Morphological awareness and learning to read: impact of socio‐economic status in French third graders

Abstract

Background In addition to phonological processing and vocabulary, morphological awareness has been clearly identified as contributing to learning to read. While the impact of socio‐economic status (SES) has been identified for both phonological processing and vocabulary, less is known about the SES influence on morphological awareness and its relationship to reading achievement. The study had two aims: to assess the net effect of SES on morphological awareness and to compare the independent contribution of morphological awareness to reading scores as a function of children's SES (middle vs low SES) when phonological processing and vocabulary are held constant. Methods The sample included 162 French third graders from low‐SES and middle‐SES schools. Children were assessed on reading‐related and literacy tests (phonological processing, vocabulary, morphological awareness, reading accuracy, fluency and comprehension). Results First, while morphological awareness was lower for low‐SES children, regression analyses showed that SES did not explain the morphological awareness score when phonological processing and vocabulary were taken into account. Second, while the morphological awareness contribution to reading accuracy did not differ across SES, its contribution to reading fluency was weaker in low‐SES as compared to middle‐SES children. Only vocabulary score predicted reading comprehension in low‐SES. Interestingly, morphological awareness was stronger than vocabulary as a determinant of reading scores in middle‐SES children, while it seems more dissociated from vocabulary in accounting for reading scores in low‐SES children. Conclusions The contribution of morphological awareness to low‐SES children's reading scores opens possibilities for morphological awareness‐based interventional studies in children with narrower vocabulary skills.

The relations of SES and literacy-related oral and written language skills after one year of reading instruction – evidence from novice readers of Arabic

“…With regard to the additional language skills related to reading acquisition, while SESrelated differences in morphological awareness have been documented in later school grades (Rassel, Facon & Casalis, 2021;Schiff & Lotem, 2011), information on the initial stages of reading acquisition is limited. In the study by Fung and Chung (2020), no difference was obtained in morphological awareness between low-and middle-SES children at the initial stages of reading acquisition of Chinese.…”

Special issue editorial: Advances in understanding the role of morphemes in literacy development

“…As well as needing to know more about whether (and how) the role of morphology in literacy development varies dependent on the language system, international comparisons can also allow us to consider differences in other factors such as education systems and sociocultural factors. In this issue, Rassel et al (2021) found that socio‐economic status does indeed influence morphological awareness, with French children of lower socio‐economic status having weaknesses in morphological awareness compared with children of middle socio‐economic status. However, after controlling for phonological awareness and vocabulary, this relationship was no longer significant.…”

“…One of the goals of this special issue was to bring together empirical evidence from different languages and contexts to inform these questions. To this end, this special issue includes studies in Chinese (Cantonese; Qiao et al, 2021), French (Rassel et al, 2021), German (Fleischhauer et al, 2021;Görgen, De Simone, Schulte-Körne, & Moll, 2021) and Norwegian (Lyster et al, 2021) and studies in English that draw upon the varied educational contexts of the United Kingdom (Dawson et al, 2021;James et al, 2021), the United States (Goodwin et al, 2021) and Canada (Georgiou et al, 2021;Ginestet et al, 2021). Qiao et al (2021) explored the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension in both Chinese and English with Chinese-English bilingual children in Hong Kong (8 to 10 years old).…”

“…Several papers in this special issue add to this body of evidence. For instance, the relationship between morphological awareness and reading ability is demonstrated cross-sectionally in French by Rassel, Facon, and Casalis (2021), in Chinese-English bilinguals by Qiao, Liu, and Yeung (2021) and longitudinally over a span of 9 years by Lyster, Lervag, Hulme, and Snowling (2021).…”