Contribution of morphological awareness and lexical inferencing ability to L2 vocabulary knowledge and reading comprehension among advanced EFL learners: Testing direct and indirect effects

Reading and Writing

Volumn 25, Issue 5, 2012, Pages 1195-1216

  Zhang, Dongbo ^a   Koda, Keiko ^b  

^a NANYANG TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY   (Singapore)

^b CARNEGIE MELLON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

English as a Foreign Language; Morphological awareness; Reading comprehension; Vocabulary knowledge

Indexed keywords

EID: 84860365802     PISSN: 09224777     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1007/s11145-011-9313-z     Document Type: Article

References (41)

1. Anglin, J. M. (1993). Vocabulary development: A morphological analysis. Monographs of the Society for Research in Child Development, 58(10), 1-165.
2. Baron, R. M., & Kenny, D. A. (1986). The moderator-mediator variable distinction in social psychological research: Conceptual, strategic, and statistical considerations. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 51, 1173-1182.
3. Bentler, P. M. (2005). EQS 6 structural equations program manual. Encino, CA: Multivariate Software, Inc.
4. Carlisle, J. F. (2000). Awareness of the structure and meaning of morphologically complex words: Impact on reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169-190.
5. Carlisle, J. F. (2003). Morphology matters in learning to read: A commentary. Reading Psychology, 24, 291-322.
6. Cheung, G. W., & Lau, R. S. (2008). Testing mediation and suppression effects of latent variables: Bootstrapping with structural equation models. Organization Research Methods, 11, 296-325.
7. Deacon, S. H., & Kirby, J. B. (2004). Morphological awareness: Just "more phonological"? The roles of morphological and phonological awareness in reading development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223-238.
8. Gu, Y., & Johnson, R. K. (1996). Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes. Language Learning, 46, 643-679.
9. Haastrup, K. (1991). Lexical inferencing procedures or talking about words: Receptive procedures in foreign language learning with special reference to English. Tubingen: Gunter Narr Verlag.
10. He, L. (2010). The Graduate School Entrance English Examination. In L. Cheng & A. Curtis (Eds.), English language assessment and the Chinese learner (pp. 145-157). New York, NY: Routledge.
11. Hu, L., & Bentler, P. M. (1999). Cutoff criteria for fit indexes in covariance structure analysis: Conventional criteria versus new alternatives. Structural Equation Modeling, 6, 1-55.
12. Jin, Y., & Yang, H. Z. (2006). The English proficiency of college and university students in China: As reflected in the CET. Language, Culture and Curriculum, 19, 21-36.
13. Kenny, D. A., Kashy, D. A., & Bolger, N. (1998). Data analysis in social psychology. In D. Gilbert, S. Fiske, & G. Lindzey (Eds.), The handbook of social psychology (4th ed., Vol. 1, pp. 233-265). Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill.
14. Kieffer, M. J., & Lesaux, N. K. (2008). The role of derivational morphology in the reading comprehension of Spanish-speaking English language learners. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 21, 783-804.
15. Kline, R. B. (2005). Principles and practices of structural equation modeling (2nd ed.). New York: The Guilford Press.
16. Ku, Y.-M., & Anderson, R. C. (2003). Development of morphological awareness in Chinese and English. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 16, 399-422.
17. Kucera, H., & Francis, W. N. (1967). Computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press.
18. Kuo, L.-J., & Anderson, R. C. (2006). Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41, 161-180.
19. Laufer, B. (1992). How much lexis is necessary for reading comprehension? In P. J. L. Arnaud & H. Bejoint (Eds.), Vocabulary and applied linguistics (pp. 126-132). Basingstoke: Macmillan.
20. McBride-Chang, C., Tardif, T., Cho, J.-R., Shu, H., Fletcher, P., Stokers, S. F., et al. (2008). What's in a word? Morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge in three languages. Applied Psycholinguistics, 29, 437-462.
21. Mochizuki, M., & Aizawa, K. (2000). An affix acquisition order for EFL learners: An exploratory study. System, 28, 291-304.
22. Nagy, W. (2005). Why vocabulary instruction needs to be long-term and comprehensive. In E. H. Hiebert & M. L. Kamil (Eds.), Teaching and learning vocabulary: Bring research to practice (pp. 27-44). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates.
23. Nagy, W. (2007). Metalinguistic awareness and the vocabulary-comprehension connection. In R. K. Wagner, A. E. Muse, & K. R. Tannenbaum (Eds.), Vocabulary acquisition: Implications for reading comprehension (pp. 52-77). New York, NY: The Guilford Press.
24. Nagy, W. E., & Anderson, R. C. (1984). How many words are there in printed school English? Reading Research Quarterly, 19, 304-330.
25. Nagy, W. E., Berninger, V., & Abbott, R. (2006). Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134-147.
26. Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. New York, NY: Newbury House.
27. Paribakht, T. S., & Wesche, M. (1999). Reading and "incidental" L2 vocabulary acquisition: An introspective study of lexical inferencing. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 195-224.
28. Qian, D. D. (1999). Assessing the roles of depth and breadth of vocabulary knowledge in reading comprehension. Canadian Modern Language Review, 56, 282-307.
29. Qian, D. D. (2004). Second language lexical inferencing: Preferences, perceptions and practices. In B. Laufer & P. Bogaards (Eds.), Vocabulary in a second language: Selection, acquisition and testing (pp. 155-169). Amsterdam: John Benjamins.
30. Read, J. (1993). The development of a new measure of L2 vocabulary knowledge. Language Testing, 10, 355-371.
31. Read, J. (1998). Validating a test to measure depth of vocabulary knowledge. In A. J. Kunnan (Ed.), Validation in language assessment (pp. 41-60). Mahwah, NJ: Lawrence Erlbaum.
32. Sandra, D. (1994). The morphology of the mental lexicon: Internal word structure viewed from a psycholinguistic perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 227-269.
33. Schmitt, N., & Meara, P. (1997). Researching vocabulary through a word knowledge framework: Word associations and verbal suffixes. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 19, 17-36.
34. Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D., & Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the behavior of two new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test. Language Testing, 18, 55-88.
35. Shrout, P. E., & Bolger, N. (2002). Mediation in experimental and nonexperimental studies: New procedures and recommendations. Psychological Methods, 7, 422-445.
36. Sobel, M. E. (1982). Asymptotic confidence intervals for indirect effects in structural equation models. Sociological Methodology, 13, 290-312.
37. TEM-8 Development Committee. (2003). A collection of TEM-8 (Test for English Majors) test papers. China: Shanghai Foreign Language Education Press.
38. Wang, M., Cheng, C., & Chen, S.-W. (2006). Contribution of morphological awareness to Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 542-553.
39. Wang, M., Ko, I. Y., & Choi, J. (2009). The importance of morphological awareness in Korean-English biliteracy acquisition. Contemporary Educational Psychology, 34, 132-142.
40. Wu, A. D., & Zumbo, B. D. (2008). Understanding and using mediators and moderators. Social Indicators Research, 87, 367-392.
41. Wysocki, K., & Jenkins, J. R. (1987). Deriving word meanings through morphological generalization. Reading Research Quarterly, 22, 66-81.