Morphological Awareness

Vocabulary is the term for the words of a language and morphology is the term for the study of the parts of words. Students’ vocabularies expand through the study of word parts, specifically root or base words (e.g., connect), affixes (e.g., reconnect, connection), and inflectional morphemes (e.g., connects, connecting, connected).

The study of word parts increases awareness of the links between words, including the origins of words in other languages. The term cognate means to have “the same ancestry.” Many English words are close cognates to German words (e.g., apple/Apfel). Other English words are easily traced to French words (e.g., communicate/communiquer). French and Spanish both originated from Latin which means that cognates also exist between English and Spanish words (e.g., communicate/comunicar). TextProject provides valuable resources for teachers to support students in developing morphological awareness and knowledge across languages.

Visit our Pinterest board on Morphological Awareness for an overview of our resources.

Using Spanish Cognates to Teach Morphological Awareness
Morphological Awareness & English Learners
Morphological Awareness & Academic Language