Perspectives of the ASHA Special Interest Groups

SIG 1, Vol. 2(Part 2), 2017, Copyright © 2017 American Speech-Language-Hearing Association

Reading Longer Words: Insights Into Multisyllabic

Word Reading
Lindsay Heggie
Faculty of Education, Queen’s University at Kingston
Kingston, Ontario Canada

Lesly Wade-Woolley
Communication Sciences and Disorders, University of South Carolina
Columbia, SC
Disclosures
Financial: Lindsay Heggie has no relevant financial interests to disclose. Lesly Wade-Woolley has
no relevant financial interests to disclose.
Nonfinancial: Lindsay Heggie has no relevant nonfinancial interests to disclose. Lesly Wade-Woolley
has no relevant nonfinancial interests to disclose

Abstract
Students with persistent reading difficulties are often especially challenged by multisyllabic
words; they tend to have neither a systematic approach for reading these words nor the
confidence to persevere (Archer, Gleason, & Vachon, 2003; Carlisle & Katz, 2006; Moats,
1998). This challenge is magnified by the fact that the vast majority of English words are
multisyllabic and constitute an increasingly large proportion of the words in elementary
school texts beginning as early as grade 3 (Hiebert, Martin, & Menon, 2005; Kerns et al.,
2016). Multisyllabic words are more difficult to read simply because they are long, posing
challenges for working memory capacity. In addition, syllable boundaries, word stress,
vowel pronunciation ambiguities, less predictable grapheme-phoneme correspondences,
and morphological complexity all contribute to long words’ difficulty. Research suggests
that explicit instruction in both syllabification and morphological knowledge improve poor
readers’ multisyllabic word reading accuracy; several examples of instructional programs
involving one or both of these elements are provided.

Reading Longer Words: Insights Into Multisyllabic Word Reading

What do we need to know to teach children to read longer words? The challenge lies in the
fact that English orthography is considered deep or opaque, meaning the correspondences between
letters and sounds are frequently less direct than other more shallow, transparent languages. For
example, moth and both are spelled similarly, but have very different pronunciations.
This apparent strangeness is magnified in multisyllabic words, which are frequently
composed of more than one morpheme. English adheres to the isomorphism principle, which
states that morphemes (the smallest units of meaning, such as suffixes, prefixes, and roots)
are to be given priority over phonology (the sound system of language); thus, the orthographic
consistency of English is retained at the expense of grapheme-phoneme consistency (Verhoeven,
Schreuder, & Baayen, 2003). For example, heal and health are morphologically related and
spelled similarly, but in each case the vowel digraph “ea” is pronounced differently.
In the current article, we begin by discussing why multisyllabic words are important
and what makes them particularly challenging, especially for struggling readers. Following
this, we review several instructional approaches that address the challenges of multisyllabic
words in the context of flexible strategy implementation.

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 Critical Importance of Reading
Literacy is so deeply rooted in our culture that “we often take for granted the complex
cognitive abilities that are required to read effortlessly” (Norton & Wolf, 2012, p. 428). Indeed,
for those of us with a high level of literacy—especially if our fluency with the written word came
without a protracted effort—it can be hard to recall a time when we did not read, let alone the
steps we took to learn to read.
Research has resoundingly demonstrated the critical importance of oral language
for reading development: proficiency in written language is built upon a foundation of oral
language (Shanahan, MacArthur, Graham, & Fitzgerald, 2006; Snow, 1991; Snow, Burns, &
Griffin, 1998). We are able to make connections to meaning in written language thanks to our
ability to understand and engage with oral language. For example, the concept of the alphabetic
principle—that graphemes stand for sounds—is rooted in an understanding that spoken words
are made up of phonemes (e.g., “cat” is /k/-/a/-/t/). Tasks such as phoneme awareness, which
emphasize the skills that rely on our implicit knowledge of oral language, are particularly
predictive of reading (e.g., Carlisle, 2000; Deacon & Kirby, 2004; Nunes, Bryant, & Bindman,
1997; Singson, Mahony, & Mann, 2000; Wagner & Torgesen, 1987).
Although decoding words begins as a slow, laborious process, it finishes as a skill so
ingrained, so automatic, that as adults we process text instantaneously, seemingly without
effort. In fact, learning to read is a multifaceted skill that is gradually learned with instruction
and practice; to build skilled reading, children must integrate increasingly strategic components
of language comprehension (e.g., language structures, background knowledge) and with increasingly
automatic word recognition skills (e.g., phonological awareness, decoding, sight word recognition;
Scarborough, 2001).
Word Reading Difficulties
As clinicians are well aware, many students struggle with learning to read. At the heart of
most reading difficulties is the inability to read words (Shaywitz & Shaywitz, 2008; Stanovich &
Stanovich, 2003). Readers who are unable to read words fluently and efficiently will continue to
expend the majority of their limited cognitive resources painstakingly decoding, with little to
no resources remaining for the demanding task of comprehension (LaBerge & Samuels, 1974;
Samuels, 1994; Snowling & Hulme, 2005). Such slow, stilted reading is not only difficult,
unenjoyable, and frustrating, but it also stunts readers’ growth; these weak readers are less
likely to practice reading and so do not improve their skills or build fluency and automaticity
(e.g., Lyon, Shaywitz, & Shaywitz, 2003; Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Verhoeven & Schreuder, 2011).

Why Are Multisyllabic Words Important?

Herein we focus specifically on multisyllabic word reading, on which comparatively
little research has been conducted (Roberts, Christo, & Shefelbine, 2010), despite the fact
that multisyllabic words constitute the vast majority—over 90%—of words in English (Baayen,
Piepenbrock, & Gulikers, 1995). Studies of English word recognition tend to rely far more heavily
on monosyllabic than multisyllabic words as stimulus items (Roberts et al., 2010). Although
some work has been conducted on issues related to longer words (e.g., syllabification, Treiman
& Zukowski, 1990, 1996), researchers have noted that the evidence for related processes (e.g.,
how beginning readers identify syllables and morphemes, how lexical stress is assigned when
reading multisyllabic words) is still insufficient (Verhoeven & Perfetti, 2003).
This imbalance has direct consequences for the classroom. Students who continue
to struggle with reading into secondary school may be able to decode monosyllabic words but
will often continue to have difficulty with multisyllabic words, for which they have neither a
systematic approach nor the confidence to persevere (Archer et al., 2003; Carlisle & Katz, 2006;
Moats, 1999). This difficulty is compounded by the fact that multisyllabic words become both

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 increasingly frequent and relevant for readers over elementary and into secondary school. Studies
estimate that this “orthographic avalanche” (Share, 1995; p. 153) begins around grade 5, when
students encounter approximately 10,000 new words in print per year, the majority of which are
multisyllabic (Archer et al., 2003; Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Other researchers have estimated
that the yearly increase is even more dramatic, with as many as 20,000 new multisyllabic words
in print per year, beginning in grades 3 and 4 (Hiebert et al., 2005; Kearns et al., 2016; Zeno,
Ivens, Millard, & Duvvuri, 1995). Not only do multisyllabic words constitute the majority of
words students must read, they also carry the meaning of content area passages (Archer et al.,
2003), and even the best reading comprehension strategies cannot compensate for a student
who is unable to accurately decode the words.
What Makes Multisyllabic Words More Difficult?
There are several reasons why multisyllabic words are hypothesized to be more difficult
to read than monosyllabic words. In fact, they are more difficult just by virtue of being longer
(Jared & Seidenberg, 1990; New, Ferrand, Pallier, & Brysbaert, 2006). For example, a reader
who decodes a 10-letter word (e.g., strawberry, confidence) without the ability to use chunking
will struggle as the task exceeds her working memory capacity. But there are a number of
additional complexities that come with increased word length: syllable boundaries (Perry, Ziegler,
& Zorzi, 2010), linguistic stress and vowel reduction (Chomsky, 1970; Ševa, Monaghan, & Arciuli,
2009), vowel pronunciation ambiguities (Venezky, 1999), less predictable grapheme-phoneme
correspondences (Berninger, 1994; Venezky, 1999), and morphological complexity (Carlisle &
Stone, 2005; Nagy, Anderson, Schommer, Scott, & Stallman, 1989; Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott,
2006; Nagy, Berninger, Abbott, Vaughan, & Vermeulen, 2003).
Although they are relatively few in number, the studies that have been conducted on
multisyllabic word reading have demonstrated that a number of factors support children’s
decoding of these longer and more complex words. As we noted above, reading is a multifaceted
skill requiring the integration of language comprehension skills (e.g., language structures,
background knowledge) and automatic word recognition skills (e.g., phonological awareness,
decoding, sight word recognition; Scarborough, 2001). With so many cognitive and linguistic
skills contributing to reading, it can be difficult to determine the focus of instruction when
students are struggling. When the goal is improvement in multisyllabic word reading, a review of
existing instructional approaches reveals similar components that have been shown to improve
word reading outcomes.

Programs that Specifically Address Multisyllabic Word Reading

To this point, we have contextualized the importance of multisyllabic words as well as
discussed some of the features that make reading long words challenging for struggling readers.
But the difficulty inherent in long words is not restricted to struggling readers; because the
acquisition of new vocabulary and concepts through reading is a hallmark of the upper elementary
grades and beyond, even typical readers may experience challenges in reading long words when they
are first encountered. While not plentiful, some research has identified instructional strategies that
address the challenges of long words. In the section that follows, we will describe some elements
that are frequently included in programs that have been designed to support multisyllabic word
reading, as well as one that has yet to be widely integrated.
Syllabification
Research reveals a number of ways to approach instruction in syllabification, including
instruction in decoding syllable patterns and syllable segmentation techniques. The LANGUAGE!
program (Greene, 1996; Moats, 2004) is a comprehensive remedial program targeting multiple
language components for adolescents reading significantly below grade level. Along with components
that incorporate an approach to multisyllabic word reading in which students are given explicit,
structured instruction about how to analyze, read, and spell six syllable patterns: closed (e.g.,
combination), open (e.g., vacation), vowel combination (e.g., spreader), r-controlled (e.g., imperious),

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 VC-e (attribute), and consonant-le (e.g., whistle). Moats (2004) reported significant pre-post
gains for students in grades 6, 7, 8, and 10 on standardized measures of reading and spelling.
Diliberto, Beattie, Flowers, and Algozzine (2008) reported on the Syllable Skills Instruction
Curriculum, which incorporated the same six syllable types plus specific steps for syllabification
and rules for syllable division. Syllabification steps involved the identification of affixes and
matching the letters in the word base to the various syllable types. Strategies for parsing syllables
within a word relied on letter patterns (e.g., “When vowel-consonant-consonant-vowel (VCCV)
patterns occur, divide the word between the two consonants (VC/CV). The first syllable will be a
closed syllable with a short vowel sound” (Diliberto et al., 2008, p. 20). Delivered as a supplement
to a Direct Instruction phonics curriculum, this syllable-based training program yielded gains in
word reading for remedial reading students in grades 6, 7, and 8 relative to a control group.
Lovett, Lacerenza, and Borden (2000) described a multilevel phonics strategy program
(PHAST) for upper elementary and middle school with severe reading difficulties. Students
learn to “sound out” a large set of one-syllable “key words” containing frequent orthographic
rimes (e.g., rain, luck) that are then used as spelling anchors when tackling longer words. When
reading a multisyllabic word, students first place a checkmark over every vowel or vowel digraph
and then look for known spelling patterns that begin with that vowel. This process is accompanied
by structured self-talk dialogues to train students’ metacognitive processing, with the ultimate
goal of independent strategy execution. For example, when decoding the word thunderstruck, the
dialogue runs:
First, I’ll checkmark the vowels and then look for spelling patterns I know. I will underline
u-n, e-r, and u-c-k. I’ll use the keywords for fun, her and luck to help me read this word.
So, if I know fun, this is thun, if I know her, this is der, and if I know luck, this is struck.
Now, I’ll blend the parts together – thunderstruck. I used rhyming and it worked! (Lovett
et al., 2000, p. 466).
Another example, this time for slightly younger students, is a word-level curriculum delivered
by tutors to second and third graders at risk for reading difficulties (Vadasy, Sanders, & Peyton,
2006). Like PHAST (Lovett et al., 2000), this program begins by laying a foundation of monosyllabic
word reading and spelling skills before introducing a set of multisyllabic words comprised of roots
and common affixes. With modeling by tutors, students began by chunking the long words orally.
Syllabification was allowed to vary somewhat (e.g., transportation might be segmented as trans-
por-ta-tion or tran-sport-a-tion). Students were advised to notice the vowels in the printed words and
find the syllables before reading and blending them together. Each session also included spelling
multisyllabic words and reading aloud from grade-level texts. This study yielded significant gains
in word level accuracy and fluency for the tutored students over untutored peers.
O’Connor and colleagues (2015) describe a curriculum for eighth grade poor readers
that incorporates word reading, vocabulary, and comprehension instructional strategies in
successive cycles over course of a school year; the first cycle involves explicit instruction in
decoding multisyllabic words using the ESHALOV (“Every Syllable Has At Least One Vowel”)
mnemonic (O’Connor et al., 2015). The ESHALOV strategy requires students to begin by underlining
all of the vowels in a word (e.g., unexplainable) and joining any vowel digraphs (“vowel teams”) into
one unit. Next, students identify known affixes (un-, -able) and count the number of syllables to
expect, based on the number of vowel units. Finally, students used this information to break the
word into parts for decoding: un – ex – plain – able. Over the course of the program, although the
amount of time spent in explicit decoding practice decreased, poor readers showed increasing
gains on experimenter-devised word reading tests, although this improvement did not translate
to standardized measures of oral reading fluency (O’Connor et al., 2015).
Some interventions focus solely on syllabification for word reading and require less
instructional time. For example, one four-session program for poor readers in grades six through
nine improved student reading outcomes and demonstrated generalization to standardized

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 reading measures over students who practiced reading the same words and over those with no
additional practice (Bhattacharya & Ehri, 2004). The four sessions consisted of instruction using
a multistep process. First, students read multisyllabic words aloud, with support if necessary
(e.g., vanilla, document, construction), then they divided them into spoken syllables or beats,
raising a finger on each beat. Next, students matched spoken to written syllables by exposing
each syllable with their thumb while it was spoken and covering the remaining letters. Flexible
segmentation in this step was allowed as long as each syllable contained a single vowel or vowel
digraph, each letter was included in only one syllable, and the letter string formed a legal pronunciation
(e.g., sim-ple or simp-le, but not si-mple) Finally, students blended the syllables to read the word.
Morphology
There has been ample research to suggest that individual differences in morphological
knowledge are predictive of reading outcomes. Because the majority of multisyllabic words are
morphologically complex, word reading strategies that focus on morphology are particularly
useful for long words. Frequently occurring affixes (e.g., in-, dis-, -ful, -less) form chunks that
appear in many words and also share meaning, supporting not only readers’ decoding but their
comprehension. Several of the studies we have discussed thus far incorporate morphological
affixes in word analysis procedures (e.g., Lovett et al., 2000; O’Connor et al., 2015; Vadasy et al.,
2006). Teaching frequent morphemes has three benefits: (a) separating the affix from the root
helps reduce the size of the word into manageable chunks; (b) teaching the meaning builds
conceptual knowledge; and (c) combining affixes with roots facilitates spelling (O’Connor, 2014).
Another benefit of morphological instruction is that, once acquired, morphological
knowledge is generative. Readers’ knowledge of morphemes can be applied to pronounce and
hypothesize the meaning of unknown words. Instructional activities involving morphology vary
widely, but some are particularly relevant to reading long words. For example, activities like word
sorting can help students determine when re- is a prefix (e.g., readmission ) and when it is part
of the root (e.g., readership; Berninger et al., 2003). This knowledge is useful for syllabification
strategies such as ESHALOV, wherein affix separation prevents the reader from wrongly assuming
that the ea in readmission is a vowel digraph that anchors a syllable, as in readership.
Suffix Types. Not all suffixes change the number of syllables in a word when they are
applied to a base (e.g., inflectional suffixes such as -s, -ed ), but derivational suffixes generally
change both the number of syllables and the word’s grammatical category (e.g., luck [n.] → lucky
[adj.]). Some derivational suffixes also have a direct effect on word stress, moving it to presuffixal
position (e.g., educate → education). These features increase the opacity of the relationship
between the stem and the derivation and can affect the speed and accuracy of derived word
reading (Carlisle, Stone & Katz, 2001; Leong, 1989).
In addition to these changes, derivational suffixes frequently result in orthographic
changes to the stem. Three common changes are: (a) the omission of a final -e when the suffix
begins with a vowel (e.g., pleasing); (b) the doubling of the final consonant when the stem ends
in CVC (e.g., spinner ); and (c) changing a final -y to an -i (e.g., friendliness). Although these are
spelling rules, a consolidated understanding of them can help students recognize the words in
morphological families for reading. For example, Kirk and Gillon (2009) described “word sort”
activities wherein students determined whether or not the word stem had been changed as a
result of suffixation (e.g., dust → dusty, ice → icy). The challenge level increases with words that
are composed of more than one suffix (e.g., carelessness); children who can correctly identify that
icy has had the final e dropped with the addition of adjectival –y may be less likely to identify this
in the word icier (O’Connor, 2014).
Word Stress. While syllabification and morphological analysis are frequently included
in decoding strategies for multisyllabic words, few programs explicitly incorporate instruction in
the placement of word stress or accent. Stress assignment is important in English because
unstressed vowels are very frequently reduced to schwa; the challenge for readers rests in the
fact that there are no reliable, overt cues in the orthography to signal where primary stress lies

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 as there are in some other languages. One exception to the lack of explicit focus on word
stress in interventions is Diliberto and colleagues’ inclusion of English “accenting patterns”
and conventions of stress assignment in their 20-lesson syllable skills intervention (Diliberto
et al., 2008). As noted earlier, students were instructed on syllable patterns and syllabification
steps and rules, applying their knowledge to the decoding and encoding of nonsense and low-
frequency monosyllabic and multisyllabic words. Instruction of accenting patterns included
reminders to: (a) accent the root or base of a word, not the prefix or suffix; (b) accent the first
syllable of a disyllabic word; and (c) place the accent on the third syllable from the end in a
trisyllabic word or longer that ends in VCe (e.g., LEGislate, PREcipice). This program saw greater
gains for participating students than for the control group, suggesting that explicit attention
to word stress may have added value for multisyllabic word reading programs.

The Key to Multisyllabic Word Reading: Flexibility

An overarching principle for multisyllabic word reading instruction is flexibility. Many
strategies for reading long words are probabilistic in that they rely on the distributional features
of English in the steps and sequences they establish. For example, most disyllabic words in
English have stress on the first syllable (e.g., PICture, PERfect ), but not all of them (e.g., maCHINE,
conTEMPT ). As a result, a reader’s first decoding attempt may be incorrect or lack precision that
results in a real (but erroneous) word, requiring flexibility to try again with another strategy. Some
of the programs reviewed here deliberately incorporate flexibility. Two that we discussed allowed
flexibility in syllable segmentation (Bhattacharya & Ehri, 2004; Vadasy et al., 2006). In their
reading intervention using common affixes, Vadasy and colleagues (2006) reported a modification
to the original curriculum that incorporated explicit practice with “vowel flexing,” or adjusting
pronunciation when encountering vowels that are properly rendered as schwa. Similarly, the
PHAST program (Lovett et al., 2000) teaches a strategy where students must consider alternate
pronunciations of vowel digraphs (e.g., ea in steak versus head ). Flexibility in decoding, or having
a “set for variability” (Tunmer & Chapman, 2012), allows the reader to engage more successfully
with the complexity inherent in multisyllabic words.
We noted at the outset that students who struggle with multisyllabic words tend neither to
have a systematic approach nor the confidence to persevere until they read these words correctly
(Archer et al., 2003; Carlisle & Katz, 2006; Moats, 1999). This can be directly addressed when
teaching word reading strategies. If we are clear that any one strategy may not necessarily work,
depending on the word, then readers can expect to apply several strategies until the word has
been accurately read. The importance of flexibility is reflected in the fact that many of the programs
we reviewed here are comprehensive, involving more than syllabification or morphological analysis.
Multisyllabic words do not exist in a vacuum, and nor do readers. Finally, it is important to
remember that especially for students with profound reading difficulties, well-understood and well-
integrated multisyllabic word reading strategies will only be achieved after a great deal of practice.

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History:
Received February 15, 2017
Revised May 02, 2017
Accepted May 24, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1044/persp2.SIG1.86

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