| With the reform of the English Curriculum Standards in China,English reading as a means to English learning is getting more and more important.Meanwhile,the focus of English reading has shifted from lecturing students about language points to cultivating their comprehensive reading ability.In recent years,researchers from abroad and home have paid much attention to the relationship between English morphological awareness(hereafter MA)and reading comprehension.However,most studies are concerned with English as a first language;most testing materials of reading comprehension contain few morphologically complex words,thus such materials to a certain extent cannot reflect the contribution of MA to reading comprehension.At home,most studies on reading comprehension focus on macro-level processes like inferring skills or cognitive strategies,while fewer researches on reading comprehension deal with the affecting factors in the micro-level processes like morphological awareness.Therefore,this thesis aims to explore the impact of morphological awareness on junior middle school students' science popular discourse reading comprehension.The participants involved in the current research were 99 eighth graders in a junior middle school in Shanghai.Three research questions were raised:(1)What are the students' morphological awareness and reading comprehension of popular science discourse like? Is there any correlation between the two?(2)Are there any differences between students with high-and low-MA,with a large and small vocabulary size,and with high-and low-phonological awareness(hereafter PA)in their reading comprehension of popular science discourses?(3)After variables such as PA and vocabulary size are controlled,does MA contribute to reading comprehension? Of the two components of MA,that is,derivational MA and compound MA,which one contributes more to the reading comprehension of popular science discourse? To answer the above three questions,a series of tests were employed.They include a phonological awareness test,a vocabulary size test,a word reading test,a derivational morphological awareness test,a compound morphological awareness test and a science reading comprehension test.SPSS 19.0 was used to analyze the data collected from the tests,and the results show that(1)there exists significant correlations between the two types of MA andreading comprehension;(2)Significant differences are found between high-and low-MA learners,high-and low-derivational MA learners,high-and low-PA learners,and learners with a large and small vocabulary size when they comprehend popular science discourses.However,between high-and low-compound MA learners the differences in reading comprehension are negligible.(3)The results of several hierarchical regression analyses show that MA can predict a certain variance in science reading comprehension.When other variables are controlled,MA still makes an independent contribution.Of the two types of MA,compound MA rather than derivational MA contributes more significantly to reading comprehension.What's more,the compound MA of meaning is the main contributor to the reading comprehension of Popular Science Discourse.In conclusion,the author gives the following two suggestions:(1)In view of the positive correlations between Morphological Awareness,Popular Science Discourse Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary size,both teachers and students should attach importance to the cultivation of morphological awareness;(2)The micro-level positive impact of MA over Popular Science Discourse Reading Comprehension should inspire teachers to think over teaching Popular Science Discourse. |
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