The Effect of Explicit English Morphology Instruction on EFL Secondary School Students’ Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension

Abstract

The study attempted to investigate the effect of explicit morphology instruction (EMI) on developing secondary school students’ EFL morphological awareness and reading comprehension. The explicit morphology instruction targeted two morphological skills namely, inflectional and derivational skills. The study used a pre-posttest experimental and control group design. The intact study participants were (98) first year secondary school students. While the first intact group (n=49) was functioned as an experimental group, the second intact group (n=49) represented the control group. To collect the data, a two-unit explicit morphology instruction program (EMIP), a morphological awareness test (MAT) and a reading comprehension test (RCT) were designed, validated and implemented. Before the intervention, the participants’ morphological awareness and reading comprehension were pre-tested. During the course of intervention, while the experimental group participants were exposed to explicit morphological instruction in addition to their regular English instruction sessions, the participants of the control group only received their regular EFL instruction sessions. Results revealed that the experimental group participants’ mean scores on the post morphological awareness test and reading comprehension test surpassed that of the control group. Accordingly, explicit morphological instruction was effective in developing EFL secondary school students’ morphological awareness and reading comprehension. However, the effect size of explicit morphological instruction on developing EFL secondary school students’ morphological awareness was higher than its effect size on developing their reading comprehension. Therefore, teaching English morphology should be an integral part of EFL secondary school curriculum.

The Impact of Blended Instructions on Developing Jordanian University Students’ Morphological Knowledge and Reading Comprehension

“…(Al-Seghayer, 2016;Askildson, 2011)). They also support the results of studies that highlight the importance of morphological knowledge on developing reading comprehension (Badawi, 2019;Bataineh & Al-Kofeiri, 2018). Additionally, the results of this study add to and support research on EFL especially when computer assisted language learning is used as a pedagogical tool.…”

The Effects of Morphological Awareness on EFL Secondary School Students’ Reading Comprehension Skills

“…She proved that explicit morphological instruction helped students improve their vocabulary knowledge and recommended using morphological instruction as an explicit teaching method in EFL classrooms. Badawi (2019) proved that using morphological awareness instruction was affected by participants' morphological awareness, rather their reading comprehension. He recommended incorporating a section about morphological rules in EFL secondary school textbooks to raise student's morphological awareness.…”

“…In addition, some EFL teachers neglect the importance of raising students' awareness of morphological knowledge. Badawi (2019) pointed out that many EFL teachers believe that students can acquire morphological awareness automatically. In other words, teachers prefer not to explain morphological structure explicitly.…”

Analysis of Students’ Morphological Awareness

“…Another case study titled the morphological awareness and reading comprehension; the qualitative study with adult EFL learners (Badawi, 2019). Yih-Lin Belinda Jiang et al (2015) analysis morphological awareness of mandarin speaking college students from Taiwan.…”