Morphological Awareness and Its Correlation to Lexical Knowledge and Morphological Complexity: Evidence from Iranian EFL Learners

The study examined the relationship between morphological awareness, lexical knowledge, and morphological complexity among Iranian learners of English as a foreign language. The objectives were to measure vocabulary size, to determine the contribution of morphological awareness to vocabulary development, and to investigate correlations between age and vocabulary size as well as gender and vocabulary size. Vocabulary size was assessed using a modified Vocabulary Levels Test, and morphological awareness was measured through an adapted Morphological Awareness Test, evaluating analytic and synthetic aspects of morphological knowledge. The participants were seventy learners enrolled in English programs at universities in Zanjan province, divided into two intact groups consisting of forty females and thirty males. The design was ex post facto. Results indicated a significant relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary size, and between morphological awareness and word complexity. No significant relationship was found between gender and lexical knowledge, while age showed a significant correlation with vocabulary size. The findings demonstrated that explicit instruction in morphological knowledge and contextual analysis is necessary for learners to expand their vocabulary. Practical implications include the development of dictionaries of roots, prefixes, and suffixes to facilitate access to word elements, and the incorporation of classroom activities, such as unseen reading texts containing affixed words to strengthen morphological awareness.

کلیدواژه ها:

morphological awareness ، lexical complexity