The Crossover Effects of Morphological Awareness on Literacy Outcomes among Children in French Immersion

This dissertation comprised three studies examining the cross-language effects of morphological awareness on literacy outcomes among early elementary school children in a French immersion program. Two aspects of morphological awareness were investigated: inflectional awareness and derivational awareness. Study 1 explored the bidirectional cross-language effects between morphological awareness and vocabulary development in English and French over one year. Participants included 156 students in Grades 1 and 2. Regression analyses revealed that English inflectional awareness predicted unique variance in French vocabulary among Grade 1 students. Among Grade 2 students, cross-lagged analyses showed that both English inflectional and English derivational awareness predicted gains in French vocabulary between Grades 2 and 3. Moreover, French derivational awareness measured at Grade 2 was associated with Grade 3 English vocabulary.Study 2 examined the role of cognates in mediating the relations between English morphological awareness and French vocabulary. Participants included 108 first and second grade students. Results indicated that English morphological awareness was a unique predictor of French cognate but not non-cognate vocabulary. This suggests that the transfer of morphological awareness across languages is facilitated when the words to be learned in the children's additional language bear similarities to words in their primary language. Finally, Study 3 evaluated the longitudinal contributions of English morphological awareness to French reading comprehension skills among the sample from Study 1. The effects of children's knowledge of the systematic relations between English and French derivational suffix pairs on their French reading comprehension skills were additionally explored. Results showed that English inflectional awareness significantly predicted French reading comprehension among the Grade 1 students, whereas English derivational awareness predicted variance in French reading comprehension among the Grade 2 students. Children's awareness of the systematic relations between English and French derivational suffix pairs predicted changes in French reading comprehension from Grades 2 to 3.Taken together, these results add to the extant corpus of research to substantiate that children can leverage morphological awareness from their primary language to facilitate their vocabulary learning as well as reading comprehension in their additional language. These results are discussed in light of current reading and transfer models.Ph.D