Pedagogical Significance of Morphological Awareness in Korean and English

Abstract

This study investigated whether Korean children understand the internal structure of compound words in Korean and English and whether there is a relationship between their performance in tasks that measure their understanding of the morphological structure of compounds in Korean and English. This study also examined the effects of gender, grade, and verbal ability on the performance of the Korean and English tasks. 106 primary school children completed a Korean and English compound task, which consisted of 32 compound test items in Korean and in English respectively. Each compound task included 16 comprehension test items and 16 production test items. Half of them were real words and the other half were pseudo words. The structures of the compounds were noun-noun or noun-verb. Korean task scores made a significant contribution to predicting English test scores after controlling for gender, grade, and verbal ability. It is concluded that L1 task performance can be a significant factor in L2 task performance, supporting evidence that L1 morphological awareness is transferable to L2 morphological processes. From a pedagogical perspective, research findings will be useful for teachers when designing compound tasks to develop Korean children's morphological awareness for language and literacy development in English.

Dimensionality of Morphological Knowledge—Evidence from Norwegian Third Graders

“…This provides evidence of similarities in English and Norwegian, and across primary and middle school. Our finding that receptive and productive knowledge make up two of these factors is also in line with González‐Sánchez et al (2018) and Jong and Jung (2015), indicating similarities with Spanish children in preschool as well as with Korean fifth and sixth graders. This separation of receptive and productive knowledge may, however, represent construct‐irrelevant variance due to differences between general comprehension and language production, rather than separate dimensions of morphological knowledge.…”

“…Other studies have found support for a multidimensional structure of morphological knowledge (González‐Sánchez et al, 2018; Jong & Jung, 2015; Levesque et al, 2017; Tighe & Schatschneider, 2015, 2016; Zhang, 2017). Both González‐Sánchez et al (2018) and Jong and Jung (2015) reported separate dimensions of receptive and productive morphological knowledge in their studies. Their studies targeted Spanish children in the last year of preschool (González‐Sánchez et al, 2018) and Korean fifth and sixth graders (Jong & Jung, 2015).…”

“…Both González‐Sánchez et al (2018) and Jong and Jung (2015) reported separate dimensions of receptive and productive morphological knowledge in their studies. Their studies targeted Spanish children in the last year of preschool (González‐Sánchez et al, 2018) and Korean fifth and sixth graders (Jong & Jung, 2015). Tighe and Schatschneider (2015, 2016) studied morphological knowledge in English‐speaking Adult Basic Education students and found evidence that a two‐factor model separating real words and pseudowords fit the data best.…”

“…Of the 13 studies reviewed in this paper, eight featured English‐speaking participants (see Table S1 and the section on empirical studies of dimensionality for more information). However, in their study of English and Korean, Jong and Jung (2015) found evidence of cross‐linguistic differences. In English, they found one receptive and one productive dimension, whereas in Korean they found one receptive and two productive dimensions.…”

“…However, the findings in extant empirical research are mixed. Some studies report evidence of a single dimension of morphological knowledge (e.g., James et al, 2021; Spencer et al, 2015), whereas others propose different dimensions of morphological knowledge such as oral versus written or receptive versus productive (e.g., Jong & Jung, 2015; Tibi & Kirby, 2017). Thus, it is unclear if the theoretical framework suggested by Levesque et al (2021) is generally applicable across different populations and settings.…”