Vocabulary acquisition in Arabic as a foreign language: The root and pattern strategy

For English speakers learning Arabic as a foreign language (L2), lexical acquisition is a major challenge. It is argued that to facilitate L2 Arabic lexical acquisition, teachers should explicitly teach learners to use the root and patterns word formation system unique to Arabic and other Semitic languages. This should raise learners' morphological awareness, which should in turn facilitate word acquisition. However, this claim has not been subjected to empirical research. The central research question of this study is: Does morphological awareness of the main word formation process of root and patterns in L2 Arabic facilitate learners' ability to infer meanings of unknown words, coin new words, and retain words?Two controlled classroom experiments were conducted that included a total of 109 beginning learners of Arabic enrolled in first- and second-semester Arabic classes at a US university. The experimental groups received explicit instruction and training on roots and patterns while the control groups did not. An immediate and a delayed post-test consisting of three sections were administered following a word learning session. The participants' retention of the learned words was measured in section A their guessing of unfamiliar words whose roots are the same as the learned words was measured in section B and their guessing of unfamiliar pseudo words was measured in section C. In each section, half of the items were tested receptively and the other half productively.The results show that the experimental groups significantly out-performed the control groups in the inferring and coining of unfamiliar items however, there was no significant difference between the two groups in their word retention. These findings demonstrate the value of utilizing the root and patterns system when dealing with unfamiliar words. The data strongly demonstrate that beginning learners are able to effectively utilize the complex derivational morphology of Arabic in their lexical inferring and coining. Morphological awareness, while having no apparent facilitating effect on word retention, greatly enhanced learners' lexical inferring and coining abilities. It is recommended that the root and patterns system be trained starting as early as the first semester as an integral part of lexical development activities.