International Journal of Language & Linguistics

Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension: A Qualitative Study with Adult EFL Learners
Yih-Lin Belinda Jiang, Li-Jen Kuo, Sunni L. Sonnenburg-Winkler

Abstract
The present studies utilized think-aloud protocols and retrospective interviews to examine the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension among adult English-as-foreign-language (EFL) learners. Participants included four Mandarin-speaking college freshmen in Taiwan. Findings demonstrated salient differences between successful and less successful adult EFL readers in how they perceived and applied morphological knowledge. While successful readers valued derivational morphological rules for word inferencing and vocabulary building, less successful readers underestimated the significance of morphological knowledge in vocabulary learning. These findings, which further extend the scope of existing research, suggest that readers’ perceptions of the usefulness of certain word learning and reading strategies should be incorporated in the componential view of reading in order to more comprehensively capture reading’s multidimensionality.

Full Text: PDF