A Study Of The Relationship Between English Morphological Awareness And Literacy Skills Among High School Students

This study aims to explore the relationship between English morphological awareness and literacy skills in high school students in China where English is learnt as a foreign language.The participants in this study were 98 grade ten students in a high school in Fuzhou,Fujian Province.Two research questions were put forward:(1)Is there a significant correlation between morphological awareness and literacy skills?(2)If correlations exist,does morphological awareness make an independent contribution to spelling,vocabulary and reading comprehension?And if the influence of other factors is controlled,does morphological awareness make an independent contribution to literacy skills?The instruments employed in this study were a set of tests,including a phonological awareness test,a morphological awareness test,a spelling test and a vocabulary size test.Data were collected in groups except those of phonological awareness test which was administered individually.Students' performance on reading comprehension was measured according to their reading scores in the midterm examination.SPSS 17.0 was used to analyze the data,and the results showed that(1)there exist significant correlations between morphological awareness and literacy skills in high school students.There are positive correlation among English morphological awareness,spelling,vocabulary and reading comprehension;(2)morphological awareness can predict a certain variance of spelling,vocabulary and reading comprehension.When the influence of other factors is controlled,morphological awareness still makes an independent contribution to literacy skills.This study has great significance.Theoretically,it explores the relationship between English morphological awareness and literacy skills in high school students in China where English is learnt as a foreign language.It extends the findings of previous studies in English morphological awareness.Practically,this study provides high school teachers with some implications.As morphological awareness makes an independent contribution to literacy skills,training of morphological awareness may help improve literacy skills.