This document discusses morphology and phonology and their importance in language instruction. It defines morphology as the study of how morphemes combine to form words. Morphemes are the smallest meaningful units of language. Teaching morphemes can help students learn more vocabulary. Phonology is defined as the study of speech sound patterns. Understanding phonology allows students to distinguish sounds in their native language from foreign sounds and to learn pronunciation rules. The document argues that learning morphology and phonology can improve students' written and verbal communication skills.

1. Morphology & Phonology
BY JOSHUA S. DONALDSON

2. Morphology in Instruction
 Morphology is the study of words and how morphemes combine to create words.
 Morphemes are the smallest units of bases and affixes that combine to form
words.
 Teaching morphemes help teach more vocabulary because students can relate
words based on common morphemes.
 To know a language one must know the morphemes of that language.

3. Morphemes
 Morphemes are grouped into Two Classes
 Closed Classes – Morphemes keep the same form every time used and cannot be changed such as
conjunctions, pronouns, auxiliary verbs, determiners, prepositions, and inflectional suffixes.
 Open Classes – Morphemes change according to the grammar and meaning of a sentence such as
nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and derivational affixes.
 Free and Bound Morphemes
 Free – One morpheme and can stand alone
 Bound – One morpheme cannot stand alone and must be attached to a free morpheme
 Inflectional Bound – Can change meaning
 Derivational bound – Often changes part of speech
(From Linguistics for Teachers of ELLs)

4. Morphology Meets Communication Needs
 Learning morphemes helps students learn vocabulary which in turn helps them
communicate more effectively.
 Written and verbal communication will improve.
 Helps students cross languages and transfer knowledge for communication
purposes.

5. Phonology in Instruction
 Phonology is the study of how speech sounds form patterns.
 Phonology lets one know which sounds are from one’s language and which are
foreign.
 It lets you know the combinations of sounds that comprise possible words in one’s
language.
 Allows one to adjust pronunciation of morphemes.
 Helps one learn the different ways plurals are pronounced.
 May compare and contrast the way sounds are used in English to other languages.

6. Explanation of Phonological Rules
 Assimilation – Sounds in words become more similar to surrounding sounds
 Deletion - Sounds are left out of words
 Insertion - Sounds are put in words
 Metathesis – Sounds are reversed in order
(From Linguistics for Teachers of ELLs)

7. Phonology Meets Communication Needs
 Learning the correct way to pronounce words will help students communicate
effectively. They will understand others’ languages and others will understand
their languages.
 Phonology can also help the teacher effectively meet the needs of ELL students.
 The following link has great activities to use to help with phonological skills
https://pals.virginia.edu/tools-activities.html

8. References
 Fromkin, V., Rodman, R., & Hyams, N. (2014). An introduction to language
(10th ed.). Boston MA: Cengage Wadsworth.
 Pals activities. (2007). Phonological Awareness Literacy Screening. Retrieved
from https://pals.virginia.edu/tools-activities.html.
 What is morphology? Linguistics for Teachers of ELLS. Retrieved from
http://linguisticsforteachersofells.weebly.com/morphology-in-the-
classroom.html.
 What is phonology? Linguistics for Teachers of ELLS. Retrieved from
http://linguisticsforteachersofells.weebly.com/phonology-in-the-
classroom.html.