Awareness Of Word Analysability And Its Role In Expanding Learners’ Vocabulary

Abstract

Some linguists have claimed that foreign language learners are unaware that English words containing Greek and Latin roots are analyzable. One purpose of the present study was to assess this claim. A second purpose was to see whether making these learners aware of the analyzability of these words would help them to expand their vocabulary. The final purpose was to find out whether students find the meanings of certain types of such words easier to guess than others. The 30 subjects in this study were pretested, given instruction in analyzing words into their component roots and guessing their meanings, and then post-tested. Descriptive and inferential statistics were used to evaluate the hypotheses, and these yielded the following results: (1) advanced Iraqi EFL learners are not aware of the analyzability of this type of words, and (2) making these learners aware of this analyzability will enable them to expand their vocabulary considerably, (3) learners find guessing the meanings of words containing Greek roots easier than those of words containing Latin roots, and (4) learners find guessing the meanings of words whose roots have not undergone any linguistic changes easier than those of words whose roots have undergone such changes.