Investigating the Use of English Language Affixes as a Problem Facing Third Year Secondary School Students

Abstract

The current study is an investigation into the use of English language Affixes as a problem facing third secondary school students, the sample of the population includes fifty Students of third year secondary school s who are all EFL learners in some Sudanese schools in Khartoum State . The study aims at enabling the students to master Affixes so as to increase their vocabularies , figuring out some problematic areas affecting students ability to master the use of Affixes as well as finding out how SPINE (4 and 5) are rich enough in Affixes. The researcher has adopted the descriptive analytical approach to accomplish the aims of the research. The results of the study reveal that the students have no background about the situation in which some derivational and inflectional morphem-es are used. They also reveal the method of teaching derivational and inflectional morphemes , needs a knowledgeable teachers who know more about the use of affixes and the differences of derivational and inflectional morphemes . Finally , the morphological problems of the students are due to lack of proper practice and students’ ignorance of derivational and inflectional morphemes resulted in wrong choice of affixes. Eventually , the study recommends that the techniques of teaching English affixes need to be regarded by the teachers at Sudanese secondary schools , at the same time students should be taught explicitly that derivational morphemes changes the meaning or the part of speech , while inflectional morphemes change the tense or aspect. It also recommends that students should be given more practices so as to master the usage of affixation. The study at the end recommends that the students should work hard to know how and in what way they use certain derivational or inflectional morphemes and teachers of English language should know about the derivational and inflectional morphemes.