Role of Morphological and Metalinguistic Awareness on Reading among Turkish EFL Learners

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of morphological treatment on morphological awareness and reading comprehension skill in a foreign language teaching. Experimental design was used in this study which was conducted with 74 freshmen who are studying at Translation and Interpreting Department. Following the Oxford Quick Placement Test and Nation’s Vocabulary Knowledge Test, the participants were divided into two groups as experimental and control groups. Before starting the training process, both groups were pretested with ‘Morphological Correction Test (MCT)’ and ‘Reading Comprehension Test (RCT)’. Following the completion of the pre-test, the treatment period of experimental group for 2 semesters started, while the control group completed the same exercises and studies without focusing on the morphological awareness. Behind the training, post-test study was applied to both groups and the differences were analysed. According to the results, the experimental group outperformed the control group in MCT and RCT. In other words, the morphological awareness of the experimental group increased efficiently; in addition to this, their reading comprehension skills developed as well. Besides, it can be said that the participants benefited effectively and consciously from the explicit training period of morphological awareness and this helped them improve their metalinguistic capacity.