Effects of Affix Type and Base Word Transparency on Students' Performance on Different Morphological Awareness...

Area of Science:

• * Educational Psychology
• * Developmental Psychology
• * Applied Linguistics

Background:

• * Morphological awareness, the understanding of word structure, is crucial for reading and spelling development.
• * Previous research has explored factors influencing morphological awareness, but the specific roles of affix type and base word transparency require further clarification.

Purpose of the Study:

• * To investigate how affix type and base word transparency influence third- through sixth-grade students' performance on morphological awareness tasks.
• * To determine the relative importance of these factors in explaining variance in student performance.

Main Methods:

• * Over 500 students per grade (3rd-6th) completed six morphological awareness tasks from the Morphological Awareness Test for Reading and Spelling.
• * Explanatory item response models were employed to analyze the impact of affix type and base word transparency.

Main Results:

• * Base word transparency and task type significantly predicted student performance, while affix type did not.
• * Students performed better on tasks with transparent base words (e.g., friend-friendly) compared to opaque ones (e.g., attend-attention).
• * Differences across individual items accounted for substantial variance (73%-83%) in student performance.

Conclusions:

• * Base word transparency is a critical consideration for assessing morphological awareness in elementary students.
• * Affix type appears less influential than base word transparency for this age group.
• * Utilizing a variety of morphological awareness tasks with differing base word transparency is recommended for comprehensive assessment.