The Effects of Morphological Awareness on EFL Secondary School Students’ Reading Comprehension Skills

Dalal Yahya Ali Al-Haydan

Abstract


This exploratory study examines the impacts of morphological awareness on Saudi female secondary school students’ reading comprehension skills. In particular, it examines the effects of increasing students’ morphological awareness on their reading comprehension skills. Participants included 58 Saudi female secondary school students, who were divided into an experimental group and a control group. The experimental group was taught using a morphemic analysis strategy during their reading classes, whereas the control group attended their usual reading comprehension classes. Pretests and post-tests were prepared to determine the effect of raising students’ awareness of morphological knowledge on their reading comprehension skills. The results indicated a strong positive correlation between the students’ morphological awareness and the improvement of their reading comprehension skills in the post-test. The study, therefore, confirms that the direct instruction of prefixes, suffixes and base words is useful and should be emphasised when teaching because it significantly increases students’ morphological awareness.

Keywords


Reading Comprehension Skills, Morphological Awareness, Morphemic Analysis Strategy, Derivational Awareness

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References


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DOI: https://doi.org/10.7575/aiac.ijels.v.8n.3p.48

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