The Effects of Three Methods of Morphological Awareness on Iranian Intermediate EFL Learners’ Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge

Abstract

Morphological awareness is currently receiving an increasing amount of attention in the literature on second language learning. This study investigated the effect of three methods of morphological awareness (i.e. Textual Enhancement (TE), Metalinguistic Explanation (ME), and Morpheme Recognition Task (MRT)) on Iranian intermediate EFL learners’ depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge. The participants of the study included 90 intermediate EFL students selected based on their scores on the Oxford Quick Placement Test (OQPT). They were divided into three groups (i.e. TE, ME, MRT), each including 30 participants. Each group was taught 60 English derivational affixes including prefixes, suffixes and roots through three different methods of morphological awareness. In order to examine the participants’ depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge, they were asked to respectively take Word Associates Test (WAT) and Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) as both pretests and posttests. In order to examine the difference between the pretest and posttest scores of the participants’ VLT and WAT, a paired-samples t-test was run for each group. In order to explore if there were any significant differences among the posttest scores of the three groups on the VLT and WAT, two separate one-way ANOVAs were conducted. Results indicated that (i) all three methods of morphological awareness have significant effects on improving EFL learners’ depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge, and (ii) that there was no significant difference among the three groups in terms of their depth of vocabulary knowledge, but there were significant differences between the ME group and the other two groups (i.e. TE and MRT) regarding their breadth of vocabulary knowledge. Considering the implications, teachers should raise students’ awareness to utilize affixes. Syllabus designers and lexicographers should also take account of different techniques and tasks for raising EFL/ESL learners’ morphological awareness.