A Study on Taiwanese Senior High School Students' Knowledge of English Derivational Suffixes
2011
Hochschulschrift
Zugriff:
100
The present study aimed to investigate Taiwanese twelfth graders’ productive and receptive English derivational suffix knowledge. The accuracy orders of English derivational suffix production and recognition were established; the correlations between both suffix knowledge and vocabulary size as well as general English proficiency were calculated. The subjects were 170 twelfth graders from a complete school. From the school authorities the researcher obtained the subjects’ SAET scores, which were gathered to determine their general English proficiency. Then the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) was administered to measure the subjects’ vocabulary size while the Productive Derivational Suffix Test (PT) and the Receptive Derivational Suffix Test (RT) were designed to assess their productive and receptive suffix knowledge. In the PT, the subjects were given twenty prompt words and required to produce appropriate derivatives corresponding to four word classes, namely noun, adjective, verb, and adverb. In the RT, the test items were the same as those in the PT, except that a list of possible suffixes followed each prompt, from which allowable suffixes were to be circled. The results of the PT show that the top five productive suffixes in noun were -ion/-tion, -ation, -er/-or, -ity, and -ic, whereas those in adjective were -ive, -al, -able/-ible, -ic, and -ful. However, simply three verbal derivational suffixes (-ize, -fy, and -ate) were supplied by all the subjects and only one adverbial suffix, -ly, contributed to the formation of adverbs. Irrespective of parts of speech, -ly, -able/-ible, -er/-or, and -al were the most productive suffixes in terms of variety. In terms of frequency, the most productive suffixes became -ion/-tion, followed by -ly and -ive. The findings of the RT helped to establish an accuracy order of derivational suffix recognition: -ship > -ary > -ure > -ity > -ize > -ic > -fy > -ful > -ation > -ly > -less > -ion > -ive > -al > -able > -er/-or. The subjects’ performance in the PT was significantly worse than that in the RT. The correlation results among vocabulary size, general English proficiency, productive suffix knowledge, and receptive suffix knowledge show that the four measures were positively and significantly correlated with one another. The findings of the current study suggest that derivational suffixes might be an important and appropriate target of instruction for senior high school students because of its close relationship with the SAET score and general English ability. To help students learn the derivational suffixes, a selected number of derivational suffixes should first be introduced to students and Nation’s (2001) Sequenced List provides a useful set of learning goals. The teaching and learning of derivational suffixes should start from the widely-attached, frequently-occurring ones. Next, learners should be taught to recognize the suffixes in words and to learn the meanings of these suffixes. Time and effort should also be devoted to the teaching of suffixes’ syntactic functions, especially the word class of the suffix. English teachers could consider including other members of the same word family in the teaching plan when introducing new words, which may assist students in dealing with semantically opaque words. Besides, teaching word families may attract students’ attention to word formation regularities and processes, which can develop the concepts of prefixed words and compounds along with those of suffixed words. High school students should also be specifically instructed to produce derivatives whose stem or suffix undergoes orthographic changes. However, it is advised to provide distributional knowledge only for Taiwanese senior high school students of a higher level of proficiency in English, such as the gifted and talented students.
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A Study on Taiwanese Senior High School Students' Knowledge of English Derivational Suffixes
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Autor/in / Beteiligte Person: | Lin, Yu-liang ; 林郁良 |
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Veröffentlichung: | 2011 |
Medientyp: | Hochschulschrift |
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