Morphological Analysis

The Impact on Vocabulary

The Research Question

How does explicit instruction in morphological analysis affect struggling, hard-of-hearing high school students’ vocabulary development?

The Study

During a six-week study, five hard-of-hearing high school students received, for forty minutes per day, three days a week, instruction in morphological analysis to improve their vocabulary. Morphological Analysis is the study of the smaller units found in words, such as prefixes, suffixes, and Greek and Latin roots. They learned that these smaller parts of words have meaning and help form the overall definition of a word. Students learned strategies and vocabulary taught through text throughout the study. At the end of the unit, students took two tests and the scores were compared to the two pretests. The results showed that ALL students' vocabulary improved after learning morphological analysis.

The Intervention

UNIT 1: Prefixes

Day 1-Introduction of 6-8 high frequency prefix word sorts from an excerpt of Paper Towns.

Day 2-Read the excerpt of Paper Towns.

Day 3-Prefix matching game

Day 4-Introduction of first morphological strategy (word mapping/mnemonic devices)

Day 5- Reread text to find unfamiliar words in which to use the word mapping strategy to determine meaning of the words.

Day 6- Writing activity with vocabulary words

UNIT 2: Suffixes
Day 1-Introduction of 6-8 high frequency suffix word sorts from Yes, Aliens (Probably) Do Exist.

Day 2-Read Yes, Aliens (Probably) Do Exist.

Day 3-Suffix matching game

Day 4-Introduction of second morphological strategy (derivation)

Day 5-Reread text to find unfamiliar words in which to use the derivation strategy to determine meaning oft the words.

Day 6-Writing activity with vocabulary words.

UNIT 3: Greek and Latin Roots

Day 1-Introduction of 6-8 high frequency Greek and Latin roots word sorts from The Life Cycle of Stars.

Day 2-Read The Life Cycle of Stars.

Day 3-Greek and Latin roots word cloud

Day 4-Introduction of third morphological strategy (parts-to-whole, part-to-whole, whole-to-part, analogy)

Day 5-Reread text to find unfamiliar words in which to use the strategy of the unit to determine meaning of the words.

Day 6-Writing activity with vocabulary words.

The Results

On both the Word Knowledge and Morphological assessments, all students improved from the pretest (blue) to the posttest (red). All students even improved on all three sections of the Morphological Analysis Assessment. On the Identifying Word Parts section of the Morphological Analysis Assessment, students' scores increased by an average of 23% from the pretest to the posttest. On the Meaning of Word Parts section, students' scores increased by 40% from the pretest to the posttest. Lastly, on the Overall Meaning section, students' scores increased by 33% from the pretest to the posttest.