s insights into the components and structure of these words (i.e., MA) are important for reading acquisition and development. How MA may contribute to reading comprehension has remained unclear. This meta-analysis of correlations found that MA influences reading comprehension indirectly through word reading and vocabulary knowledge, as well as directly over and above these two word-level competencies. Variations in these relations were also found between monolingual and bilingual readers of English and between children differing in age/grade. These findings suggested that morphological instruction may need to be differentiated and responsive to children’s language status and stage of schooling.

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Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash

Photo by Suad Kamardeen on Unsplash