Goodwin, A. P., Petscher, Y., Carlisle, J. F., & Mitchell, A. M. (2017). Exploring the dimensionality of morphological knowledge for adolescent readers. Journal of Research in Reading, 40(1), 91–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/1467-9817.12064
[Abstract]
This study examined the dimensionality of morphological knowledge. The performance of 371 seventh- and eighth-graders on seven morphological knowledge tasks was investigated using confirmatory factor analysis. Results suggested that morphological knowledge was best fit by a bifactor model with a general factor of morphological knowledge and seven specific factors, representing tasks that tap different facets of morphological knowledge. Next, structural equation modelling was used to explore links to literacy outcomes. Results indicated the general factor and the specific factor of morphological meaning processing showed significant positive associations with reading comprehension and vocabulary. Also, the specific factor of generating morphologically related words showed significant positive associations with vocabulary, while specific factors of morphological word reading and spelling processing showed small negative relationships to reading comprehension and vocabulary. Findings highlight the complexity of morphological knowledge and suggest the importance of being cognizant of the nature of morphology when designing and interpreting studies.
Northbrook, J., & Conklin, K. (2018). Is What You Put in What You Get Out? —Textbook-derived Lexical Bundle Processing in Beginner English Learners. Applied Linguistics, 1–19. https://doi.org/10.1093/applin/amy027
Usage-based approaches to second language acquisition put a premium on the linguistic input that learners receive and predict that any sequences of words that learners encounter frequently will experience a processing advantage. The current study explores the processing of high-frequency sequences of words known as ‘lexical bundles’ in beginner learners of English in Japanese secondary school. To do this we use a phrasal judgment task, testing students on items taken directly from their teaching materials. Students responded to lexical bundles that occurred in their textbooks significantly faster and more accurately compared with non-lexical bundles, and were sensitive to the frequency of oc- currence in their textbooks. This study shows, perhaps for the first time, that even very low-level, beginner secondary students are sensitive to the frequency of lexical bundles which appear in the input they receive from teaching materials, a finding that has important implications for teaching and material design.
This study examined the sensitivity of Chinese-English bilinguals to derivational word structure in English. In the first experiment, English monolinguals showed masked priming effects for prime-target pairs related both transparently (e.g., hunter-HUNT) and opaquely (e.g., corner-CORN) but not for those related purely in terms of form (e.g., freeze-FREE), whereas bilinguals showed priming in all three conditions. Furthermore, stronger form priming was found for bilinguals who were less experienced in English. A second experiment showed that bilingual participants found it harder to identify items as nonwords when the words possessed a suffix (e.g., animalful) than when they did not (e.g., animalfil), and this was true in terms of accuracy even for bilinguals with less exposure to English. Overall, these findings suggest that Chinese-English bilinguals, regardless of proficiency, have some sensitivity to morphological structure and that greater proficiency leads to priming effects that tend to pattern more like those of monolinguals.