A Study of Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary Development of Pakistani Undergraduate ESL Students

Abstract

The current research aims to highlight the significance of morphological awareness for vocabulary development in learning English as a Second Language for Pakistani undergraduate students. This study first scrutinizes morphology and its types to present a broad-spectrum concept of morphological awareness and its crucial role in vocabulary development. Then, it spotlights numerous morphological zones such as the notion of morpheme, its categories, and the difference between inflectional and derivational morphology. The study adopted the theoretical framework of morphemic analysis in the light of Charles F. Hockett’s work on morphology and utilized a quantitative design to assess learners who comprised of 100 undergraduate students divided into two groups of 50 ESL learners each. Group two received explicit morphological instructions for one full semester whereas group one didn’t receive any kind of morphological instructions. For data collection, an objective type test based on different morphological processes and their application in the writing was administered for both groups. The findings overtly revealed that morphological processes must be introduced to ESL learners from the elementary level in order to achieve greater development in vocabulary and writing skills at the undergraduate level. The study suggests that English morphology should be an essential component of the ESL curriculum for undergraduate programs.