Morphological Knowledge and Early Writing Ability

Abstract

This study assessed the morphological knowledge of kindergarteners and first graders in relation to their early writing ability. Morphological knowledge was investigated because, in order to write, children need to understand that words are composed of morphemes and phonemes, and because poor writers have particular difficulty with inflected forms of words. Kindergarteners and first graders were grouped by their implicit understanding of morphology and were given tests of dictated spelling and morphological analysis. First graders with poor implicit morphological knowledge omitted more inflectional morphemes in writing and were less able to identify base morphemes in spoken words than kindergarteners and first graders with higher levels of implicit morphological knowledge. The results demonstrate the importance of morphological knowledge in the development of written language proficiency.