Morphological Awareness and Word Complexity in an EFL Context

Linguistics

Abstract

This study examined the relationship between morphological awareness and word complexity (simple versus complex words) in an EFL context. The participants in this study were 100 fourth-year secondary school Arts students in Tunisia. Students’ morphological awareness was measured by the Morphological Awareness Test. Vocabulary size was tested using an adapted version of Nation’s (2001) Vocabulary Levels Test as a receptive measure of vocabulary size. Half of the vocabulary test items were made complex to check the participants’ performance on simple and complex words. The informants’ scores were high on the overall morphological awareness task, and the best performance was on inflectional morphemes. This could be very useful for teachers to build on, improve, and construct better future teaching practices. Finally, morphological awareness differentiated between students’ performance on simple versus complex words.