Question: Can students
identify meanings of unfamiliar words because of their roots?
Answer: 88 fifth-grade
students and 74 eight-grade students. Suggests that student can use morphological
analysis to infer word meanings. Sample item: The verbose teacher made us late for recess: a. disorganized b.
talkative* c. stern. *= correct choice.
Comment: IF the students pause long enough to
analyze the unfamiliar word, they can apparently use the word root to infer the
meaning of the word when three possible meanings are given. I’m not sure how
helpful this finding is. A test in which the sentences are presented in
isolation and not in a running text is not the same thing as reading normal
pages in which students might pass over the unfamiliar word. Still, if students
are taught to try to unlock the unfamiliar word when reading, they might do so.
That’s what this finding would mean to me: teach the students to analyze an
unfamiliar word, looking for a clue in the word’s root. RayS.
Title: “Inside
Incidental Word Learning: Children’s Strategic Use of Morphological Information
to Infer Word Meanings.” D McCutchen and B Logan. Reading Research Quarterly (October/
November/ December, 2011), pp. 334-349.
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