Teaching English Vocabulary Using Phonological Awareness in Morphological Pattern Instruction

王毓芝(Yu-Chih Wang)

《應用英語期刊》 4期 (2011/12) Pp. 91-105

https://doi.org/10.29691/JAE.201112.0007

並列摘要

This study explores effective ways of teaching and learning English vocabulary for EFL learners because vocabulary instruction has always been a backbone concern in foreign language teaching. The learning of English vocabulary has long been a common problem for EFL students, hindering the advance of their learning of the language, especially for many Taiwanese students with a limited understanding of the correlation between pronunciation and spelling. In this research, college students in two business English classes of juniors were divided into an experimental group (EG) and a control group (CG). Students in the experimental group were provided training not only in extensive reading and writing, but also in identifying morphological pattern instruction - word families: the prefixes, suffixes, and word roots, and the correlations between phonology and morphological patterns. Students in the control group were only provided an extensive reading and writing curriculum. The findings based on their placement tests in the first semester, finals in the second semester, questionnaires in two semesters, and interviews in the second semester are that there is a correlation between phonological awareness and morphological patterns. 1) the more sense of pronunciation and spelling they have, the easier they feel when memorizing vocabulary words, 2) the greater the number of word families they learned, the higher their learning achievements they performed, 3) the more training they got, the stronger their motivation was shown, and 4) the stronger the motivation they demonstrated, the higher self-confidence in English learning they had. The final average score of experimental group was 74.33, compared to 66.12 for the control group. The students in the experimental group also had higher attendance than that of the control group because of their peer teaching and group works, and there were more students coming to ask questions after class because they needed to make presentations. Therefore, using phonological awareness in morphological pattern instruction should be on the right track to gear up students' vocabulary learning.

並列關鍵字

phonological awareness ； morphological instruction ； vocabulary ； word families ； extensive reading ； business English