A Study Of The Effects Of Morphological Awareness On Junior Middle School Students' Reading Comprehension

In recent years, many researchers have paid considerable attention to the effects of English morphological awareness(MA) on reading comprehension. Some foreign researchers have stated that vocabulary is the intermediary between MA and reading comprehension, what' s more, they have found that MA can predict English language learners' reading comprehension. Nevertheless, the relevant studies are conducted in the context of English as the first language. And a few Chinese researchers have put their attention to the significant role of MA in reading comprehension. Therefore, on the basis of componential model of reading(CMR), the present study aims to explore the effects of MA on some junior middle school students' reading comprehension in the context of English as a foreign language.The participants involved in the current study were 85 ninth graders in a junior middle school in Jingning County, Pingliang City, Gansu Province. And two research questions were presented:(1) Is there a significant correlation between MA and English reading comprehension among junior middle school students after controlling the effects of nonverbal intelligence?(2) Which kind of MA could contribute most to reading comprehension, inflectional morphological awareness, derivational morphological awareness or compound morphological awareness? To solve the above questions, the researcher conducted a series of tests, including nonverbal intelligence test, MA tests, and reading comprehension test.The research results indicated that(1) after controlling the effects of nonverbal intelligence, junior middle school students' MA was significantly correlated to reading comprehension, and the correlation coefficients of inflectional and derivational MA were much higher than that of compound MA;(2)inflectional morphological awareness and derivational morphological awareness could contribute most to reading comprehension. There existed many similarities between Chinese and English compound MA, so compound MA did not play the important role in the process of reading comprehension.The above research findings suggested that MA played a significant role in reading comprehension. In order to improve junior middle school students' abilities of reading comprehension, the researcher provided some suggestions about how best to teach vocabulary and reading comprehension. Finally, some limitations of the current study and suggestions for future researches were presented.