The Effect of Raising Morphological Decomposition Awareness on Lexical Knowledge of Complex English Words

Abstract

Lexical knowledge of complex English words is an important part of language skills and crucial for fluent language use. This study aimed to assess the role of morphological decomposition awareness as a vocabulary learning strategy on learners’ productive and receptive recall and recognition of complex English words. University students majoring English at the English department of Kerman University were randomly assigned to three groups: form-focused group whichlearned the words by being morphologically decomposed to them; meaning-focused group to which the glosses were presented by being defined and used in a sentence; and a control group, rote memory, the members of which were asked to only memorize the glosses. TOEFL and VLT pretests showed comparable results among the three groups (p>o.o5). However, in post-tests the participants in the form-focused group achieved higher scores in all four aspects of lexical knowledge than the other two groups (p<0.05). Morphological decomposition strategy is recommended as a very useful strategy for learningcomplex English words.

Keywords

• second language acquisition
• morphological decomposition
• productive recall
• receptive recall
• recognition