Contribution of Morphological Awareness to Second-Language Reading Comprehension

Abstract

This study investigates the contribution of second-language (L2) morphological awareness to foreign language reading comprehension. Tenth graders (n = 188) at a South Korean high school were assessed on 6 reading-and language-related variables: phonological decoding, listening comprehension, vocabulary knowledge, passage-level reading comprehension, metacognitive reading awareness, and morphological awareness. A series of 10 sequential regression analyses were conducted to determine the unique reading variance accounted for by each of the 2 morphological awareness tests included in this study (i.e., the Test of Morpho-The result revealed that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of L2 reading comprehension when other variables were controlled. Of the 2 tests, the TMS-R-a measure that primarily tested derivational morphological knowledge-showed stronger predictability. This provides evidence that morphological awareness, especially derivational morphological knowledge, is an important variable to be considered in explaining L2 reading comprehension among older readers. THE GOAL OF THIS STUDY IS TO INVESTIgate the importance of target language morphological awareness in reading comprehension among English-as-a-foreign-language (EFL) learners. A number of recent first-language (L1; mostly English monolingual) studies have documented a strong link between morphological awareness and reading abilities. Skilled readers are more sensitive to the morphemic structure of a word than their less skilled counterparts (e.g., Stoltz & Feldman, 1995). Morphological awareness has also been found to make a significant contribution to passage-level reading comprehension over and beyond key reading-related variables such as phonology and vocabulary (e.g.

Roles of L1 and L2 Derivational Morphological Awareness in L2 Reading Through the Mediation of L2 Vocabulary Knowledge

“…This result supports the relation of derivational morphological awareness to vocabulary development reported in L1 studies (Anglin, 1993;Carlisle, 2000;Carlisle & Fleming, 2003) and L2 studies (Cho & Tong, 2014;Jeon, 2011;Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012;Zhang Note. L2 DMA = L2 derivational morphological awareness; L1 DMA = L1 derivational morphological awareness; L2 VK = L2 vocabulary knowledge; L2 RC = L2 reading comprehension.…”

“…In addition to the scarce amount of L2 studies, another limitation of previous studies is that, similar to L1 research, L2 studies have usually tracked young learners or adolescents rather than adults (Cho & Tong, 2014;Jeon, 2011;Koda, 2000;Lam et al, 2012;Zhang & Koda, 2012). A few studies have dealt with L2 adult learners in passage-level reading.…”

“…The relations between L2 morphological awareness, L2 vocabulary knowledge, and L2 reading have also been researched (Jeon, 2011;Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012;Lam et al, 2012;Qian, 1999). The influence of L2 morphological awareness on L2 vocabulary knowledge or L2 reading comprehension has been of main interest.…”

“…The influence of L2 morphological awareness on L2 vocabulary knowledge or L2 reading comprehension has been of main interest. Jeon (2011) investigated the effects of L2 morphological awareness on the EFL reading comprehension of 10th graders in Korea. The results indicate that L2 morphological awareness has an effect on either L2 vocabulary knowledge or L2 reading comprehension and that L2 morphological awareness, especially derivational morphological awareness, plays a crucial role in L2 reading comprehension.…”

“…A reader factor which recently has gained attention is L2 morphological knowledge (Jeon, 2011;Kieffer & Lesaux, 2012;Zhang & Koda, 2012), as the role of L1 morphological awareness has1 Fusional and agglutinative languages are two ends of a continuum of synthetic language. A fusional language is morphologically opaque in that attachment of affixes to a morpheme causes phonological and orthographical alteration and a single affix may carry several meanings.…”