The Effect of Raising Morphological Decomposition Awareness on Lexical Knowledge of Complex English Words

Abstract

<span>Lexical knowledge of complex English words is an important part of <span>language skills and crucial for fluent language use. This study aimed <span>to assess the role of morphological decomposition awareness as a <span>vocabulary learning strategy on learners' productive and receptive <span>recall and recognition of complex English words. University students <span>majoring English at the English department of Kerman University <span>were randomly assigned to three groups: form-focused group which<br /><span>learned the words by being morphologically decomposed to them; <span>meaning-focused group to which the glosses were presented by being <span>defined and used in a sentence; and a control group, rote memory, the <span>members of which were asked to only memorize the glosses. TOEFL <span>and VLT pretests showed comparable results among the three groups <span>(p>o.o5). However, in post-tests the participants in the form-focused <span>group achieved higher scores in all four aspects of lexical knowledge <span>than the other two groups (p<0.05). Morphological decomposition <span>strategy is recommended as a very useful strategy for learning<br /><span>complex English words.</span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br /></span>