What is the primary purpose of morphological awareness instruction?

• A. To focus on handwriting development
• B. To help students infer meaning and create new words through prefixes, suffixes, and roots
• C. To memorize synonyms
• D. To learn color words

Answer: (B)

Morphological awareness instruction helps students understand how word parts convey meaning by focusing on prefixes, suffixes, and root words. This approach teaches them to infer the meaning of unfamiliar words and to build new words by combining morphemes they already know. For example, recognizing that prefix un- often means negation can help decide that unhappy means not happy, and adding suffix -ness can turn an adjective into a noun, as in happiness. This knowledge also supports vocabulary growth and reading comprehension because students can connect new and related words through shared morphemes rather than just memorizing word lists. It’s not about handwriting, memorizing synonyms, or learning specific color words.