Crosslinguistic Sharing of Morphological Awareness in Biliteracy Development: A Systematic Review and Meta‐Analysis of Correlation Coefficients

Abstract

This study examined the crosslinguistic sharing of morphological awareness (MA) in biliteracy development. The analysis included 34 correlational studies with 41 independent samples (N = 4,104). Correlational coefficients were meta‐analyzed, yielding four main findings: (a) the correlation between first language (L1) and second language (L2) MA was small (r = .30); (b) the interlingual correlations between L1 MA and L2 word decoding and between L1 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both small (r = .35, .39, respectively); (c) the intralingual correlations between L2 MA and L2 word decoding and between L2 MA and L2 reading comprehension were both moderate (r = .46, .52, respectively); and (d) MA measurement type and age were significant moderators. Our review suggests that there is a need for future research to align the definition and measurement of MA.

Is the Science of Reading Just the Science of Reading English?

“…Other likely casualties of the century‐long Anglophone obsession with (oral) word‐reading accuracy include the study of meaning (i.e., morphology, morphological awareness), which has only begun receiving the research attention it deserves over the past decade or so (e.g., Berthiaume, Daigle, & Desrochers, 2018; Bowers & Bowers, 2017; Duncan, 2018; Goodwin & Ahn, 2013; Harm & Seidenberg, 2004; Ke, Miller, Zhang, & Koda, 2021; Kirby & Bowers, 2017; Kuo & Anderson, 2006; Levesque, Breadmore, & Deacon, 2021; Lin, Sun, & McBride, 2019; Rastle, 2018; Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2011). Oral reading accuracy, furthermore, also emphasizes phonological processes more so than silent (word) reading at the expense of orthography and morphology (for a discussion, see Share, 2008).…”

Do Kindergarteners Develop Awareness of the Statistical Regularities They Acquire?

“…Because of these limitations and because we cannot expect children to verbalize rules or partake in confidence judgment tasks, given that they probably do not possess P‐awareness, it seems unreasonable to employ these methods to test awareness in children. Other lines of research into awareness in young children, such as awareness of language itself at a macro‐level (e.g., Atagi & Sandhofer, 2020) or metalinguistic awareness about written language (Ke, Miller, Zhang, & Koda, 2020) are also limited in that they do not give us methods for tapping into awareness of grammar during exposure to a new spoken language. Several tasks, such as grammaticality judgment tasks and wug tests, have been argued to tap into metalinguistic awareness and so might overcome these difficulties (Barac & Bialystok, 2012; Bialystok, 1986).…”

The Strength of Cross‐Language Interdependence for Listening Comprehension Proficiency in Turkish–Dutch Emergent Bilinguals: Testing Three Hypotheses

“…Drawing upon the broader literature, we also looked at links between the strength of the cross-language relationship and potential moderating variables, that is, task, age or grade, instruction, and typological distance. (See, for example, Ke, Miller, Zhang, & Koda, 2020, for a meta-analysis of such variables moderating L1-L2 relations for morphological awareness.) Prevoo et al (2016) and Proctor, Harring, and Silverman (2017) hypothesized that the way in which a task construct is operationalized is a moderating variable in cross-language transfer.…”