Does morphological awareness training enhance EFL learners' abilities to infer meaning of unknown words

2023 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 20K13148
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Early-Career Scientists
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Review Section: Basic Section 02100:Foreign language education-related
• Research Institution: Nagoya Gakuin University
• Principal Investigator: Ichikawa Shingo 名古屋学院大学, 外国語学部, 教授 (40634415)
• Project Period (FY): 2020-04-01 – 2024-03-31
• Keywords: L2リーディング / メタ言語意識 / 語彙習得

Outline of Final Research Achievements

This research project focused on whether learning the function and meaning of prefixes and using contextual information can enhance the ability of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners to make informed guesses about unfamiliar words. University students were divided into control and experimental groups, with only the experimental group receiving 8 weeks of morpheme-based training. The lexical inferencing skills of the students were measured before and after the training. The analysis revealed that while the control group students improved their morphological knowledge by 4.1% and lexical inferencing by 3.7%, the experimental group that received the training improved their morphological knowledge by 10.5% and lexical inferencing by 13.4%. These results indicate that morpheme-based training effectively enhances the lexical inferencing skills of adult EFL learners, suggesting the potential for promoting vocabulary acquisition and improving reading comprehension among EFL learners.

Free Research Field

第二言語習得論

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

本研究はL2の読解スキルの発展における形態素意識の役割を示すことで、理論的な貢献をしている。本研究は形態素意識を直接測定したわけではないが、縦断的研究によって形態素意識トレーニングと推測スキルの間に因果関係が存在する実証的な証拠を提供している。また、本研究の結果は、限られた条件下ではあるが、形態素知識と文脈情報を利用する方法を教えることで、語彙推論に必要な情報にアクセスする能力を向上させることができることを示している。さらなる研究と教育方法の改良によって、L2学習者は偶発的な語彙の学習と語彙知識の向上を図ることができる。