This study investigated within and cross-language effects of morphological awareness on word reading among Spanish-speaking
children who were English Language Learners. Participants were 97 Spanish-speaking children in grade 4 and grade 7. Morphological
awareness in Spanish and in English was evaluated with two measures of derivational morphology. The results showed that Spanish
morphological awareness contributed unique variance to Spanish word reading after controlling for other reading related variables.
English morphological awareness also explained unique variance in English word reading. Cross-linguistic transfer of morphological
awareness was observed from Spanish to English, but not from English to Spanish. These results suggest that morphological
awareness is important for word reading in Spanish, a shallow orthography with a complex morphological system. They also suggest
that morphological awareness developed in children’s L1 is associated with word reading in English, their L2.
Keywords Morphological awareness - Reading - English language learners - Literacy - Cross-linguistic - Word reading