Correlation among Morphological Awareness, Reading Fluency and Spelling for School-Aged Children with Language-Learning Disabilities in Third to Fourth Grades

Objectives: There are several linguistic factors affecting reading fluency (RF) and spelling, particularly the factors called metalinguistic abilities such as phonological awareness (PA) and morphological awareness (MA). The 3rd and 4th grades in elementary school are widely known as important periods for developing RF and spelling. Therefore, the study investigated how MA ability affects reading and writing skills of primary students in 3rd and 4th grade. Methods: The research was conducted with students in the 3rd and 4th grade of elementary school. Thirty-two students participated in the research, 16 students with language learning disabilities (LLD) and 16 typically-developing students (TD). The research used RF with accuracy and rate, spelling with phoneme-grapheme correspondent (PGC) writing and phoneme-grapheme non-correspondent writing and MA. MA tasks were divided into compound and derivation. Results: First, the students with LLD showed prominently lower performance in MA tasks than TD students. Second, students with LLD showed slower speed and less accuracy in correspondent and non-correspondent writing tasks than TD students. Third, TD's derivation correlated with RF, reading rate, spelling and PGC scores. In particular, derivative scores were correlated with reading rate. In the LLD group, accuracy was correlated with compound and overall production. Conclusion: TD students use MA to read automatically. This means TD students near the final stages of correspondent writing are influenced by their derivative abilities. Students with LLD also depend on their MA skills to read accurately, and therefore fail to read fluently.