Studies carried out in alphabetic languages show that the ability to reflect upon morphemes, morphological awareness, is related to the success in recognizing words and comprehension in reading and spelling. Portuguese is a language with a fairy normal orthography in terms of letter-sound correspondence rules. This study investigated whether morphological awareness helps with spelling in Portuguese and whether this contribution is independent of other cognitive aspects of language such as vocabulary and memory. The sample was composed of children from the 2nd and 3rd grades. The Pearson correlation results showed that morphological awareness is associated with spelling; when memory and vocabulary are controlled this relationship is significant.
Literacy; Cognition; Metalinguistic awareness; Spelling
