The Relationship Between English Morphological Awareness And Vocabulary Learning Among Senior High School Students

Morphological awareness is defined as language learners’ ability to wittingly consider the internal strudcture of words and their understanding and manipulation of the rule of word-formation in langauge.It occupies a critical role in the development of vocabulary learning and literacy.Although plentiful researchers have proved that morphological awareness is a great contributor to English native speakers’ vocabulary learning,few of which stretch exploration into non-alphabetic language environment,especially Chinese senior high school students.In order to learn about the overall level of morphological awareness and its relationship with vocabulary learning among Chinese senior high school students,the aim of the current study can be divided into the following three aspects:(1)What is the status quo of morphological awareness of senior high school students,in terms of both receptive morphological awareness and productive morphological awareness?(2)How does receptive and productive awareness of senior high school students correlate with their breadth of vocabulary knowledge?(3)How does receptive and productive awareness of senior high school students correlate with their depth of vocabulary knowledge?The participants involved in the current research are 165 senior grade two students in a senior high school in Jiangxi province.The instruments employed in this study are a set of tests,including Morphological Awareness Test,Vocabulary Level Test and Test of Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge.The Morphological Awareness Test measures participants’ receptive morphological awareness as well as their productive morphological awareness.The Vocabulary Level Test evaluates their breadth of vocabulary knowledge.The participants’ knowledge of word form,word meaning,and word use is examined as an indicator of their depth of vocabulary knowledge.Then,all the test data are processed and analyzed by SPSS 22.0.The findings show that senior high school students have mastered a certain level of English morphological awareness.However,the development of morphological awareness is not balanced,for students’ receptive morphological awareness exceeds their productive morphological awareness.Next,the result reveals only a positive correlation between students’ productive morphological awareness and their vocabulary size,while their receptive morphological awareness has nothing to do with their vocabulary size.The study also finds that both receptive and productive awareness are correlated with students’ knowledge of word meaning and word form.However,it is found that the relationship between their receptive and productive morphological awareness and students’ knowledge of word use is insignificant.The current study may not only enrich the empirical studies on Chinese learners’ English morphological awareness,but also has some important implications for the cultivation of English morphological awareness and vocabulary teaching for senior high school learners.It is suggested that in the process of vocabulary teaching,teachers have to spend more time on cultivating students’ English morphological awareness in order to promote the development of students’ vocabulary learning ability.