How does morphological awareness contribute to literacy?

Morphological awareness plays a crucial role in literacy by helping students understand how words are constructed and what they mean based on their components, which include prefixes, suffixes, and root words. This understanding enhances their ability to decode unfamiliar words and fosters vocabulary development by allowing them to make educated guesses about the meanings of new words they encounter. Recognizing the relationships between word parts empowers students to analyze and derive meanings effectively, which is essential for reading comprehension and overall literacy development.

In contrast, other options either place too much emphasis on memorization without the critical understanding of word formation, narrow the focus to phonics which is just one aspect of literacy, or highlight fluency which, while important, does not specifically address the understanding of word structure and meaning that morphological awareness provides.