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University of Southeastern Philippines


College of Education
Bo. Obrero Davao City

___________________________________________

MEASURING MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS OF THE GENERAL


ACADEMIC STRAND AND ACCOUNTING AND BUSINESS MANAGEMENT
OF THE ST. JOHN PAUL COLLEGE DAVAO CITY

A TERM PAPER

___________________________________________

In Partial Fulfillment
of the Course Requirement for the Subject
INTRODUCTION TO LINGUISTICS

Presented to:

DR. MILAGROS VILLAS


Professor

Presented by:

MAY ANN V. ALFECHE


MARVIN C. MICULOB
ELAINE R. MORAN
HONEY LEE T. SUMALPONG

MED-LT 1

DECEMBER 2017
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Chapter I

INTRODUCTION

This chapter presents the background of the study, the statement of the problem, the

significance of the study, the scope and limitation, and the definition of terms used in the

study.

Background of the Study

Morphological awareness (MA) is considered a prime force in children’s vocabulary

growth, but this skill has scarcely been measured in adults. In the process of growing up in

a literate society, most young people gain a large vocabulary, and word learning can

continue throughout the lifespan. It is hard to appreciate the scale of this achievement

because no one knows precisely how many words are learned. There is an enormous

research literature describing the early years of language development, and many

mechanisms of word learning have been identified in young children. There is also a large

research base about learning to read and the related gains in language ability during early

years of schooling. Most of the research has focused on how communication ability

develops in childhood, and less is known about vocabulary development in adolescents and

adults. There is still no complete explanation for the vast word-learning accomplishment

of the first 15 or 20 years of normal development (Maag, 2007).

Two highly influential studies have examined the conditions of English vocabulary

learning, and these papers prompted the current study. In the first study, Nagy and

Anderson (1984) analyzed the words found in typical school materials through grade 9,

and determined that the teaching of vocabulary would fall short because there are too many
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words to be taught. They concluded that children must be gaining much of their vocabulary

through reading, and by making inferences about words that are semantically transparent.

Anglin (1993) interviewed school children to learn about the depth and breadth of their

word knowledge. The children were encouraged to try to explain words that they were

unable to define. For example, one child who didn’t know the word treelet, decided by

analogy that it must mean a small tree because a piglet was a little pig. Anglin called this

process “morphological problem solving” and showed that understanding of

multimorphemic words was low in first graders, but increased dramatically by fifth grade.

He suggested that the ability to analyze the morphemes in complex words accounted for a

large part of vocabulary growth.

There have been many estimates of vocabulary size for different ages, and the totals

vary tremendously. At 12 months of age, when most children are beginning to produce

single words, some children have a vocabulary of 52 words and others have zero (Bates et

al., 1994). A typical first-grader may know 2,700 words (Dolch, 1936) or 26,000 (Shibles,

1959). With older students, the estimates diverge even more. An average college student

may have a vocabulary of 17,000 words (Goulden, Nation, & Read, 1990; D'Anna,

Zechmeister, & Hall, 1991), or 200,000 words (Hartman, 1946 cited in Anderson &

Freebody, 1981).

One method of conceptualizing word knowledge used a scale with 4 levels (Dale,

1965). A person might (1) never have seen the word before; (2) know that it is a word, but

not know the 16 meaning; (3) know the general idea of a word; or (4) know a word well.

Measuring knowledge of root or basic words is one way to avoid the word definition

problem. Root words or basic words are not inflected or derived, and must be learned
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individually. For example, a child would have to learn the meaning of think, but would be

assumed to know the inflected forms: thinks, thinking, and even the irregular past tense,

thought. By one account, children older than second-graders can gain about 1,000 basic

words per year (Biemiller & Boote, 2006). Using basic words to estimate vocabulary size

is a sensible accommodation to the problem of defining separate words, but such a count

does not fully indicate the depth or quality of a person’s word knowledge. To make better

use of the basic word measure, an additional measure would be valuable: the extent to

which the word learner can use morphological clues to interpret complex words formed

from basic words. Such a measure would indicate recognition of word families, as in

knowing think and understanding its derivations: thinkable, thoughtful, thoughtless,

unthinkingly, forethought, afterthought, rethink, methinks, overthink, think tank, and

groupthink. This is the ability that would be rated with a test of morphological awareness

(MA).

Due to the methodological problems, we do not know precisely how large an adult’s

vocabulary is, but we know that the numbers are large. Accounting for the rapid increase

in word knowledge that begins in childhood and continues throughout adulthood is even

more complex, and likely involves multiple learning strategies.


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Statement of the Problem

The researcher specifically aims to answer the following questions:

1. What is the morphological awareness of the GAS and ABM Senior High School of

St. John Paul II College of Davao?

2. What are the scores of the participants in the morphological test?

3. Which of the two strands get higher or lower scores?

Theory Base

This study will use the vocabulary development theories which are the following: First,

the mutual exclusivity principle (Markan, 1990), or the novel- nameless category principle

(Golinkoff, Shuff- Bailey, & Olguin, 1995). For instance, children often assume that a new

word applies to something for which they did not already have a name. A variation is the

principle of contrast that states that no two words mean exactly the same thing (Clark,

1993).

Second, the whole object bias is another principle that would simplify word-to-

referent mapping, and a taxonomic bias would guide the extension of the word to similar

objects (Markman, 1990). Using these guidelines, a child would assume that the word cat

refers to the entire animal, and not just to its fur, its tail, or some other feature, and that cat

also applies to other creatures that look like a cat. Some constraints theorists have

maintained that these are innate properties, but others have proposed developmental

pathways for constraints. For example, one set of multiple constraints has been proposed,

beginning with three basic principles that get word learning off the ground, and evolve into

three more sophisticated principles (Golinkoff et al., 1995).


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Third, the shape bias is another principle that enables children to apply a newly

learned noun to other objects with similar forms, but Smith (1999) describes this as an

emergent, not innate, mechanism. Markson and Bloom (1997) showed that 3- and 4-year-

olds learned novel facts as readily as novel words, concluding that a dedicated word

learning system is unneeded. Similarly, Samuelson and Smith (1998) explained examples

of word learning through memory and attention, asserting that specialized skills for words

are unjustified.

Other types of language knowledge contribute to learning word meanings. Linguistic

information within an utterance can help a child determine the meaning of an unfamiliar

word. Two-year-olds can use their understanding of familiar verbs (such as eat, ride, or

spill) and their general knowledge to infer the meanings of unfamiliar nouns (Goodman,

McDonough, & Brown, 1998). Children listened to sentences such as "Mommy feeds the

ferret," and were asked to pick out the target noun ferret from a page with drawings of 3

inanimate objects and 1 small mammal. The 24- and 30-month old participants correctly

identified a novel noun an average of 4.3 times out of 10. Thus, by the age of 2 or 3, children

can draw on an array of cues to figure out the meanings of new words (Maag, 2007).

Young children have many strategies for figuring out new words and use multiple

methods for doing so (Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, & Hollich, 2000; Akhtar, 2002, Bloom,

2000). It is probably safe to assume that older children can use the same methods and apply

them more skillfully.

A body of research indicates that the importance of morphological awareness in

learning vocabulary increases with age (Carlisle, 2000; Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Nagy et

al., 2006; Nagy et al., 2003). For example, Nagy et al. (2003) found the relationship
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between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge to be stronger in fourth

grade than in second grade. Anglin (1993) reported that students’ morphological awareness

skills got better in later grades. This may partly explain the incremental importance of

morphological awareness in learning new words throughout the school years. As the

students sharpen their ability to analyze words using morphological clues, they become

more able to use this strategy to acquire new vocabulary.

Morphological awareness contributes to vocabulary knowledge in several ways. The

understanding the morphological structure of complex words enables children to infer the

meanings of these words from constituent morphemes. Morphologically complex words

make up approximately 60% of the new vocabulary encountered by school-aged children,

and the constituent morphemes of these words are familiar enough to make a reasonable

guess about their meanings (Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

The Schema Theory or the Schema Perspective theory states that all knowledge is

organized into units. Within these units of knowledge, or schemata, is stored information.

The goal of this theory is to describe interaction between what is in the text and how that

information is shaped and stored by the reader.

Schemata, according to Rumelhart and Ortony, represent generic concepts are stored

in memory. The way in which a particular concept is stored is not by remembering the

isolated event in its totality down to its most basic components. The goal of schema theory

is to describe interaction between what is in the text and how that information is shaped

and store and stored by the reader. (Adams and Collins) The underlying assumption is

that meaning does not lie solely in the print itself, but interacts with the cognitive structure

or schemata already present in the reader’s mind. In fact, readers appear to activate a
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schema as soon they begin to read. The initial schema then activates others, thus directly

affecting how readers understand and react to a text. Schemas that are related to text

organization are especially important to comprehension. Having knowledge of a text's

organization improves students' understanding of that text.

Conceptual Framework
The conceptual framework in Figure 1 shows the different variables of the study.

The vocabulary development consisting of mutual exclusivity principle or the nameless

category principle, whole object bias, and shape bias as the independent variable. The

morphological awareness consisting of the word knowledge and familiarity of the word.

The senior high strand, sex and age are identified as the moderator variable.

INDEPENDENT VARIABLE DEPENDENT VARIABLE

Vocabulary Development Morphological Awareness


- Mutual Exclusivity -
Principle - Morphology Skill
- Whole Object Bias - Definition
- Shape Bias
- Schema Theory

Moderator Variable
- Senior High Strand (Tech.
Voc)
- Sex
- Age Figure 1.
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Significance of the Study

This study will be significant to the following:

Students. This study would give the students adequate awareness on their

morphological level and vocabulary development. This is to have guide in facilitating

adequate understanding on assessments or reading which require vocabulary knowledge.

Teachers. This study would provide the teachers an idea of their learners’ vocabulary

size and development which will guide them as to the level of difficulty of assessments and

instructional materials they are going to give.

Future Researchers. This study would provide useful resources for future researchers

who will conduct studies regarding morphological awareness as implications of vocabulary

development.

Scope and Limitation of the Study

The study aims to measure morphological awareness by utilizing the principle of the

mutual exclusivity principle or the novel name-nameless category principle, whole object

bias, shape bias, and other language knowledge. This will be used to determine the

vocabulary development of the learners.

Definition of Terms

The following terms are operationally defined to clarify the terms used in this study.

Technical Vocational refers to one of the four strands of the Senior High School.

It also refers to the respondents of the research conducted.

Vocabulary development refers to the pivotal to developing strong reading skills

Morphological awareness refers to a “conscious awareness of the morphemic

structure of words and their ability to reflect on and manipulate that structure” (Carlisle,
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1995, p. 194). Morphemes are the smallest units of meaning in a word. Words can be either

morphologically simple (a single morpheme) or complex (more than one morpheme). As

well, morphemes can be either lexical (with semantic meaning) or grammatical

(inflectional or derivational) (Gombert, Cole, Valdois, Goigoux, Mousty & Fayol, 2000).

Inflectional morphology refers to the systematic marking of grammatical function on a

word stem required by the syntax (for example, I tum-> she turns; one book-> two books)”

(Kuo & Anderson, 2006, p. 163). Derivational morphology involves “the addition of a

morpheme to change the part of speech or the meaning of a base morpheme (for example,

explain-> explanation)” (Kuo & Anderson, 2006, p. 163).


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Review of Related Literature and Studies

Related Literature

Vocabulary

Vocabulary development is pivotal to developing strong reading skills. The

National Reading Panel (National Institute of Child Health and Human Development

[NICHHD] 2000) has identified it as one of the five critical components of reading

instruction (phonemic awareness, decoding, fluency, vocabulary, and comprehension).

Other instructional resources (e.g., ICAT Resources) have identified vocabulary

development through word recognition/meaning and word study as two of seven

dimensions of reading instruction (comprehension, metacognition, language and prior

knowledge, word recognition, and meaning, word study, fluency, and responding).

One of the key indicators of students’ success in school, on standardized tests, and

indeed, in life, is their vocabulary. The reason of this is simply that the knowledge

anyone has about a topic is based on the vocabulary of that information (Marzano &

Pickering, 2005). “teaching vocabulary will not guarantee success in reading, just as

learning to read words will not guarantee success in reading. However, lacking either

adequate word identification skills or adequate vocabulary will ensure failure” (Biemiller,

2005).
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In grades 3 through 12, an average student is likely to learn approximately 3,000 new

vocabulary words each year, if he or she reads between 500,000 and a million words of

text a school year (Nagy & Anderson, 1984).

Vocabulary is generically defined as the knowledge of words and word meanings.

More specifically, we use vocabulary to refer to the kind of words that students must

know to read increasingly demanding text with comprehension (kamil & Heibert, 2005).

It is something that expands and deepens over time.

Morphology

Morphology is a critical element of successful vocabulary development.

Awareness of morphology has been shown to be a strong indicator of and positive

influence upon reading comprehension (Soifer, 2005). Subsequently, weakness in

vocabulary skills is noted as a potent inhibitor to fully comprehending text.

Morphology, a word of Greek origin, combines “morphe,” meaning form, and

“ology,” meaning the study of.

Morphology is widely held to be part of the explanation for how children learn so

may words that they were never explicitly taught (e.g. Anglin, 1993; Carlisle & Fleming,

2003; Carlisle, 2007; Nagy and Anderson, 1984; Taft & Kougious, 2004). Anglin (1993)
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described morphological problem solving as a process by which the meaning of

previously unknown complex words can be deciphered.

Students who understand how words are formed by combining prefixes, suffixes,

and roots tend to have larger vocabularies and better reading comprehension than peers

without such knowledge and skills (Prince 2009). Nagy (2007) proposed that the teaching

morphological awareness in school may be the way to narrow the achievement gap for

children whose families differ in education and income levels, and ethnic or racial

backgrounds. A deep and full knowledge and understanding of vocabulary will improve

outcomes for students who struggle.

Morin (2003) proposed the strategy of using morphological knowledge to infer

word meanings, and with it, the need to develop morphological awareness in the L2

would become more realized. She characterizes morphological awareness as the ability to

reflect on and manipulate morphemes and word formation rules in a language.

Related Studies

The Role of Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary Acquisition Children‘s

awareness of the morphological structure of words has been found to be correlated with

vocabulary knowledge (Carlisle & Fleming, 2003; Nagy et al., 2003; Singson et al.,

2000). It has also been found that children with more advanced morphological awareness

have an advantage in acquiring new vocabulary (see Reed, 2008). For example, Freyd
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and Baron (1982) found that compared to average readers, good readers used derivational

rules more frequently and were faster at learning derived words. In another study,

Wysocki and Jenkins (1987) observed that sixth- and eighth-grade students were better

able to deduce the meaning of a root word (e.g., anxiety) than fourth-grade students, if

they had already learned a related derived word (e.g., anxious).

Studies and reviews of research over the past three decades have shown that the

size and depth of elementary student’s vocabulary is associated with proficiency in

reading comprehension and that instruction to increase readers’ vocabulary results in

higher levels of reading comprehension (e.g., Baumann, Carr-Edwards, Font,

Tereshinski, Kame’enui, & Olejnik, 2002; Beck, Perfetti, & McKeown, 1922;

Kame’enui, Carnine, & Freschi, 1982; Stahl & Fairbanks, 1986).

In their studies on children’s literacy development, Dr. John Kirby and Ph.D.

student Peter Browers find that morphology improves vocabulary acquisition, spelling,

and reading ability.

However, in a study with third and fifth grade students, Carlisle (2000) showed

that learners are less able to recognize morphologocal cues in “shift words” that have

changes in pronunciation and/or spelling due to suffixing patterns across related forms.

Pressley, Disney, and Anderson (2007) reviewed the evidence for the value of

teaching internal context cues (morphological word parts) for vocabulary development.
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Although they described the evidence so far as “thin and equivocal” (Pressley et.al.,

2007, p 214) they reported that there was some evidence that teaching about morphemes

can improve children’s and adult’s ability to infer the meanings of words.

Chapter 3

METHODS

Participants

Grade 11 students (GAS and ABM strand) of St. John Paul II College of Davao

were recruited for the study. There were a total of 40 participants. They were picked

randomly. There were 20 participants for each strand-ABM and GAS. There were 3

males and 17 females from ABM strand while there were 10 males and 10 females from

GAS, and most were between 16 and 20 years old.

Instruments

The Nelson-Denny Reading Test (ND) was selected as a standardized test because it is

suitable for group. The ND is a well regarded instrument used both for research purposes

and for assessment of reading progress in schools and in clinical settings (Masterson &

Hayes, 2004). Standardization of the test was done from 1991 to 1992, and the college-

level sample included over 5,000 students from 38 four-year universities (Brown, Fishco,

& Hannah, 1993). Standard administration includes a 15-minute vocabulary section with

80 items, and a 20-minute comprehension section with 38 questions. Each multiple-

choice question in the vocabulary and comprehension sections has five answer choices.
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The Morphology Test Designed for the Current Study

The test for measuring morphology skill contained four sections, which were called

Section 1: Self-Assessment and Demographic Information Subtest 1: Checklist, Subtest

2: Morphology Skill, and Subtest 3: Definitions. Section 1 required a response to their

language preference both in speaking and reading as well as their speech and reading

problem. Each section starting Subtest 1 required a response to the same list of 50

morphologically complex words.

For section 1: participants were given 14 questions including their demographic

information to be answered and fill in.

Questions 1 and 2 is all about their language preference in speaking and reading.

Questions 3-7 is about their current reading and vocabulary levels. Questions 8-11 will be

all about their language and reading background. Lastly, questions 12-14 will be all about

their demographic information.

For Subtest 1: Checklist, participants were given the list of 50 complex words, and asked

to place a check next to the words they know. The instructions included “check yes if you

could use the word in a sentence.” In everyday parlance, knowing a word means

recognizing its meaning, and the superficial purpose of Subtest 1 was simply to obtain a

yes-or-no response for this level of knowing each word. The less obvious purpose was to

gain access to a deeper level of knowledge in later steps of the test. A thorough

knowledge of a word includes its associations with derivationally-related words. This

knowledge is usually implicit, but can be made explicit by the sequence of Subtest 1:

Checklist followed by the third subtest.


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In Subtest 2: Morphology Skill, the participants were asked to identify the simpler word

that is morphologically related to each of the complex words (as shown in the example

above). By itself, the score for Subtest 2 would represent the student’s basic knowledge

of general derivational word-formation processes (or morphology skill). Taking results

on Subtest 2 for only the words marked known on Subtest 1 represents the specific,

usually tacit knowledge of the derivational relationships of the particular test words. This

is how the score for morphological awareness (MA) was obtained.

Subtest 3: Definitions was a standard-format, multiple-choice vocabulary test, in which

the definition of the target word had to be selected. A sample item from the third subtest

was

____ 24. expensive a. talking too much b. thoughtful c. costly

The score for Subtest 3: Definitions is simply a measure of knowledge of word meanings.

Comparing Subtest 3 answers to words marked as known on Subtest 1 can be used as an

assessment of metacognitive skill. This comparison was termed Accuracy because it

indicates whether or not the students actually know the meanings of the words they think

they know. In addition to the three-part morphology test, the participants were also asked

about the amount of reading they do, and if they had any language problems in school or

difficulty learning a foreign language.

Scoring

For the morphology test, last three subtest scores were obtained. Starting with Subtest 1:

Checklist, the number of words checked as known was recorded. Scores for Subtest 2:

Morphology Skill, and Subtest 3: Definitions were the numbers of correct responses on
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each subtest. The responses to individual words on the three subtests allowed the scores

for MA and accuracy to be derived.

The MA score was calculated by counting the correct answers from Subtest 2:

Morphology Skill for words checked as known (on Subtest 1: Checklist). Similarly,

Accuracy scores were obtained by assigning one point for each correct definition from

Subtest 3: Definitions for each word checked as known (on Subtest 1: Checklist). As an

example, if a student marked commendable as unknown on the Checklist, but correctly

chose commend as the related word on Subtest 2: Morphology Skill, the student would be

credited with one point toward the Subtest 2 score, but would not earn credit for this

word on the MA score. Using the same procedures, if a student marked opacity as known,

but did not select the correct definition on Subtest 3: Definitions, no point would be

credited to the Accuracy score.

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