Roles of morphological awareness in the reading comprehension of Spanish-speaking language minority learners: Exploring partial mediation by vocabulary and reading fluency
Open accessAbstract
This study investigated the direct and indirect roles of morphological awareness reading comprehension for Spanish-speaking language minority learners reading in English. Multivariate path analysis was used to investigate the unique contribution of derivational morphological awareness to reading comprehension as well as its indirect contributions via three hypothesized mediators for students in sixth, seventh, and eighth grade (N= 101). Results indicated a significant unique contribution of morphological awareness, controlling for phonemic decoding, listening comprehension, reading vocabulary, word reading fluency, and passage reading fluency. Results further indicated significant indirect contributions of morphological awareness via reading vocabulary and passage fluency, but not via word reading fluency. Findings suggest that morphological awareness may play multiple important roles in second-language reading comprehension.
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- Authors
- KIEFFER, M. J., BIANCAROSA, G., & MANCILLA-MARTINEZ, J.
- Affiliations
- Columbia University (US)
- University of Oregon (US)
- Corresponding author
- KIEFFER, MICHAEL J.
- Venue
- Applied Psycholinguistics
- Publisher
- Cambridge University Press (CUP)
- Published
- 2012-02-20
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 4
- Pages
- 697-725
- ISSN
- 0142-7164 (ISSN-L)
- 1469-1817
- OpenAlex
- W2156432665
- Cited by
- 105
- References
- 90
- Citations by year
- 2026: 10 · 2025: 10 · 2024: 4 · 2023: 12 · 2022: 4 · 2021: 5 · 2020: 7 · 2019: 15 · 2018: 7 · 2017: 7 · 2016: 7 · 2015: 5 · 2014: 5 · 2013: 5 · 2012: 2
- FWCI
- 10.95
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- bronze
- doi.org
- Locations
- Applied Psycholinguistics (publishedVersion)
- Funders
- Spencer Foundation
- William and Flora Hewlett Foundation
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Second Language Acquisition and Learning
- Social Sciences › Psychology › Developmental and Educational Psychology › Reading and Literacy Development
- Social Sciences › Arts and Humanities › Language and Linguistics › EFL/ESL Teaching and Learning
- Keywords
- morphological awareness, derivational morphology, reading comprehension, English as a second language, reading vocabulary, reading fluency, word reading fluency, mediation, second language reading
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