The Role of Morphological Awareness on Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary size in Sudanese students as EFL learners. The aims of this present study is to , investigate to what extent the students are aware of analytic and synthetic word formation rules, determine the relationship between Morphological awareness and vocabulary size and determine the Morphological awareness between students performance on complex and simple words. The results reveal that students displaced low overall Morphological awareness of word formation. The results also show that the students vocabulary size is relatively low. This indicate that they will struggle to understand on an average text. The study recommends to administer Morphological awareness test and vocabulary test separately to minimize cognitive load on the students. Teaching affixes to promote students vocabulary size.The Participants in the study were 30 Sudanese EFL learners. All the participants completed the test. Descriptive statistics, reliability measures and correlation coefficients were calculated and reported. The results indicate that, the students’ overall morphological awareness and vocabulary size were limited, and that the relationship between the two constructs could not be established, owing to the appearance of floor effect in test scores and task difficulty. Although no statistical relationship was established between morphological Awareness and vocabulary in this study, it is premature to discount the potential Importance of morphological awareness in the L2 vocabulary development, particularly for the type of learner examined in this study.