TERTIARY EFL STUDENTS’ MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS OF ENGLISH

Abstract

Morphological awareness is regarded as a significant predictor of vocabulary acquisition,reading comprehension, and the advancement of various literary competences. Thus, thepresent study sought to investigate tertiary EFL students’ morphological awareness ofEnglish in terms of morphological identification and morphological structure awareness. Bymaking use of the total sampling technique, 51 tertiary EFL students from one of theuniversities in Bengkulu, Indonesia, were involved as the participants. Their Englishmorphological awareness was assessed using a valid and reliable test already developed by aprevious researcher. The results indicated that their English morphological awareness wasmoderate. Such condition became a positive potential which might contribute to consolidatethem in the process of English vocabulary acquisition, in dealing with readingcomprehension, and in fulfilling various English literary needs. This study recommends thatboth deductive and inductive English morphological interventions be given to tertiary EFLstudents in tandem with adequate practices that can continuously train their Englishmorphological awareness.