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The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development

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Abstract

The aim of this study was toinvestigate the long-term effects of twodifferent training programs in kindergarten onreading development. One group received aprogram focusing on the phonological structureof words, while a second group received aprogram focusing on morphology. Both groupsalso had some print exposure focusing onphonological or morphological elementsrespectively. During their last pre-schoolyear, participants received training for 30minutes per week for a total of 17 weeks. Acontrol group received no intervention but wasregularly visited by the researcher and hadextensive print exposure. Both trained groupsshowed improvements in phonological,morphological and reading skills in comparisonto the Control Group. The effects of trainingvaried according to mother's educational level:Children of relatively highly educated mothersentered the pre-school training with betterdeveloped metalinguistic abilities thanchildren of less well educated mothers.Significant interactions between the groups andthe mother's educational level, for some of theschool reading measures, indicated thatdifferent training programs had differenteffects on different groups of children.Children of poorly educated mothers profitedthe most from metaphonological training whilechildren of highly educated mothers profitedthe most from metamorphological training.

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  1. Department of Special Needs Education, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway

    Solveig-Alma Halaas Lyster

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Lyster, SA.H. The effects of morphological versus phonological awareness training in kindergarten on reading development. Reading and Writing 15, 261–294 (2002). https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1015272516220

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