Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in second-language adolescent learners : an intervention study

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of instructional approaches to phonics and morphological awareness on literacy development of second-language learners. Of the 106 Chinese-speaking adolescents in a 6-hour English training programme, about half were taught affix and root meanings, while others were taught basic phonic rules. The focus lay on teaching students how to break words apart into meaningful parts and clusters of sounds. Chinese adolescents receiving morphological instruction performed significantly better on affixed word production and vocabulary knowledge by inferring word meanings from word parts. They seemed better able to discriminate affixed words on the basis of prefix and suffix. This study provides empirical evidence for the importance of teaching morphemes in the English-as-second-language curriculum.