Dynamic assessment of morphological awareness in the EFL context

Mahnoosh Hamavandi,Golnar Mazdayasna,Mohammad Javad Rezai,Sammy King Fai Hui

doi:10.1080/2331186x.2017.1324254

Abstract

AbstractThe Vygotskyan concept of the Zone of Proximal Development forms the basis of DA which endorses interaction between teacher and learner during the assessment procedure. Although morphological awareness constitutes a key aspect of reading comprehension, little research has addressed the effect of morphological dynamic assessment (DA) on EFL learners’ reading comprehension in EFL settings. The primary purpose of this study was to investigate the DA effect on reading comprehension. The other aim of the study was to examine which method of assessing morphological knowledge could predict and account for the EFL learners’ reading ability. To fulfill these aims, 50 intermediate EFL learners, divided into experimental and control groups, participated in the study. The participants in the experimental group were assessed using a dynamic assessment procedure, while the participants in the control group were taught the morphology following the methodology proposed by the institute. The Nelson–Denny Reading T...

Highlights

According to Carlisle (2003), morphological awareness refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphological structure of words as well as morphemes. Wolter and Pike (2015) state that morphological awareness is the metalinguistic ability to understand and manipulate the smaller meaningful parts of language such as prefixes, base words/roots, and suffixes (e.g. -ing, -ist) to develop morphologically complex word forms
This study was the first attempt in investigating morphological analysis skills as well as exploring the power of this instrument in predicting EFL learners’ morphological awareness and reading comprehension using a dynamic measure
The findings gleaned from this study can shed light on the impact of dynamic assessment in the EFL context as the instruction was effective in improving EFL learners’ reading comprehension

Summary

Introduction

According to Carlisle (2003), morphological awareness refers to the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphological structure of words as well as morphemes. Wolter and Pike (2015) state that morphological awareness is the metalinguistic ability to understand and manipulate the smaller meaningful parts of language such as prefixes (e.g. re-), base words/roots (e.g. cycle), and suffixes (e.g. -ing, -ist) to develop morphologically complex word forms (e.g. recycle, cycling, recycling, cyclist). Considering the linguistic nature of morphological awareness and its relationship with other aspects of vocabulary knowledge, it is crucial to investigate the development of this skill for English language learners. Most of the studies that have revealed the unique contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension have been conducted on monolingual children, those speaking English (Kieffer & Lesaux, 2008; Ku & Anderson, 2003; Wang, Cheng, & Chen, 2006; Wang, Ko, & Choi, 2009) or adolescents (Nagy, Berninger, & Abbott, 2006). Nagy et al (2006) conducted a study on child and adolescent English readers and examined the extent that morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge contributed to reading comprehension using the SEM method. The results showed that morphological awareness contributed significantly to vocabulary knowledge, but it predicted reading comprehension when the impact of vocabulary knowledge was excluded

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