Education Commons^™

Morphological Awareness As An Intervention For Struggling Readers: A Review Of The Literature, Jill Batman

Culminating Projects in Special Education

Literacy is essential for academic success, but many students read below grade level. The purpose of this article is to determine if morphological awareness--the ability to recognize word parts and their meanings--is an effective intervention for struggling readers. I analyzed data from twelve research studies and found that students who learned morphology made reading comprehension gains 75 percent of the time; in addition, potential design flaws in the remaining three studies may have contributed to lower performance from the experimental groups. These results have promising implications for teachers and their students with reading disabilities, language impoverishment, and alternate language constructs.