The effect of explicit morphological awareness training in English on high-school students’ morphological skills in English, French, and Standard Arabic: a quasi-experimental study

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ABSTRACT This study explores the effects of explicit training in morphological skills in English (L3) on high-school students’ morphological awareness in English, French (L2), and Standard Arabic (L1). It specifically investigates whether explicit instruction in English morphology enhances students’ word decomposition, word derivation, and word inflection abilities in English and whether it leads to the development of similar skills in French and Standard Arabic. The study employed a quasi-experimental design involving 66 first-year baccalaureate students, divided into an experimental (n = 34) and a control (n = 32) group. Written pre- and post-intervention tests were administered to assess the participants’ word decomposition, word derivation, and word inflection skills in the three languages. MANOVA results indicated significant improvement in the experimental group’s English morphological skills. Notable progress was observed in word derivation and word decomposition in French, but not in word inflection. Only word derivation in Standard Arabic significantly improved. These results suggest that morphological awareness can be effectively developed through targeted instruction. The study underscores the efficacy of explicit English morphological instruction in enriching morphological skills in English, word derivation and word decomposition in French, and word derivation in Standard Arabic, and suggests establishing a connection among these languages for leveraging (meta-)linguistic knowledge transfer.