What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words?
Our book has two aims. Its first is to persuade our readers that morphemes are extremely important for children learning to read and write. Our second aim is to describe a set of studies that we carried out on teaching children about morphemes and their relation to written words. The first two chapt...
| Main Authors: | , , , , , |
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| Format: | Book section |
| Published: |
Routledge Taylor and Francis Group
2006
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| _version_ | 1797085121694662656 |
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| author | Nunes, T Bryant, P Pretzlik, U Evans, D Bell, D Olsson, J |
| author_facet | Nunes, T Bryant, P Pretzlik, U Evans, D Bell, D Olsson, J |
| author_sort | Nunes, T |
| collection | OXFORD |
| description | Our book has two aims. Its first is to persuade our readers that morphemes are extremely important for children learning to read and write. Our second aim is to describe a set of studies that we carried out on teaching children about morphemes and their relation to written words. The first two chapters in the book are all about the first of these two aims. In the remaining chapters we will try to fulfill our second aim by describing our work on teaching children about morphemes and spelling. In the first chapter we showed how many spelling principles in English and in several other languages are based on morphemes, and we also reported some research that established the existence of a strong relationship between children's knowledge of the morphemic structure of spoken words and the progress that they make in learning about written words. In this second chapter we shall look at a series of studies on children's actual spellings and examine what they tell us about their morphemic knowledge and about the way that they are using this knowledge in their writing. So this chapter focuses on what we can find out about people's knowledge of morphemes if we treat spelling as a window on their knowledge of morphemes. We shall show how children's spellings tell us a great deal about their knowledge of morphemes. In the studies that we shall describe we used three different techniques to detect how people use morphemes in spelling. In these tasks we ask children: 1. to spell words that contain a morpheme whose spelling cannot be entirely predicted from the way that it sounds but can be predicted on the basis of how that morpheme is spelled: For example, the past-tense ending; 2. to spell pseudowords which contain particular morphemes: We create invented words using actual stems and affixes, place them in sentences that clearly identify the word type, and ask the children to spell the pseudoword that we dictate to them; 3. to spell some real words and pseudowords and then to explain their choice of spelling. We carried out many different studies using these techniques. The results of these studies tell us a great deal about what children (and adults) know about morphemes without much explicit teaching, because there is currently little teaching about English morphemes in English schools. This chapter presents a summary of what we found out. The sections are organized by the target spellings and the aims of each of the studies. The first section focuses on suffixes that have a fixed spelling which is not completely predictable from oral language. The second section focuses on the spelling of stems. The third section focuses on how children and adults spell pseudowords made with real stems and suffixes and the explanations that they give for their choice of spellings. The final section presents an overview of the results and raises questions about the possibility of improving children's knowledge of morphemes through teaching. Although the focus of the chapter is on spelling, the aim of our investigations is to understand the connection between knowledge of morphemes and literacy in a broader and a better way. |
| first_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:04:38Z |
| format | Book section |
| id | oxford-uuid:9e8b1748-2971-44a1-b8d2-ada85f786a25 |
| institution | University of Oxford |
| last_indexed | 2024-03-07T02:04:38Z |
| publishDate | 2006 |
| publisher | Routledge Taylor and Francis Group |
| record_format | dspace |
| spelling | oxford-uuid:9e8b1748-2971-44a1-b8d2-ada85f786a252022-03-27T00:50:56ZWhat knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words?Book sectionhttp://purl.org/coar/resource_type/c_3248uuid:9e8b1748-2971-44a1-b8d2-ada85f786a25Symplectic Elements at OxfordRoutledge Taylor and Francis Group2006Nunes, TBryant, PPretzlik, UEvans, DBell, DOlsson, JOur book has two aims. Its first is to persuade our readers that morphemes are extremely important for children learning to read and write. Our second aim is to describe a set of studies that we carried out on teaching children about morphemes and their relation to written words. The first two chapters in the book are all about the first of these two aims. In the remaining chapters we will try to fulfill our second aim by describing our work on teaching children about morphemes and spelling. In the first chapter we showed how many spelling principles in English and in several other languages are based on morphemes, and we also reported some research that established the existence of a strong relationship between children's knowledge of the morphemic structure of spoken words and the progress that they make in learning about written words. In this second chapter we shall look at a series of studies on children's actual spellings and examine what they tell us about their morphemic knowledge and about the way that they are using this knowledge in their writing. So this chapter focuses on what we can find out about people's knowledge of morphemes if we treat spelling as a window on their knowledge of morphemes. We shall show how children's spellings tell us a great deal about their knowledge of morphemes. In the studies that we shall describe we used three different techniques to detect how people use morphemes in spelling. In these tasks we ask children: 1. to spell words that contain a morpheme whose spelling cannot be entirely predicted from the way that it sounds but can be predicted on the basis of how that morpheme is spelled: For example, the past-tense ending; 2. to spell pseudowords which contain particular morphemes: We create invented words using actual stems and affixes, place them in sentences that clearly identify the word type, and ask the children to spell the pseudoword that we dictate to them; 3. to spell some real words and pseudowords and then to explain their choice of spelling. We carried out many different studies using these techniques. The results of these studies tell us a great deal about what children (and adults) know about morphemes without much explicit teaching, because there is currently little teaching about English morphemes in English schools. This chapter presents a summary of what we found out. The sections are organized by the target spellings and the aims of each of the studies. The first section focuses on suffixes that have a fixed spelling which is not completely predictable from oral language. The second section focuses on the spelling of stems. The third section focuses on how children and adults spell pseudowords made with real stems and suffixes and the explanations that they give for their choice of spellings. The final section presents an overview of the results and raises questions about the possibility of improving children's knowledge of morphemes through teaching. Although the focus of the chapter is on spelling, the aim of our investigations is to understand the connection between knowledge of morphemes and literacy in a broader and a better way. |
| spellingShingle | Nunes, T Bryant, P Pretzlik, U Evans, D Bell, D Olsson, J What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title | What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title_full | What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title_fullStr | What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title_full_unstemmed | What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title_short | What knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words? |
| title_sort | what knowledge of morphemes do children and adults show in the way that they spell words |
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