The effect of form-focused morphological instruction on derivational morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge of 11th-grade EFL Turkish high school students

Abstract

The aim of this research was to investigate the effect of form-focused morphological instruction including free base words and derivational suffixes on derivational morphological awareness (MA), and vocabulary knowledge of 11-grade EFL learners studying at a private high-school in the province of Hatay in Türkiye. This study had a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest non-equivalent control group research design. A total of 61 EFL students participated in the study (experimental group: 30; control group: 31). The participants were selected with the use of convenience sampling. Before the intervention, all participants took EF Standard English Test (EF SET), an English proficiency test administered online. During a 6-week timeframe, the students in the experimental group received form-focused morphological instruction twice a week and attended 2 review sessions. On the other hand, the students in the control group continued with their usual school timetable, and received no form-focused morphological training. The Test of Morphological Structure (derivational MA test) (Carlisle, 2000), and updated Vocabulary Levels Test (vocabulary knowledge test) (Webb et al., 2017) were administered to all participants as pre- and post-tests. The data analyses were conducted using independent and paired samples t-tests. The results indicated that while both experimental and control groups made statistically significant gains in derivational MA, the experimental group significantly outperformed the control group. However, neither group showed any improvement in vocabulary knowledge after the intervention.