Children’s Written Morphology Skills Demonstrated in Third Grade Narrative Responses

Morphological knowledge supports vocabulary, reading, and writing, yet its development in school-aged children remains underexplored, particularly within classroom writing. Prior studies have relied on isolated subtests rather than authentic written production to evaluate morphological skill. This study addressed a practical and theoretical gap by examining how third-grade students demonstrate morphological knowledge through narrative writing and how these patterns relate to subtest performance. The study aimed to describe how students used base words, inflections, and derivations in their writing, and examine the extent to which these written features predicted performance on a broader morphological knowledge construct. The sample included 265 third-grade students. Writing samples were analyzed using a web-based linguistic tool and coded for six morpheme levels. Subtest scores were drawn from a morphological awareness measure. Descriptive analyses, correlations, and structural equation modeling were used to examine relationships among variables. Students produced a wide range of morphological forms, with increased complexity in higher-performing writers. The use of advanced morphemes (Levels 5–6) significantly predicted the latent morphological knowledge factor, although the variance explained was modest (R2 = .03). Writing features showed weak to moderate correlations with subtest scores. Overall, written expression provided unique insight into students’ morphological knowledge that was not fully captured by structured subtests.