Abstract

The study aimed to examine the relationship between morphological knowledge and reading comprehension ability among college-level English as a foreign language (EFL) students. One hundred and twenty-one students participated in this study and they completed two morphological knowledge measures (morpheme-form knowledge and morpheme-meaning knowledge), reading vocabulary knowledge, lexical inference and reading comprehension. Drawing upon hierarchical regression and path analysis, the study found that morphological knowledge explained a unique proportion of variance in reading comprehension after word-meaning knowledge was accounted for. In addition, morphological knowledge had direct and indirect effects on EFL reading comprehension via reading vocabulary breadth and lexical inference ability. To be more specific, the mediating effect of morpheme-meaning knowledge seemed to be salient in EFL reading comprehension. Conceptual and methodological interpretations were discussed based on the findings.

摘要

本研究旨在探讨大学水平英语作为外语（EFL）学生的形态学知识与阅读理解能力之间的关系。121名学生参加了本次研究，完成了词汇知识、词汇推理和阅读理解两项形态学知识测量（语素形式知识和语素意义知识）。该研究利用层次回归和路径分析，发现在考虑词义知识后，形态学知识解释了阅读理解中独特的差异比例。此外，形态学知识通过阅读词汇广度和词汇推理能力对英语阅读理解产生直接和间接影响。更具体，语素意义知识在英语阅读理解中的中介作用似乎很突出。根据调查结果讨论了概念和方法的解释。