I think Mina Reddy's question is very interesting and important for
those teaching adult English language learners. My teaching experience -
and that of others -  seems to indicate that an understanding of English
morphology should be taught to adult English language learners - even if
there isn't experimental research with this population to back that us.
Nation (2005, p. 592) discusses teaching word parts - suffixes,
prefixes, inflections for tenses -- as a "strategy [that] deserves
teaching time because of the large number of words it can be applied
to." And an experimental study of college level students (Qian, 1999) -
who had a vocabulary level of 3,000 words in English (more words than
many adult English language learners) suggested that teaching word parts
might help these students increase their English vocabulary and also
could be a strategy to improve their reading comprehension. But that was
all I could find.   So I asked Dr. Julie Mathews, research associate for
CAELA, to look at research on ELLs - whether K-12, adult or higher ed.
She found some research on younger ELLs, that I think is worthwhile
considering.  

Here's Julies  response:

"Here's what I've come up with after a pretty exhaustive search of the
academic databases.

I agree with Kathy Harris and Lynn Santelmann when they say that there
isn't a lot of research (if any) specifically addressing the question of
whether explicit teaching of morphology may affect text comprehension in
second language learners. I also agree with their broad overview of
research on English morpheme/morphology acquisition-some forms seem to
be acquired faster with instruction, others not. But to answer Mina
Reddy's question, I think that both her own experiences and the results
of two fairly recent studies are enough to say that some explicit
instruction in English morphology would not hurt, and might very well
contribute to ELLs' text comprehension. 

The studies I have in mind are Carlo, August, McLaughlin, Snow et al
(2004) and Tremblay & Morris (2002). In the first study, the researchers
found that 5th graders' academic vocabulary (and ultimately their
reading comprehension) could be enhanced by teaching the meanings of
academically useful words together with strategies for using, among
other things, morphological information about the words. The second
study, working with similarly aged students, found that weekly
interventions (over a 15-week period) in which students' attention was
drawn to particular morphological language points through a cloze test
(with the teacher first reading the text-repeating sentences on
request-and students trying to fill in the blanks, then discussing in
small groups to agree on the correct answers), resulted in dramatic
improvement in students' use of those forms. Tremblay & Morris point out
that it seems to be the case that students with appropriate linguistic
ability (not complete beginners) and cognitive levels (not very young
learners), can benefit from such explicit instruction. 

M.S. Carlo, D. August, B. McLaughlin, C.E. Snow, et al. (2004). Closing
the gap: Addressing the vocabulary needs of English language learners in
bilingual and mainstream classrooms. Reading Research Quarterly, 39(2),
188-215.

Tremblay, M., Morris, L. (2002). The impact of attending to unstressed
words on the acquisition of written grammatical morphology by French
speaking ESL students. The Canadian Modern Language Review. 58(3)
364-385."

Nation, I. M. P. (2005). Teaching and learning vocabulary. In E. Hinkel
(Ed.), Handbook of research in second language teaching and learning
(pp. 581-595). Mahwah, NJ: Erlbaum.
Qian, D. D. (1999). Assessing the roles of depth and breadth of
vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. The Canadian Modern
Language Journal, 56, 262-305. 
Miriam
*****
Miriam Burt
Center for Applied Linguistics
4646 40th Street NW
Washington, DC 20016
(202) 362-0700
(202) 363-7204 (fax)
miriam at cal.org 

-----Original Message-----
From: specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov
[mailto:specialtopics-bounces at nifl.gov] On Behalf Of David Rosen
Sent: Thursday, May 25, 2006 8:38 PM
To: specialtopics at nifl.gov
Subject: [SpecialTopics 45] Explicitly assessing and teaching
anunderstanding of English morphology

Mina Reddy  wrote:

"...Specifically for second language learners, how important or useful
is it to explicitly assess and teach an understanding of English
morphology? How much does an understanding of English morphology
influence their comprehension of text?  I am curious about this because
of my personal experience reading in languages in which my vocabulary is
limited.  I find that an understanding of the structure of the language
helps me to derive at least a basic meaning from the text even when I do
not understand many of the words."

John Strucker answered:

"Mina, I think you are right about this last point, but I don't know of
much ESOL research that focuses on this.  NCSALL's Steve Reder would be
a good person to ask about this.  However, I think ELL research has
looked at this from time to time, and that research supports your
position.  As an aside, in general, I think those of us in ABE/ESOL can
probably learn a lot by looking more at ELL research."

I (David Rosen) asked Steve Reder to reply, and he turned to his
colleagues at Portland State University's Department of Applied
Linguistics, Kathy Harris and Lynn Santelmann. They asked that we post
this reply:

"There isn't a lot of research directed at this specific question,  
but the research that exists points to a couple of conclusions.   
First, student acquisition of some kinds of morphemes (e.g. plural and
3rd person -s) can be promoted with instruction.  However,  
instruction of other forms (e.g. -ing) can promote overproduction.   
Also, other types of English morphology aren't easily acquired through
instruction (e.g. articles such as the and a).  Generally, the order in
which English morphology is learned isn't altered by instruction, but
some aspects may be acquired more quickly through instruction.
Instruction may help students to "notice" new forms so that when the new
forms become salient (through error correction or negotiation for
example), learners have knowledge of the new form to apply."

Kathy Harris & Lynn Santelmann
Department of Applied Linguistics & the NCSALL Adult ESOL Lab School
Portland State University


David J. Rosen
Special Topics List Moderator
djrosen at comcast.net



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