THE IMPACT OF MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS ON THE VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT OF IRANIAN EFL STUDENTS

This study investigated the impact of explicit instruction of morphemic analysis and synthesis on the vocabulary development of the students. The participants were 90 junior high school students divided into two experimental groups and one control group. Morphological awareness techniques (analysis/synthesis) and conventional techniques were used to teach vocabulary in the experimental groups and control group respectively. The results of ANOVA revealed a statistically significant difference in post-assessment vocabulary test scores for the three groups (F = 59.02, p = .00), where the mean score of the two experimental groups were found to be significantly higher than that of the control group. The results also indicated that the mean of experimental group 1 and experimental group 2 put together was significantly different from the mean of conventional group (tc = 10.86 > tα = 2.49).

Keywords:

Vocabulary , Morphological awareness , Morpheme identification awareness , Morphological structure awareness