Intensive and explicit derivational morphology training in school-aged children: an effective way to improve morphological awareness, spelling and reading?

Abstract Morphological awareness has been shown to contribute the acquisition of literacy in various languages. The current study focuses on an explicit derivational morphology training program French-speaking fourth graders with aim measuring direct effects morphological and transfer spelling reading. intensive given class consisted (1) learning how segment words into smaller units (2) understanding meaning affixes relation words. Thirty-six children received 34 age-matched participants followed alternative visuo-semantic matched for intensity. results this pre-post group comparison show a significant Group by Time interaction: Substantial progress is observed trained morphology, both as well untrained items. A similar gain was morphologically derived words, Both roots were spelled more accurately. For reading however, we found effect speed accuracy but no generalization All maintained four months after training. These highlight role that plays children’s development.