Morphology

According to What Content-Area Teachers Should Know About Adolescent Literacy, “Morphology is the study of word structure. Morphology describes how words are formed from morphemes. A morpheme is the smallest unit of meaning in a word” (8). Morphology is very important in literacy, when students don’t recognize the meanings or how morphemes work they have difficulties with reading and writing. In order to be a good reader students must, “…use their knowledge of morphological structure to recognize complex words…Struggling adolescent readers who lack the knowledge of morphological structure will have more difficulty in recognizing and learning words,” (8).

There are many suggested strategies for teaching morphology. One strategy is teaching students frequently used morphemes, doing this improves students’ spelling, “…provides strategies for decoding and for building vocabulary,” (8). Another strategy is teaching different morpheme patterns. “When teaching new words, teachers should not only consider the spelling of the word, but also should explain the morphemes role in changing word meaning,” (8). For example, you have the word “work” when you add an “s” or “-ed” to the word the tense changes, but when you add an “-er” to the word the entire meaning changes. This is important to teach students so that when they are wrting and reading they can successful understand everything. Other suggested strategies are the use of speed drills, teaching different syllabl types, there are six an teaching morphemes in the context of a sentence.