What the learner connects is not the same as how the written word is built.
Orthographic mapping has become one of the most frequently discussed ideas in literacy, and there is value in helping teachers understand how written words become familiar enough to recognize quickly. Linnea Ehri’s work has been central to that discussion. Her account describes how spellings become connected in memory with pronunciations and meanings. More recently, morphology has also been given a larger place in that explanation.
The trouble begins when this kind of psychological model is treated as though it were also a description of written English. It is not. A model of what a learner connects, stores, or retrieves does not tell us how the written word itself is constructed. Those are different questions, even though literacy education has often blurred them.
Many educators have seen diagrams linking orthography, phonology, and semantics. Some newer versions include morphology. The addition of morphology may make the model more complete as an account of the information involved in recognizing and remembering words, but it does not turn the diagram into a model of the writing system. The labels still represent kinds of knowledge or mental representation. The connections still describe what may become associated in the learner. They do not show the linguistic organization of the written word.
A model of written English would need to show how letters form graphemes, how graphemes operate within written morphemes, and how written morphemes combine within written words. It would also need to distinguish those written units from the corresponding units of speech. A triangle connecting orthography, phonology, meaning, and even morphology does none of that.
I thought they were showing me the writing system
When I saw words such as orthography, graphemes, and morphemes in diagrams about reading and spelling, I assumed the diagrams were showing the structure of written language. Why wouldn’t I? We were talking about learning to read and spell. I thought orthography meant the actual writing system, graphemes meant the written units inside it, and morphemes meant the meaningful written structures we could see and investigate in words.
It took me a surprisingly long time to understand that this was not necessarily what the models were describing. In many cases, the labels referred to mental representations: what the learner knows, stores, activates, or connects while recognizing a word. A grapheme in the diagram was not necessarily being presented as a unit inside a written morpheme. A morpheme was not necessarily the written structure visible in a word family. These were proposed representations and processes within the mind of the reader.
Once I understood that, I had another question. Why had I been given so many models of what might be happening inside the learner and so few models of the writing system the learner was expected to understand?
We were teaching reading and spelling. The written language was sitting directly in front of us. Yet the dominant conversation kept directing our attention inward, toward storage, mapping, processing, and retrieval. I could not understand why the structure of written English itself was not the starting point.
I did not clearly see oral and written language modeled as separate but corresponding systems until I began studying Structured Word Inquiry and encountered Peter Bowers’s writing. His parallel nested model showed me something that now seems obvious: speech and writing have related but different units. Phonemes are not graphemes. Spoken morphemes are not written morphemes. Spoken words are not written words.
That was when I finally understood why the earlier models had been so difficult for me to interpret. I had been looking at psychological models and assuming they were linguistic models of written English.
They were never intended to do the same job.
What Ehri’s account is actually explaining
Ehri’s orthographic-mapping account is concerned with how a written word becomes bonded in memory to a word the learner already knows. The learner knows the pronunciation and meaning. Through attention to the spelling and its relationship to speech, the written form becomes connected with that existing knowledge.
More recently, Ehri has acknowledged a larger role for morphology in the process. That is an important development because morphology was pushed aside for years or treated as something to introduce only after children had mastered the supposedly basic code.
Still, the model remains concerned with learning and memory. It tells us about the connections a reader forms. It does not display the internal organization of the written word itself.
We do not see letters forming graphemes, graphemes operating within written morphemes, or written morphemes combining to form words. We also do not see a clear distinction between a morpheme in speech and a morpheme in writing.
Adding morphology to the diagram does not change the kind of model it is.
Including morphology is not the same as modeling written morphology
This distinction has become especially important now that morphology is appearing in literacy models, courses, books, and professional development. Its growing prominence is welcome. For years, morphology was delayed, minimized, or treated as advanced vocabulary work. But the presence of the word morphology does not tell us how morphology is being understood.
In an account of orthographic mapping, morphology may be treated as one type of information involved in storing and recognizing a word. A learner may connect a spelling with a pronunciation, a meaning, and an awareness of meaningful parts. That is still an account of the learner’s knowledge and memory.
Written morphology is something more specific. Written morphemes are units of the writing system. They contain graphemes and combine to form written words. Their boundaries affect how the letters in a word can be analyzed. A model may acknowledge morphological knowledge without showing any of this structure.
That is why including morphology in a diagram does not establish that the diagram represents written English. It only establishes that morphology has been included among the forms of information believed to contribute to word learning.
A triangle with morphology in it is still not the writing system.
Spoken and written morphemes are not identical
The word morpheme is often used without specifying whether the discussion concerns speech or writing. That makes the explanation sound simpler, but it conceals an important distinction.
A spoken morpheme belongs to oral language. A written morpheme belongs to written language. The two correspond, but they are not the same object and do not always have the same form.
Consider the plural suffix. In cats, the written suffix <s> is pronounced /s/. In dogs, the same written suffix is pronounced /z/. In wishes, the plural is written <es>, and the spoken form includes a vowel. The grammatical meaning remains plural, while the spoken and written forms vary.
Word families make the distinction even clearer. The written base <heal> is visible in both heal and health:
<heal>
<heal + th → health>
The pronunciation changes, but the written relationship remains visible. The spelling preserves the connection between the words even though speech does not preserve a single pronunciation of the base.
When spelling is approached mainly as a representation of pronunciation, examples such as heal and health appear troublesome. When written words are examined through their morphological structure, the relationship is straightforward. The writing system is preserving meaning and family connection across a change in pronunciation.
A model of memory may tell us that readers connect these forms. It does not necessarily show why the written relationship exists in the first place.
What Peter Bowers’s model makes visible
Peter Bowers’s parallel nested model addresses a different question from Ehri’s orthographic-mapping account. It shows the organization of oral and written language and keeps their units distinct.
On the oral side, phonemes operate within spoken morphemes, and spoken morphemes combine within spoken words. On the written side, graphemes operate within written morphemes, and written morphemes combine within written words. Letters and phones can also be shown at the level below graphemes and phonemes.
The model does not deny the relationship between speech and writing. It makes the correspondence visible without treating one system as though it were simply a version of the other. Phonemes correspond with graphemes, spoken morphemes correspond with written morphemes, and spoken words correspond with written words. Correspondence does not make the units identical.
That may sound elementary, but literacy instruction frequently collapses the distinction. Children are taught to begin with a spoken word, divide it into phonemes, and assign spellings to those sounds. Morphology and meaning are often introduced only after the word has already been analyzed through speech.
Bowers’s model shows why that sequence can be inadequate. Written words already have morphological structure before the learner begins sounding them out. Graphemes operate inside written morphemes, and they cannot cross morpheme boundaries. The structure of the word therefore has a direct bearing on the graphemic analysis.
Consider reacted:
<re + act + ed>
The word is not simply a continuous series of letters waiting to be divided according to pronunciation. It contains three written morphemes. Those morphemes are present from the beginning and help determine how the word should be investigated.
A morphology-inclusive account of orthographic mapping. Original explanatory schematic based on Linnea Ehri’s account of how spellings become connected with pronunciations and meanings in memory. Not a reproduction of a published figure.
What becomes connected in memory: spelling, pronunciation, meaning, and morphology as forms of knowledge involved in recognizing a word.
How oral and written language are structured: spoken and written units shown separately, with the correspondences between them made visible.
Placed together, the difference is much easier to see. One model is concerned with what the learner stores and connects. The other shows the structure of the language systems the learner is trying to understand.
Both questions are worth asking. They simply require different models.
The writing system had been described, but most teachers were not shown it
None of this means that the structure of English orthography was unknown before Peter Bowers. Linguists, orthographers, spelling researchers, and some educators had examined the organization of written English for decades. Richard Venezky’s The Structure of English Orthography, published in 1970, is an important example. There was also substantial work on spelling development, morphology, word relationships, and the ways English spelling represents more than pronunciation.
Some of that knowledge entered education through developmental spelling, word study, and morphological instruction. It did not, however, become the central picture most teachers were given when they were taught how reading works.
The models that dominated literacy training were usually models of the learner. They described phonological processing, lexical storage, recognition, memory, and the connections formed among spellings, pronunciations, and meanings. Teachers could receive extensive explanations of what was believed to be happening in the mind without receiving an equally clear account of how written words themselves were structured.
Peter Bowers did not invent graphemes, written morphemes, or the organization of English spelling. What his work did for me, and has done for many educators, was bring that linguistic structure into literacy instruction in a form that could actually be seen and used. The parallel nested model places oral and written language beside one another. Word sums, matrices, and morphological families then give teachers and learners ways to investigate that structure directly.
The writing system had been described for years. I simply had not been shown it.
Why the distinction matters in classrooms
This is not simply an argument about diagrams. The model a teacher receives affects what that teacher notices in a word.
When orthography is treated as a visual form connected with pronunciation and meaning, its internal organization can disappear. Graphemes are then taught as though they can be identified across an uninterrupted string of letters. Morphology becomes something to add later, often as vocabulary enrichment or advanced word study.
When the written word is treated as a structured linguistic object, the investigation begins differently. Meaning and morphology help identify the written units. Graphemes are considered within morphemes. Changes in pronunciation across a family are no longer automatic evidence of irregularity. The spelling can be examined for the information it preserves.
English writing represents phonology, but it also represents morphology, meaning, and historical relationships. A psychological model of word learning may include all of those forms of information. It still does not show how they are organized within the writing system.
Orthographic mapping can help explain how a written word becomes familiar to a learner. It cannot, by itself, explain what the written word is made of.
That is the distinction teachers need to see. A model of the learner is not a model of written English, even when morphology has been added to the diagram.
