The Effects of English

Morphology on EFL Learners’

Vocabulary Development

Adviser: Dr. Huang

Date of Submission: 2001/6/21

Student Name: Pan Chih-Pin

Student Number: A8960042

Class: 1A, DML, NPUST

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Chapter Page1. Introduction 1

1.1. Statement of the problem 11.2. Research questions 21.3. Significance of the study 21.4. Delimitations 31.5. Limitations 41.6. Definition of terms 51.7. Summary 5

2. Literature review 62.1. Effectiveness of vocabulary development 6

2.1.1. Morphology and vocabulary development 62.1.2. Semantics and vocabulary development 7

2.2. Recall of learned vocabulary 82.2.1. Morphology and vocabulary retention 92.2.2. Semantics and vocabulary retention 10

2.3. Summary 113. Methodology 12

3.1. Population 123.2. Instrument 133.3. Data collection 13

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CHAPTER ONE

INTRODUCTION

Being bilingual or multilingual has been considered an essential skill in this ever-

changing international community. In order to deal with this, Taiwanese linguistic

education has to be paid much more attention, English in particular. Learning English

as a foreign language has long been Taiwanese educational policy. When English

teachers nationwide are in pursue of students’ English proficiency, the approaches to

vocabulary development are widely investigated. As Wilkins (1972) states that

“Without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be

conveyed.” Because vocabulary is the fundamental unit in the learning of a foreign

language, the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of English morphology

on EFL learners’ vocabulary development. By making learners aware of English

morphology, it is hoped that learners’ linguistic competence and performance can be

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fostered to meet the needs of this multidimensional society.

1.1. Statement of the problem

Most EFL learners who are senior-high-bound are usually challenged by the

difficulty of memorizing vocabulary mainly caused by the complexity of English

word formation, which often leads to easily forgetting learned words. Because of

their failure to keep a longer retention of vocabulary, frustration occurs when they

intend to apply their limited vocabulary knowledge to the traditional four plus

contemporary one skills of the target language, listening, speaking, reading, writing,

and translating, respectively. In order to enhance EFL learners’ vocabulary

development, providing them with lectures on English word formation is perhaps a

better way to have an ideal understanding about the five interconnected skills of

English and to eventually achieve the goal of Taiwanese English language education,

which is defined by Howatt (1984) as “using English to learn.”

1.2. Research Questions

In order to probe and answer the above assumption, this study set the following

research questions in accordance with how English morphology affects vocabulary

size and vocabulary retention when tenth graders learn English.

1. Does studying English morphology benefit tenth graders in Taiwan who

attempt to expand their vocabulary size?

2. Does studying English morphology do good to pursue a longer retention of

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vocabulary tenth graders have learned?

1.3. Significance of the study

Most EFL learners in Taiwan may agree that they cannot say anything

comprehensible in English without an adequate vocabulary size to create

comprehensible discourse, not to speak of advancing their English proficiency. The

flaw in building up learners’ themselves vocabulary size is usually resulted from the

fact that many English words are too complex to memorize or that learned words are

easy to forget. It may attribute to learners’ lack of knowledge about how English

words are formed. If learners have a thorough understanding about the rules of

English word formation, they will hold the high possibility to further their English

proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and translating. Therefore,

bewaring of the system of word formation becomes very important to the learning of

the target language. By doing this study, the researcher hopes to help EFL learners at

the tenth-grade level identify its effects on vocabulary development in order to meet

their lexical needs. When they become college-bound and exposed to English texts,

their ability to effectively expand vocabulary knowledge and to recall learned words

will bring them better academic achievements. More importantly, when they are

challenged by the impacts on globalization, the linguistic barrier will be overcome,

and they will possess the predominance in the application of the target language.

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1.4. Delimitations

The delimitations of the study are as follows:

1. The study will be limited to one semester.

2. The subjects will be limited to tenth graders who have learned English for at

least three years.

3. The study will be limited to the effects of English morphology on vocabulary

development.

4. The students’ input will be limited to the chapter 3 of the book titled “An

Introduction to Language”, sixth edition and Mandarin Chinese version.

5. Measurements of student achievement will be limited to pretest and posttest.

1.5. Limitations

The limitations of the study include:

1. The subjects selected hinder the researcher from examining how the effects

influence other higher graders.

2. The focus on first-year senior-high students who have learned English for at least

three years fails to perceive which English level they remain.

3. The samplings of the subjects were limited to rural population, thereby

preventing those in urban areas.

4. The effects of English morphology on vocabulary development limit the effects

on other linguistic areas.

5. The use of the input material limits relevant input offered by other books.

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1.6. Definition of terms

Proficiency- be able to do something because of training and practice

EFL- English as a Foreign Language

Morphology- the study of the structure of words; the component of t

he grammar that includes the rules of word formation

Linguistic competence- have the knowledge to produce sentences of a language

and apply this knowledge

Linguistic performance- how one use this knowledge in actual speech production

and comprehension

Senior-high-bound- be about to study in the senior high school

Retention- ability to remember things

Five interconnected skills- refer to listening, speaking, reading, writing, and

translating

1.7. Summary

This study intends to investigate the effects of English morphology on the

vocabulary development of tenth graders. By setting the two research questions, the

answers are expected to provide the clues for tenth graders to expand their vocabulary

size and obtain longer vocabulary retention, and eventually use English to seek higher

academic achievements.

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CHAPTER TWO

LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Effectiveness of vocabulary development

The studies that examined the effects of morphology and semantics on

vocabulary development will be reviewed in this section.

2.1.1. Morphology and vocabulary development

Al-QADI (1991) conducted a study in order to identify what specifically is

difficult for Arab speakers in their acquisition of English derivational

morphology. The subjects were adult male Saudi EFL learners (N=150). Data

were collected by identifying major similarities and differences between written

standard Arabic and written standard English through contrastive analysis,

proposing hypotheses about degree of difficulty, and testing the hypotheses

through empirical investigation. The result pointed out that vocabulary

development could be achieved by helping the EFL learners to acquire one of the

main sources of English word formation, namely, derivation.

The study completed by Nagy and Bhatt (1993) investigated the

development of two levels of morphological knowledge that contribute to

Spanish-English bilingual students’ ability to recognize cognates and to

recognize a cognate stem within a suffixed English word, and knowledge of

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systematic relationships between Spanish and English suffixes. Latino bilingual

students (N=196) in fourth, sixth, and eighth grades, were asked to give the

Spanish equivalent for English words, some of which had derivational and

inflectional suffixes. Results indicated that students’ ability to translate cognates

increase with age above and beyond any increase in their vocabulary knowledge

in Spanish and English. Other findings indicated that there was also marked

growth in students’ knowledge of systematic relationships between Spanish and

English suffixes. Students recognized cognates stems of suffixed words more

easily than non-cognate stems. This suggested that cross-language transfer

might play a role not just in recognizing individual words but also in the learning

of derivational morphology in closely related languages such as Spanish and

English.

2.1.2. Semantics and vocabulary development

Myers (1981) implemented a study designed to bring forth evidence

focusing on four three hypotheses that (a) the attrition of L2 skills proceeds at

different rates for different skills, (b) the attrition of L2 skills will be in inverse

proportion to the cumulative average the student had in the low-intermediate

German class, and (c) the attrition of L2 patterns will reflect the learning order

and the frequency of occurrence of those patterns. Data were collected by Bryn

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Mawr College undergraduates (N=6) through the twenty-three tests administered

over the course of a year and covered such areas morphology, vocabulary,

writing skills, listening and reading comprehension. The results suggested useful

instructional techniques aimed at lessening attrition, which is teaching

vocabulary via semantically paired items and via synonyms and antonyms, and

developing a linguistic sensitivity to word formation.

The study conducted by Page (2000) explored the possibility that grouping

words in a manner other than the traditional list of nouns, all fitting under a

common theme, might be more beneficial for students. Participants were third,

fourth, and fifth grade students receiving the same level of English-as-a-Second-

Language instruction. This study produced data on the retention of new

vocabulary data over three weeks and the students’ opinions about the two types

of word clusters (i.e. thematic and semantic clusters). Results showed both word

groupings were beneficial and suggested that teachers might consider using both

semantic and thematic groupings to help second language elementary students

learn new vocabulary words.

2.2. Recall of learned vocabulary

The studies that examined the effects of morphology and semantics on

vocabulary retention will be reviewed in this section.

2.2.1. Morphology and vocabulary retention

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Laufer (1988) set forth a discussion of the ease or difficulty in second

language vocabulary learning emphasizing on a variety of issues in L2

instruction. Research factors in vocabulary learning centered on similarity in

form and morphology, deceptive morphological structure, different syntactic

patterning in the native language, differences in the classification of experience

in the native language and second language, abstractness, specificity, negative

value, connotations nonexistent in L1, differences in the pragmatic meaning of

nearsynonyms and L1 translation equivalents, the learning burden of synonyms,

and the apparent rulelessness of collocations. It was argued that word

learnability (i.e. the ease or difficulty of learning a particular word) could serve

as a guideline to the teacher in: (1) the selection and presentation (quantity,

grouping, language of presentation, isolation or context); (2) facilitation of long-

term memorization (through meaningful tasks, mnemonic techniques, rote

learning, and reactivation); (3) development of self-learning strategies; (4)

assessment of vocabulary knowledge.

A study carried out by Lutjeharms (1990) examined the processes and

strategies by which second language learners attain and organize verbal

knowledge with a review of the literature and teacher observations. Participants

were students (N=152) at a Dutch-speaking university. Classroom data were

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derived from experience in teaching German. The analysis focused on the

relationship of morphology and word recognition and retention, lack of attention

given by second language reader to word endings, and interference arising from

lack of word contrast. The distinctions and relationships between mental

lexicon, semantic memory, and common semantic or conceptual stores across

language were also investigated. The results indicated that a distinction between

semantic memory and mental lexicon was seen as necessary in explaining

interference from lack of word contrast.

2.2.2. Semantics and vocabulary retention

Lawson and Hogben (1998) administered a study to identify the effects of

training in the use of the keyword method on vocabulary acquisition. Subjects

were students (N=189) at Flinders University, Australia. Their reports on their

usual vocabulary acquisition pointed out that relatively little of the students’

strategic activity was similar in nature to that of the elaborative activity

encouraged by keyword training. Hierarchical linear modeling analysis was

employed to assess the long-term benefit of training in an elaborated keyword

technique, with students in both the experimental and control groups being tested

on four occasions. The analysis showed that the keyword-trained students

maintained a significant and substantial advantage in recall of word definition

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over control students on each occasion.

Schneider (1996) completed a study aimed at introducing a specialized

approach to teaching at-risk students a foreign language. Because the

methodology placed a strong emphasis on the metacognitive aspects of language

in both native and foreign language instruction, the term “multisensory,

structured, metacognitive language instruction” was used to address at-risk

students’ weakness in recognizing linguistic rules and structure patterns, which

are necessary tools for becoming independent users of a foreign language. The

approach involved the students in learning to access their linguistic knowledge

and the instructor in facilitating metacognitive thought processes.

Summary

In the first section of this chapter, the review of literature identifies some

relevant researches exploring the relationships between morphology and vocabulary

development and between semantics and vocabulary development. In the second

section, the review of literature identifies some researches exploring the relationships

between morphology and vocabulary retention and between semantics and vocabulary

retention. In the next chapter, the procedures about how this study is conducted and

accomplished are unveiled.

CHAPTER THREE

METHODOLOGY

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This study intended to investigate the effects of English morphology on EFL

learners’ vocabulary development. More specifically, this study concentrated on

investigating the effects of studying morphology on vocabulary development of tenth

graders. Since morphology is concerned with the rules of word formation, tenth

graders could try to expand their vocabulary size and keep longer vocabulary

retention by making themselves aware of English morphology. Studying morphology

was therefore considered a good approach to activate learners’ mental lexicon. Then,

the learners’ English proficiency in listening, speaking, reading, writing, and

translating could be also activated. This study probed the relationships between

morphology and vocabulary development. In order to investigate the research

questions, the researcher collected all the research data through Conjugation Test,

Word-meaning Match Test, and Recall Protocol. All the scored data were analyzed by

the multiple regression procedure of the Statistic Package for Social Science (SPSS)

program.

Population

The researcher employed the sampling plan “Stratified Random Sampling” to

choose population. Population for this study was first-year senior-high students from

the National Pingtung Senior High School and the National Pingtung Girls Senior

High School in Taiwan. There were 400 first-year students, with half of them male

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and the other female. Their average age was 15.6 and their average length of English

study was 3.7 years.

Instruments

The instruments for this study will be three kinds of tests, Conjugation Test,

Word-meaning Match Test, and Recall Protocol, respectively. Before the students

study morphology, Conjugation Test and Word-meaning Match Test will be given to

them to identify their current ability to recognize the morphological features of words.

The two tests will last one hour. After they have studied morphology for one semester

(about four months), the same tests will be given to them again in order to observe

how they employed the rules of word formation (morphology) in the tests. The two

tests will also last one hour.

Data collection

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