Several studies have demonstrated that morphological awareness is related to reading and writing acquisition. However, there are different types of morphemes. The present study explores differences in derivational and flexional awareness development in Brazilian Portuguese. The sample in this study was constituted of 134 children from 1st to 4th grades of primary education who accomplished tasks which assessed their knowledge of derivational and flexional morphology. The results show that for all grades flexional morphology tasks were easier than derivational morphology ones. Performance improved from second to third grade but not from third to fourth grade. In general, results corroborate those already found in English and French languages.
Derivational morphology; flexional morphology; morphological awareness; metalinguístic awareness
