A Study On Assessment And Intervention Of Morphological Awareness Of Chinese Dyslexia

Morphological awareness is part of metalinguistic awareness, which is the awareness of morpheme inherent structure, and the ability to manipulate morphological structure. Chinese morphological awareness includes homonymous awareness, isomorphic awareness, radical awareness and awareness of morpheme recognition. Morphological Awareness can not only promote decoding of words, but also promote writing and vocabulary development, and have a direct or indirect effect on reading comprehension. Developmental reading dyslexia refers to those who have normal intelligence, but the reading achievements are far below their intellectual level. Morphological awareness deficits play an important role in developmental reading dyslexia in Chinese.Two aspects are explored in this study:assessment and intervention of morphological awareness.The<Reading Test on Pupils> and<Morphological Test on Pupils> are used to measure morphological awareness among students from Grades Two, Four and Six to explore the relationship between morphological awareness and reading ability, the characteristics of development of morphological awareness in different grades, the similarities and differences between the experimental group and the control group in morphological awareness, as well as morphological awareness characteristics of students who have Reading Disabilities(RD) in different grades. A pack of intervention of morphological awareness (16times) was carried on Grade Four students to find out the effect of morphological awareness training for children who have reading difficulties.Based on the above study, conclusions are as follows:1. At the elementary level, reading achievement and morphological awareness have a strong association, with positive correlation between homonymous awareness, isomorphic awareness, radical awareness and reading achievement in Grades Two, Four and Six. The awareness of morpheme recognition was not yet developed in the lower grades, but entered into a critical period in Grade Four, and is closely related to the reading ability as the grade develops. In addition, the various dimensions of morphological awareness increase with the grade’s progression. Homonymous awareness develops sustainably during the primary stage. The awareness of morpheme recognition, isomorphic awareness and radical awareness has a rapid development from Grade Four to Six.2. Compared with the control group, children who have reading difficulties (RD), from Grades Two, Four and Six are presented with deficits in homonymous awareness, deficits in isomorphic awareness and deficits in radical awareness. The deficits in morphological awareness of the dyslexia group does not recover with grade’s progression, each dimension of morphological awareness’development structures shows uneven features in different grades:homonymous awareness and radical awareness develops faster than isomorphic awareness and awareness of morpheme recognition develops at the last.3. The intervention of morphological awareness promotes the improvement of morphological awareness and reading performance in dyslexic children significantly, increases awareness of morpheme recognition, homonymous awareness, isomorphic awareness, and reading performance but it is unable to promote radical awareness. The improvement of each dimension of morphological awareness is not significantly different from the control group, and short intervention time, large-class teaching, lack of targeted training materials and no after-school practices are possible reasons.4. The intervention of morphological awareness can improve awareness of morpheme recognition, homonymous awareness, isomorphic awareness and reading performance among normal children but it is also unable to promot radical awareness since again lack of the training time and materials, etc., are possible reasons. In the intervention for Grade Four as a whole, awareness of morpheme cognition and isomorphic awareness improve greatly, while homonymous awareness and radical awareness don’t improve significantly, which proves once again that Grade Four is the critical period for the development of awareness of morpheme recognition and isomorphic awareness.