Role of Morphological and Metalinguistic Awareness on Reading among Turkish EFL Learners

Year 2019, Volume: 6 Issue: 2, 261 - 277, 13.12.2019

Fatma Demiray Akbulut

https://doi.org/10.33200/ijcer.564134

Abstract

This study investigates the effect of morphological
treatment on morphological awareness and reading comprehension skill in a
foreign language teaching. Experimental design was used in this study which was
conducted with 74 freshmen who are studying at Translation and Interpreting
Department. Following the Oxford Quick Placement Test and Nation’s Vocabulary
Knowledge Test, the participants were divided into two groups as experimental
and control groups. Before starting the training process, both groups were
pretested with ‘Morphological Correction Test (MCT)’ and ‘Reading Comprehension
Test (RCT)’. Following the completion of the pre-test, the treatment period of
experimental group for 2 semesters started, while the control group completed
the same exercises and studies without focusing on the morphological awareness.
Behind the training, post-test study was applied to both groups and the
differences were analysed. According to the results, the experimental group
outperformed the control group in MCT and RCT. In other words, the
morphological awareness of the experimental group increased efficiently; in
addition to this, their reading comprehension skills developed as well. Besides,
it can be said that the participants benefited effectively and consciously from
the explicit training period of morphological awareness and this helped them
improve their metalinguistic capacity.

Keywords

Morphological awareness, Metalinguistic awareness, Reading, Language teaching

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