The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and English Vocabulary Knowledge of Indonesian Senior High School Students

The Relationship between Morphological Awareness
and English Vocabulary Knowledge
of Indonesian Senior High School Students
Nurhemida
The University of Queensland
Supervisor: Dr. Michael Harrington
Submitted in partial fulfilment of the requirement of the Degree of Master of
Applied Linguistics, The University of Queensland
November 2007
i STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP
I declare that this thesis does not contain material which has been accepted for the
award of any other degree or diploma in any university, nor does it contain material
previously published or written by any other person, except where due reference is made
in the text of the thesis.
Nurhemida
ii ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
My sincere gratitude goes to my dissertation supervisor, Dr Michael Harrington,
who encouraged me to learn about being a researcher and doing research. I owe him for
his time (even his weekends) reading the drafts, helping with the statistical analyses of
the data as well as discussing the results with me. His kind support, explanation, sense of
humor, and spirit of discovery have encouraged me to complete this project. It would
have been impossible to finish this thesis without his kind feedback and suggestions. I
would also like to express my thanks to Dr Noriko Iwashita, Dr Peter White and
Professor Roly Sussex for their guidance and inspirational teaching.
In addition, I wish to express my deep gratitude to all of my family: aunt, sister,
and brothers, for their help in data-collection in Indonesia as one of the main parts of
doing this dissertation. My greatest thanks also go to the students who participated in the
study and to the teachers for their cooperation.
I also thank my dear friends, Verni, Finita, Rayini and Rina for their support and
help during the process of writing this dissertation as well as during my study at the
University of Queensland. My gratitude is also owed to my friends and colleagues at the
University of Queensland, Amira AL-Nabhani, Chien-Chu Yeh, Jiang Shaojun, Makoto
Abe and Siti Muniroh, for their encouraging support and invaluable ideas. In particular, I
would like to thank Satoshi Nagaba, Badriya Alfarsi and Mayuko Inagawa for their time
in reading the draft, suggestions, comments and support to help me finish this writing.
Finally, I dedicate this manuscript for my mother and father as my thankfulness
for their faithful love and support.
iii ABSTRACT
The main purpose of the present study is to investigate the relationship between
English morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in the context of English as
Foreign Language (EFL) for senior high school students in Indonesia. Measurements of
learner vocabulary size and morphological awareness are obtained and then correlated to
assess the degree to which knowledge of English morphological processes and structures
can be systematically related to vocabulary knowledge. Based on the findings, the
possible role that morphological awareness can play in second language (L2) vocabulary
development is discussed. Implications for vocabulary instruction are also addressed.
The participants were 98 students (29 males and 69 females) at a public Islamic
senior high school in a rural area in West Sumatra, Indonesia. The participants were
grouped into two groups according to program of study: Social Science and Natural
Science. The data collection tools were Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), which
tested knowledge of words drawn from the 2000, 3000 and 5000 most frequently
occurring word families (90 words in total) and two morphological awareness tasks. The
first consisted of a Morpheme Identification task (item matching, 5 questions) and the
second was Morphological Structure test (short answer, 20 questions). A 10-item
questionnaire that elicited the participants’ perceptions of the tests and their English
vocabulary learning in general was also administered. The VLT results revealed that the
students performed better at the 2000 level than the two higher frequency levels, with
little difference between the Social Science and Natural Science groups. Performance on
the Morpheme Identification Test approached the ceiling for both groups, while the
Natural Science group did better on the Morphological Structure Test. There was a
iv
significant relationship between the students’ performance in the vocabulary level test
and the morphological awareness tasks. Finally, the participants gave feedback that
suggested their interest in applying the morphological knowledge to their vocabulary
learning. Thus, the findings have implications as to the importance of facilitating the
students’ morphological awareness in English vocabulary learning for EFL senior high
students in Indonesia.
v TABLE OF CONTENTS
Page
STATEMENT OF AUTHORSHIP i
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ii
ABSTRACT iii
TABLE OF CONTENTS v
LIST OF TABLES vii
CHAPTER 1: INTRODUCTION 1
CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW 4
2.1. Vocabulary Learning 4
2.2. Morphological Awareness as a Vocabulary Learning Strategy 9
2.3 Measuring English Morphological Awareness 13
2.3.1. Morpheme Identification Awareness 14
2.3.2. Morphological Structure Awareness 15
2.4. Research Questions 16
CHAPTER 3: METHODOLOGY 18
3.1. Participants 18
3.2. The Testing Instruments 19
3.3. Procedures 22
3.4. Data Analysis 23
CHAPTER 4: RESULT 25
4.1. Performance on the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) 25
4.1.1. Results of the VLT 25
vi
4.1.2. Results of the VLT between Two Programs 26
4.2. Performance on the Morphological Awareness Tasks 27
4.2.1. Results of Morphological Awareness Test 28
4.2.2. Students’ Perceptions of the Morphological Awareness Test 29
4.3. The Relationship of the VLT to Morphological
Awareness Test 30
4.3.1. The Intercorrelations between the VLT and Morphological
Awareness 30
CHAPTER 5: DISCUSSION 32
5.1. English Vocabulary Size 32
5.2. Morphological Awareness 33
5.3. The Relationship between Morphological Awareness and
English Vocabulary Knowledge 37
CHAPTER 6: CONCLUSION 41
6.1. Summary of the Study 41
6.2. Pedagogical Implications 42
6.3. Limitations of the Study and Suggestions for Future Research 42
REFERENCE 44
APPENDICES 50
Appendix A 50
Appendix B 64
vii LIST OF TABLES
Page
Table 1 Mean frequency, and standard deviation in different levels of
the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT)
26
Table 2 Mean frequency, standard deviation, maximum and
minimum scores in different levels of the Vocabulary Levels
Test (VLT) by each study program
27
Table 3 Analysis of Variance for Groups of Social Science (N= 49)
and Natural Science (N=49
27
Table 4 Mean frequency, standard deviation, maximum and
minimum scores of Morpheme Identification and
Morphological Structure test
28
Table 5 The percentages of students’ perceptions on the difficulty of
the test, and their preference between the two types of
Morphological Awareness test
29
Table 6 Intercorrelations between Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) and
Morphological Awareness test across the group