Read Writ (2018) 31:1685–1694

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11145-018-9866-1

Morphological awareness and literacy in second

language learners: a cross-language perspective

Xi Chen1 • Mila Schwartz2

Published online: 4 June 2018

 Springer Science+Business Media B.V., part of Springer Nature 2018

Morphological awareness refers to the ability to understand morpheme meaning and

reflect on morphemic structure of words (Carlisle, 1995). The concept of
morphological awareness becomes even more complex when Carlisle’s (1995)
definition is applied to the three types of morphology: inflection, derivation, and
compound. Within each type of morphology, we need to consider both meaning and
structural awareness when we examine the role of morphological awareness in
literacy development. Morphological systems vary considerably across different
languages. For example, English has a relatively developed derivational system but
few inflections. Hebrew and Arabic are characterized by rich inflectional and
derivational morphology. The majority of words are compounds in Chinese, which
contains few derived or inflected words. Furthermore, morphology interacts with
orthography in determining how morphological awareness may contribute to
literacy outcomes. The English, Hebrew and Arabic writing systems are morpho-
phonemic, encoding both phonemes and morphemes. As a result, morphological
awareness helps children understand the semantic relations between words despite
differences in phonological structure, e.g., sign-signal and this understanding in
turns facilitates reading comprehension (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). The Chinese
writing system is morphosyllabic. Because phonology is not represented system-
atically by Chinese characters, awareness of morphology is particularly important
for reading Chinese (McBride-Chang, Shu, Zhou, Wat, & Wagner, 2003).
In recent years, two central themes have emerged in studies of literacy
development of monolingual and bilingual children from diverse language

& Xi Chen
xi.chen.bumgardner@utoronto.ca
1
Department of Applied Psychology and Human Development, Ontario Institute for Studies in
Education, University of Toronto, Toronto, Canada
2
Language Department, Advanced Studies Faculty, Oranim Academic College of Education,
Kiryat Tiv’on, Israel

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backgrounds. The first theme focuses on teasing apart language universal and
language specific processes in reading development through comparing monolin-
gual children who acquire literacy in different languages. The second theme
examines cross-language and cross-modality transfer of language and literacy skills
in bilingual children. This special issue addresses both themes from the perspective
of morphological awareness. We present a collection of papers that explore the role
of morphological awareness in literacy acquisition in a variety of languages,
including English, French, Spanish, Greek, Chinese, Korean, Arabic, and Hebrew,
in both monolingual and bilingual populations. We examine the contributions of
morphological awareness to literacy outcomes within each of these languages and
explore the patterns of cross-language transfer from one language to another in
bilingual children.
With respect to the first theme of this special issue, comparing findings across
many different languages enables us to separate language universal and language
specific processes. There is increasing evidence that morphological awareness
contributes to literacy outcomes (word reading, vocabulary and reading compre-
hension) for monolingual and bilingual children. The evidence comes from many
languages, including alphabetic languages such as English and French, Semitic
languages such as Arabic and Hebrew, and logographic languages such as Chinese
(Chung et al., 2018b; Schwartz, Taha, Assad, Khamaisi, & Eviatar, 2016). In this
regard, morphological awareness functions similarly to cognitive skills such as
phonological awareness, working memory and rapid automatized naming in that it
is universally related to literacy outcomes. On the other hand, morphological
processing possesses language specific features because the aspect of morphological
awareness that is important appears to be determined by the morphological structure
of a language. Studies on English and other alphabetic languages primarily focus on
inflectional and derivational awareness, whereas studies on Chinese mostly involve
compound awareness. Moreover, because Chinese has few inflected or derived
words, studies tend to adopt the meaning-structure dimension in evaluating
awareness of compound words (e.g., Chen, Hao, Geva, Zhu, & Shu, 2009; Liu,
McBride-Chang, Wong, Shu, & Wong, 2013).
The second theme of the special issue centers on cross-language transfer of
morphological awareness. A prominent model addressing cross-language transfer is
the transfer facilitation model proposed by Koda (2007, 2008). According to Koda
(2008), transfer is ‘‘an automatic activation of well-established first-language
competencies, triggered by second-language input’’ (p. 78). Koda maintains that
transfer is non-volitional and non-selective in that it takes place regardless of
learners’ intent. Notably, the transfer facilitation model applies only to L2 learners
with established automaticity in the L1. For these learners, transfer occurs from a
highly proficient L1 to a less proficient L2. However, recent studies have
demonstrated cross-language transfer of metalinguistic skills from the L2 to L1, or
in both directions in emerging bilinguals acquiring two languages simultaneously
(e.g., Chen, Xu, Nguyen, Hong, & Wang, 2010; Chung, Chen, & Deacon, 2018a).
To expand the scope of the transfer facilitation model, Chung, Chen, and Geva
(2018b) proposes an interactive framework, which identifies key factors that
influence transfer in both directions in bilingual learners of different levels of

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proficiency. While findings of this special issue are largely consistent with the
prediction of the transfer facilitation model (transfer from the L1 to L2), several
studies also support the interactive transfer framework by demonstrating transfer
from the L2 to L1. The special issue also identifies novel factors that influence the
transfer process, including the developmental trajectory of morphological aware-
ness, language learning environment, and Social Economic Status (SES).

Language universal and language specific features of morphological

awareness

Three papers in this special issue address language-universal and language-unique

features of morphological awareness with respect to the role it plays in literacy
development. They go beyond the previous research in several ways, both in terms
of research questions and methodology. By including English-, French- and Greek-
speaking children in the same study, Desrochers et al. were able to compare the
extent of the contribution of morphological awareness to literacy outcomes across
the three languages. Luo et al. chose to study the relationship between morpho-
logical awareness and word reading in Chinese and English in the same sample of
Chinese–English bilinguals, thus eliminating the cohort effect. Finally, Gottardo
et al. presented a more comprehensive framework of reading comprehension in
English for Spanish–English bilinguals by including not only vocabulary but also
syntactic awareness in the same model. Taken together, these studies provide
findings that are largely consistent with those reported in the previous research.
These findings will be described in detail below. Moreover, they expand previous
research by directly comparing multiple languages within the same study, and by
presenting a more comprehensive model of reading comprehension.
In a longitudinal study that included large samples of English-, French-, and
Greek-speaking children, Desrochers, Manolitsis, Gaudreau, and Georgiou observed
that morphological awareness, measured by tasks containing both inflectional and
derivational items, were related to reading comprehension and spelling 1 year later
for each of the languages. Interestingly, the strength of the relationship was also
similar across the three languages, further confirming the universal contributions of
morphological awareness. On the other hand, Desrochers et al. reported language-
specific findings—morphological awareness was related to word reading accuracy
in English only, and it was related to word reading fluency in English and French,
but not Greek. The researchers argue that these findings are consistent with the
notion that morphological awareness plays a bigger role in opaque languages (e.g.
English, and to a lesser extent, French) than transparent languages (e.g., Greek).
Because readers of opaque languages cannot rely solely on grapheme–phoneme
correspondences, they also have to take advantage of morphological knowledge.
Similar to Desrochers et al., Luo, Koh, Deacon, and Chen also support the
contribution of morphological awareness to literacy outcomes across different
languages. They focused on English and Chinese, two languages that are
typologically different. The study examined the contributions of phonological
awareness and morphological awareness to vocabulary within English and Chinese

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in a 1-year longitudinal study. An advantage of the design is that it utilized the same
sample of Chinese–English bilinguals to compare the relationships across the two
languages, thus ruling out cohort effects. Morphological awareness was assessed
based on the morphological features of each language, with inflectional and
derivational awareness in English and compound awareness in Chinese. Results
showed that morphological awareness contributed to both vocabulary at Time 1 and
at Time 2 in English and Chinese, while there were no significant findings for
phonological awareness. The results highlight the importance of morphological
awareness for vocabulary across typologically different languages. At the same
time, the study suggests that the type of morphological awareness that is important
in a language is consistent with the features of the language.
While Luo et al. and Desrochers et al. both highlight the importance of
morphological awareness for literacy development across different languages, these
studies also reveal language specific processes. Because English and Chinese have
very different morphological structures, morphological awareness measures in these
two languages targeted different aspects—inflectional and derivational awareness in
English, and compound awareness in Chinese. By contrast, the same aspects of
morphological awareness—inflectional and derivational awareness—were assessed
across English, French and Greek, all of which are Indo-European languages. Thus,
the type of morphological awareness that functions in a language is constrained by
the morphological structure. Considering that morphological structures vary widely
across different languages, this notion has implications not only on the relationships
between morphological awareness and literacy outcomes within a language, but also
on the aspects of morphological awareness that transfer between two languages. We
will discuss the impact of morphological features on cross-language transfer in the
next section.
Notably, Gottardo, Mirza, Koh, Ferreira, and Javier did not find a direct effect of
morphological awareness, specifically derivational awareness, on reading compre-
hension after controlling for word reading, vocabulary, and syntactic awareness in
Spanish-speaking children. All the measures were given in English, the children’s
L2. These findings are different from those reported in the two studies described
above. They are also different from Bae and Malt, who reported both direct and
indirect effects of morphological awareness on reading comprehension in English
for Korean-speaking children. The discrepancy highlights methodological issues in
measuring morphological awareness. First, the tasks in Desrochers et al., Luo et al.,
and Bae and Malt contained items that measured two types of morphology. The task
in Gottardo et al. only assessed derivational awareness and arguably represented a
weaker construct. Gottardo et al. also had a smaller and more heterogeneous sample.
However, Gottardo et al. conducted a more rigorous analysis by including
vocabulary and syntactic awareness in the analysis, while one or both controls were
missing from the other studies. Thus, a contribution of Gottardo et al. lies in
presenting a more comprehensive framework of reading comprehension.

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Cross-language transfer of morphological awareness

Six of the nine papers in this special issue address cross-language and cross-
modality transfer of morphological awareness directly. In other words, these papers
measured morphological awareness in the L1 and L2 and examined the relationships
between morphological awareness in one language and literacy outcomes in the
other. Generally speaking, these studies provide support to the interactive transfer
framework (Chung et al., 2018b) by demonstrating transfer not only from the L1 to
L2, but also from the L2 to L1 (e.g., Tong, et al.). These papers not only address the
factors examined by the previous studies, such as morphological structures of the L1
and L2, relative proficiency levels of the two languages, and overlap and distance
between the morphological systems (Koda, 2007, 2008; Chung et al., 2018b), but
they also add several new factors. For example, Lam and Chen investigated how the
developmental trajectory of morphological awareness (i.e., inflection awareness
developing before derivation awareness) interacts with transfer. Bae and Joshi, and
Kahn-Horwitz and Saba explored the impact of language learning environment by
comparing the transfer patterns between English foreign language (EFL) learners
and English second language (ESL) learners. Kahn-Horwitz and Saba investigated
transfer of morphological awareness in low SES and underachieving adolescents.
Choi, Tong, Law, and Cain examined the transfer of awareness of morpheme
meaning, an aspect that has not been evaluated before.
In a study focusing on Chinese–English bilinguals, Tong, et al. measured
compound awareness in both Chinese and English. Compounding is the most
dominant word formation method in Chinese. Compared to other alphabetic
languages, English also has a relatively large number of compounds, but
compounding is less prevalent than inflection or derivation. The study showed
that English compound awareness contributed to Chinese word reading and
vocabulary after controlling for Chinese phonological awareness and morphological
awareness. This finding suggests that transfer of morphological awareness is
conditioned by overlapping morphological features between the L1 and L2, which
are shared compounding rules in the case of this study. On the other hand, no
transfer was observed from Chinese morphological awareness to English word
reading or vocabulary.
The direction of transfer reported in Tong et al. (from English morphological
awareness to Chinese but not the other way around) has been observed in several
previous studies (Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, & Ramirez, 2011; Wang, Cheng, &
Chen, 2006; Wang, Yang, & Cheng, 2009). Tong, et al. offer two explanations for
the uni-directional transfer. First, the direction of transfer is determined by the
morphological features of the language of the outcome variable. Because
compounding is a crucial way to form words in Chinese, word reading and
vocabulary in Chinese are supported by compound awareness not only developed
within Chinese but also transferred from English. Reading English requires less
compound awareness, hence transfer from Chinese is not necessary. This theory,
first proposed by Pasquarella and colleagues (2011), is confirmed by Tong, et al.
The researchers also propose a novel notion about compound awareness between

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Chinese and English. Compared to English, Chinese has a more complex

compounding system. Some of the rules are language universal, while others are
language specific. The language-specific elements of the compounding system may
prevent compound awareness from transferring from Chinese to English. This
notion makes an important theoretical contribution to theory of cross-language
transfer. Notably, Pasquarella, Chen, Lam, Luo, and Ramirez (2011), Wang, Cheng,
and Chen (2006) and Wang, Yang, and Cheng (2009) involved Chinese–English
bilinguals in North America. By focusing on Chinese–English bilinguals in Hong
Kong, Tong et al. suggest that similar transfer patterns may be found for Chinese
children in different English learning environments.
Choi et al. presented findings that were quite different from those in previous
studies. In a study including second, fifth and eighth graders in Hong Kong, they
found that Chinese homophone awareness explained unique variance in English
word reading in grade two. To our knowledge, this is the only study that has
observed transfer of morphological awareness from Chinese to English. Notably,
previous studies focused on compound structure, whereas this study assessed
homophone awareness, which requires children to differentiate meanings of
homophonic morphemes. The two aspects of morphological awareness, morpho-
logical structure and morpheme meaning, may exhibit different patterns of transfer.
Thus, this finding points to a new direction for studying transfer of morphological
awareness. Choi et al. found negative transfer from English compound awareness
and derivational awareness to Chinese word reading. These findings deviate sharply
from previous research reporting positive transfer from English to Chinese. The
researchers attribute these findings to the unique learning environment of Hong
Kong children and to overgeneralization of derivational awareness from English to
Chinese. The latter led to a misfit because Chinese has few derivations. However,
since English morphological awareness measures were actually not negatively
correlated with Chinese outcomes, it is possible that the negative regression results
were due to suppression and should be taken with caution.
Bae and Joshi reported a rare study that compared transfer of morphological
awareness between Korean and English in both ESLs and EFLs. The participants
were in Grades 5 and 6 in the US and Korea, respectively. Different from Chinese,
which has very few derived words, Korean shares both derivational and
compounding features with English. Bae and Joshi observed transfer of morpho-
logical awareness, measured with compound and derivational items, from Korean to
English word reading in the ESL sample. In contrast, transfer was not found in the
EFL sample. The significant finding based on the ESL sample strengthens the notion
that transfer of morphological awareness is based on overlapping morphological
features between the two languages. The researchers attributed the lack of transfer
for the EFL sample to their low English proficiency. This study suggests that
transfer patterns may be influenced by language learning environment as well as
level of proficiency in the novel language. The patterns of data not only support
previously examined factors that influence transfer of morphological awareness
(Koda, 2007, 2008; Chung et al., 2018b), but also highlight a novel factor, learning
environment, which may facilitate transfer or hinder it. Unfortunately, the study did
not examine transfer from English to Korean.

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Another study focusing on EFLs was conducted by Kahn-Horwitz and Saba. The
researchers examined cross-language transfer of morphological awareness in Arabic
speakers enrolled in a technological school. The participants came from low SES
backgrounds and were considered to have low English proficiency compared to their
peers. However, the participants in this study were also much older (eleventh grade)
than in Bae and Joshi and other studies in this collection. Results showed that
morphological awareness, specifically derivational awareness, in Arabic was related
to both word reading and reading comprehension in English. Notably, there are a
couple of limitations to the design. First, the study did not control for morphological
awareness or other reading related variables in English. Second, vocabulary was not
controlled in either language when English reading comprehension was predicted.
As a result, we cannot directly compare the findings of this study to those of Bae and
Joshi or any transfer studies with within-language controls. Despite the limitations,
the study provides preliminary evidence for transfer of morphological awareness
between Arabic and English, two typologically different languages. The study is
also innovative in the sense that it focused on low SES populations. Indeed, the
researchers found that household density was negatively related to English word
reading.
Eviatar, Taha and Schwartz explored the effects of morphological complexity on
development of morphological and literacy skills. The study followed Hebrew (L1)-
Arabic bilinguals, Arabic (L1)-Hebrew bilinguals, and Hebrew- and Arabic-
speaking monolinguals from kindergarten to Grade 1. The bilingual groups showed
accelerated development of morphological awareness in the L1 compared to their
monolingual peers. Notably, exposure to Arabic led to growth of Arabic
morphological awareness for the Hebrew–Arabic bilinguals, whereas exposure to
Hebrew did not result in similar improvement in Hebrew morphological awareness
for the Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals. This asymmetry in development may be caused
by differences in morphological complexity between the two Semitic languages.
Because morphology is more complex in Arabic than Hebrew, exposure to Arabic
has a larger effect in Hebrew–Arabic bilinguals. Different patterns were also
observed in regressions predicting spelling. For Hebrew (L1) speakers, both
language experience (being bilingual or not) and morphological awareness in
kindergarten were significant predictors of spelling at the end of the first grade. For
Arabic (L1) speakers, parental education was the strongest predictor. The visual
complexity and the diglossic situation of Arabic may have reduced children’s ability
to utilize morphological awareness in kindergarten to acquire the written language
in the first grade.
Lam and Chen presented an innovative study that examined how the develop-
ment of morphological awareness interacts with cross-language of transfer in
English–French bilinguals. Research has established that children typically develop
inflectional awareness before derivational awareness in English (e.g., Carlisle,
2003). As expected, the patterns of transfer were consistent with the developmental
trajectory of morphological awareness. In the younger cohort, English inflectional
awareness measured in the fall term of Grade 1 predicted French vocabulary
7 months later. By contrast, English derivational awareness did not predict French
vocabulary. In the older cohort, both English inflectional and derivational awareness

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measured in Grade 2 predicted French vocabulary measured in Grade 3.

Remarkably, these relationships remained significant after controlling for other
reading related variables and the autoregressor (French vocabulary in Grade 2),
suggesting that morphological awareness contributes to gains in vocabulary
overtime. Transfer was also observed from French morphological awareness to
English vocabulary, but it was more limited and disappeared after controlling for the
autoregressor. This study highlights the value of considering development in
studying transfer. At the same time, the findings corroborate those of Desrochers
et al. in showing that inflectional and derivational awareness are important for
literacy development in both English and French, and thus transfer between the two
languages.

Conclusion

To recapitulate, the editors believe that this special issue makes two contributions to
the field. First, it confirms the language universal and language specific features of
morphological awareness reported in the previous research. On the one hand,
morphological awareness is found to contribute to all literacy outcomes, including
word reading, vocabulary, and reading comprehension. As Carlisle (2003) points
out, morphological awareness is a complex construct that requires multiple skills,
including phonological, orthographic, semantic, and syntactic skills. The multi-
faceted nature of morphological awareness explains why it is important for all
literacy outcomes. The universality of morphological awareness is also reflected in
the findings that morphological awareness is related to literacy outcomes across
alphabetic, Semitic, and logographic languages. On the other hand, the current issue
stresses the language-specific features of morphological awareness. Nagy, Carlisle,
and Goodman (2014) provide a detailed and convincing account of how
morphological awareness and knowledge are related to literacy outcomes in
English. Taking a cross-language perspective, our special issue illustrates how
morphological processes in other languages may be similar to and different from
those in English. These similarities and differences are determined by overlapping
and unique features of morphological systems across languages.
Another contribution of the special issue is that it advances the theory of cross-
language transfer. As mentioned earlier, the transfer facilitation model proposed by
Koda (2007, 2008) focuses on L2 learners with high levels of proficiency in the L1.
The interactive framework proposed by Chung et al. (2018b) expands the scope of
transfer to emergent bilinguals who are learning two languages simultaneously.
Transfer often occurs in both directions for these young bilinguals. The findings of
several studies included in the special issue confirm those reported in the previous
research and provide further support to the interactive framework. Specifically, the
aspect of morphological awareness that transfers between two languages is
determined by the overlapping features of the morphological systems. The direction
of transfer is influenced by both the relative complexity of the morphological
systems and the characteristics of the language of the outcome variable.
Importantly, our special issue also examines factors influencing transfer that were

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not included in previous research. These factors address how patterns of transfer are
influenced by the multifaceted nature of morphological awareness (morpheme
meaning vs. morphological structure), its developmental trajectory (inflectional
awareness before derivational awareness), language learning environment (ESL vs.
EFL) and SES. These novel findings point to the need of continuously advancing the
theoretical framework of cross-language transfer.
The contributions of the special issue must be considered together with the
limitations of its studies. Bilingual studies involve populations from diverse
backgrounds. For example, the learning environment of Arabic–Hebrew bilinguals
in Israel is very different from that of Chinese–English bilinguals in Hong Kong. As
a result, it may not always be feasible to generalize findings across different studies.
Another challenge faced by the field is that studies tend to adopt different designs
and analytical methods. While some cross-language analyses control for within
language variables, others do not. Even within the same language, different control
variables are used in models of reading comprehension. Based on the simple view of
reading model (Hoover & Gough, 1990), it is common practice to control for both
word reading and vocabulary when studying the contribution of morphological
awareness to reading comprehension. However, some studies do not have these key
control variables in the analyses. The effects of other metalinguistic variables, such
as phonological awareness, orthographic processing, and syntactic awareness should
also be considered, but rarely does a study offer such a comprehensive model of
reading comprehension. Finally, a critical limitation of the field is that there is
currently no theory which accurately predicts the extent and direction of cross-
language transfer. While research has documented the effects of an increasing
number of factors, it is not clear exactly how these factors interact with each other.
The dynamic and interactive nature of cross-language transfer needs to be further
investigated.
With respect to educational implications, this special issue highlights the
significant role of morphological awareness in literacy development in diverse
bilingual populations. Field implications suggest that when considering children’s
literacy instruction in the L2, their linguistic background needs to be taken into
account. Even if policy makers and educational practitioners are not proficient in the
children’s L1, they should familiarize themselves with L1 linguistic features in
order to understand similarities and differences between children’s two languages.
In particular, teachers should offer explicit and systematic instruction in morpho-
logical awareness to facilitate children’s vocabulary and literacy development in the
novel language. In addition, drawing on data on cross-linguistic and cross-modality
transfer of morphological awareness, explicit instruction in L1 morphological
structure may facilitate L2 literacy acquisition and development. Similarly, in the
context of an immersion program, instruction in L2 morphological structure may in
turn facilitate L1 literacy.

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