The Study Of English Affix Acquisition Order Of Chinese English Learners

Affix knowledge is considered to be an important aspect of vocabulary knowledge. It plays an important part in vocabulary development and reading. The mastery of affix is of great importance to both language teaching and language learning. Learners with competent affix knowledge will be able to expand their vocabulary, especially their knowledge of derivatives, and thereby, to read material containing unfamiliar words, Affix knowledge contributes to determining how well a learner reads new words (Nagy et al, 1993). The language teachers having a sound knowledge of affix will be able to choose, to classify and to systematize the linguistic material to be mastered by their students, and, thereby, to facilitate the students' understanding and memorization. To teachers a good knowledge of affix will prove especially useful, as it furnishes a tool helping the students to guess and retain in their memory the meaning of new words by comparing and contrasting them with the previously learned affixes.This study is an attempt to describe the order characterizing the affix learning by the Chinese EFL (English as a Foreign Language) learners as revealed from their level of receptive and productive mastery of affix knowledge. The theoretical framework of this study is the "Affix Acquisition Order Hypothesis" by Mochizuki (2000). The purpose of this study is to answer the following research questions:(1) What's the acquisition order of English affix of Chinese learners?(2) What is the relationship between the acquisition of English affix and the size of English vocabulary?The subjects chosen for the present study are all Chinese learners of English as a foreign language (i.e. EFL). They are 49 Senior 1 students from a natural class of a high school in Anhui Province; 100 Senior 2 students from a natural class of a high school in Nanjing; 103 Senior 3 students who are also from a natural class from a high school in Nanjing; 48 freshmen from a natural class of a vocational college in Jiangsu Province. The 242 senior middle school students have 8 periods of English class every week with 45 minutes per period. And all the 48 college students tested are non-English majors: they had an average of 6 years of English learning experience in middle school.In this study, we used three test papers, the "Productive affix knowledge test", the "Receptive affix knowledge test" and the "Vocabulary size test". These three tests are kept as the raw data which are then analyzed by SPSS10.0. The results show that (l)There is a certain order in the EFL learners' English affix acquisition-, (2) Suffix knowledge superiority over prefix knowledge; (3) Receptive affix knowledge superiority over productive affix knowledge; (4) English affix knowledge acquisition is related with vocabulary size.Chapter 1 raises the basic research questions, research orientation as well as the significance of the present study. Chapter 2 introduces the definitions and classification of English affix, prefix and theoretical framework of the present study, the affix acquisition order by Mochizuki (2000) is made as the theoretical foundations. Chapter 3 deals with the empirical studies: first literatures related to the present study are to be reviewed and commented upon; we will also discus the recent studies on English affix knowledge development. Chapter 4 provides the study methods, including the participants, research design, test paper design, procedures for administering the tests, scoring of the test paper and data analysis. Chapter 5 reports the statistical results of the study, laying out the major findings and makes preliminary analysis, then possible rationale and principles underlying these findings are discussed. In Chapter 6, the pedagogical implication and the limitations of the present study are stated and the suggestions for further studies are put forward.