Contributions of figurative language and morphological awareness to reading ability in Grades 2 and 4

Background and objective. - To our knowledge, no research has so far associated idiomatic (or figurative) and morphological aspects of language in children reading and in examining the various skills involved. This study aims to: (1) specify, at two levels of reading ability, the implication of these two dimensions of language in decoding - word identification and comprehension and their possible correlation: idiom comprehension and morphemic skills have in common the need to pay attention to the meaning and play with the different levels of language analysis (literal vs figurative and sublexical vs lexical representations); (2) examine individual performance profiles of children with reading difficulties, in the light of these idiomatic and morphological skills. Method. - Tasks of oral explanation of idioms with related context, of morphemic segmentation (to give the smallest meaningful units in words orally), of reading (word identification and reading comprehension) as well as control tasks (phonemic, syntactic, vocabulary) were administered in Grade 2 (69 children, mean age: 7.8 years) and in Grade 4 (67 children, mean age: 9.11 years). Results. - Results show (a) correlations between idiomatic and morphemic skills and reading abilities with second and fourth graders; (b) a correlation between idiomatic and morphological tasks in Grade 2; (c) a significant contribution, both complementary and specific, of idiomatic and morphemic skills with reading comprehension, particularly with second graders. For lexical age, the contribution is marginal; (d) the individual profiles reveal that, together or separately, morphemic skills and idiom comprehension could be weak points but vectors of "improved success" too for many children with reading difficulties (decoding and/or comprehension). Conclusion. - Idiomatic and morphemic skills are related to reading abilities, so they can constitute complementary supports for helping children to progress in learning to read accurately. The possible educational implications of our findings are then discussed and encourage the development of a range of varied activities from which children early could be implicated or "remobilized" in learning to read. (C) 2016 Societe Francaise de Psychologie. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.