The Development of Vocabulary and Morphological Awareness: A Longitudinal Study With English-as-a-Foreign-Language College Students

• In Event: Vocabulary Research

Abstract

This paper reports findings from a larger project that takes a componential view of reading to investigate the development of vocabulary and reading comprehension in English among EFL college students. Results show that consistent with research with English-speaking and ELL children, EFL college struggling readers are characterized by a smaller vocabulary, and in particular, more limited ability to infer meanings of morphologically-complex words. Furthermore, adverbial suffixes were found to be the type of derivational morphology students had the least difficulty in. Verbal suffixes were significantly more difficult than adjectival and nominal suffixes for the middle and upper proficiency groups, but the three types of suffixes were of similar difficulty for the lower proficiency group. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Authors

• Li-Jen Kuo, Texas A&M University - College Station

• Yih-Lin (Belinda) Jiang, Soochow University

• Tsu-Ting Huang, New York University

• Yihan Chen, National Chengchi University

• Tae-Jin Kim, Northern Illinois University