Recent research has acknowledged the importance of morphological awareness, beyond phonological awareness, to literacy achievement in both reading and writing for children, adolescents, and adults. Morphological awareness is the ability to recognize, reflect on, and manipulate the sublexical structure of words--the roots, prefixes, and suffixes.…

This article highlights the clinical application of morphological awareness intervention to facilitate phonological, vocabulary, reading, and spelling success in children with language and literacy deficits. First, the research-based benefits of morphological awareness instruction are reviewed and current theoretical and research-based…

Purpose: Morphological awareness refers to the ability to consider and manipulate consciously the smallest units of meaning in language. In previous studies investigating students' morphological awareness, no consistent task has been used to measure this skill across grade levels and comparisons among studies have been based on tasks, which…

Recent work has demonstrated the importance of derivational morphology to later language development and has led to a consensus that derivation is a lexical process. In this review, derivational morphology is discussed in terms of lexical representation models from both linguistic and psycholinguistic perspectives. Input characteristics, including…

Cross-language effects of Spanish derivational awareness on English vocabulary and reading comprehension were studied in Spanish-speaking English Language Learners (N = 90) in grades four and seven. The role of cognate vocabulary in cross-language transfer of derivational awareness was also examined. Multivariate path analyses controlling for age,…

Purpose: The main goal of this study was to examine whether the morphological structure of a child's first language determined the strength of association between morphological awareness and reading and spelling skills in English, their second language. Methods: The sample consisted of 888 Grade six students who had English as their first language…

In this article, we review three responses to the study and evaluation of grammar in children who speak nonmainstream dialects of English. Then we introduce a fourth, system-based response that views nonmainstream dialects of English, such as African American English (AAE) and Southern White English (SWE) as made up of "dialect-specific"…

Complex syntax production emerges shortly after the emergence of two-word combinations in oral language and continues to develop through the school-age years. This article defines a framework for the analysis of complex syntax in the spontaneous language of preschool- and early school-age children. The purpose of this article is to provide…

Children with language impairment (LI) show an overall immaturity in grammatical structure. This includes difficulties with basic sentence constituents, pronouns, verb form elaboration, negative and interrogative sentences, noun phrase elaboration, and complex sentences. This article describes explicit instruction and scaffolding strategies, based…

Research findings concerning verb-level influences on past-tense morphology carry implications for the careful selection of treatment targets. Using 6 of the broad criteria for "good verbs to choose" proposed by D. Crystal (1985) more than 25 years ago as a framework, this article summarizes some of the more recent research with a nod…

Developing writers make qualitative changes in their written products as they progress from scribbling and drawing to conventional, paragraph level writing. As yet, a comprehensive measurement tool does not exist that captures the linguistic and communicative changes (not just emergent spelling) in the early stages of this progression. The…

This study examined the composing process and communication of students aged 5-8 identified with intellectual disabilities. An open-ended writing activity called Big Paper was implemented at least once every 2 weeks for a 6-month period. Qualitative methods were utilized to analyze writing samples, videotapes of writing sessions, and transcripts…

This article describes comprehensive, high-quality writing instruction for students with developmental disabilities. The Enriched Writers' Workshop combines differentiated writing process instruction with social communication instruction and cognitive strategy instruction for students with complex writing needs across a wide range of ages. It…

In this single-subject design study, we examined the effects of an intervention targeting planning and self-regulation strategy use on the persuasive writing of children with high-functioning autism spectrum disorders (ASD). Three 8- to 9-year-old children with ASD in third and fourth grades learned a mnemonic-based strategy for planning and…

Recently, it has been proposed that schools teach disciplinary literacy in science, mathematics, history, and literature classes as students move into middle school and high school. A disciplinary literacy approach emphasizes the specialized knowledge and abilities possessed by those who create, communicate, and use knowledge within each of the…