Relations between morphological awareness, vocabulary knowledge and word reading in different orthographies and scripts: Evidence from Africa and Asia

This study investigated the relations between morphological awareness (MA), vocabulary knowledge and word reading among first language learners of Akan, Chinese and Zulu, together representing two different scripts and three different morphological systems. By including three languages that are underrepresented in cross-linguistic literacy research, the study contributed to a more inclusive global research on child development. As the languages under study represent a unique set of linguistic features that are distinct from Indo-European languages, the study broadens our understanding of nuances in linguistic relations. Participants included native speakers of Akan (n = 217), Chinese (n = 275) and Zulu (n = 175) with a mean age of 13.0; 9.5; and 11.7 years respectively. Informed by the Lexical Quality Hypothesis (LQH), through path analysis, the study tested the relations between MA, vocabulary and word reading. The same model produced the best fit for all three languages, indicating that MA contributes directly to word reading and vocabulary in all three languages, thereby expanding support for the LQH. An indirect effect from MA to word reading via vocabulary was found for Chinese only. For languages that demand strong visual skills of their readers, i.e. Chinese and Zulu, a significant relation from vocabulary knowledge to word reading was confirmed, suggesting that readers partly depend on a lexical route for word reading. The study concludes that certain linguistic relations do not structurally differ across languages with different scripts and morphological systems, but relative contributions of each construct vary as a function of language features. Implications for practice are discussed. • MA contributes directly to word reading and vocabulary in Akan, Chinese, and Zulu. • MA-vocabulary and MA-word reading relations exist for alphabetic tone languages. • An indirect MA-vocabulary-word reading relation was found for Chinese only. • Results support the Lexical Quality Hypothesis for Akan, Chinese and Zulu. • Linguistic relations do not structurally differ across the three different languages.