Morphological Processing Difficulty of Thai Learners of English with Different Levels of English Proficiency

Abstract

English morphology is said to be one of the most difficult subjects of linguistic study Thai students can acquire. The present study aims at examining Thai learners of English with different levels of English language proficiency in terms of their 1) morphological knowledge and 2) morphological processing behaviors. Two experiments were designed to test 200 participants from Mae Fah Luang University. The results showed that students with low language proficiency (LL group) have less morphological knowledge than those with intermediate language proficiency (IL group). However, those in the IL group still show some evidence of morphological difficulty, though they have better skills in English. For morphological processing behavior, it was found that, with less knowledge, participants in the LL group employ a one-by-one word matching technique rather than chunking a package of information as do those in the IL group. Accordingly, unlike those in the IL group, students in the LL group could not generate well-organized outputs.