Morphological awareness of separable words among Chinese L2 learners

Abstract This study investigated English-speaking Chinese L2 learners’ familiarity with, awareness, and conditional production of 12 high-frequency separable words in six commonly employed separable-use structures (AXB) at an American university. The participants included 60 students from first- to third-year Chinese classes. The results showed that students were exposed to the six high-frequency AXB structures from the beginning stage of their study and that this exposure increased linearly across three instructional levels. However, a significant increase in awareness and comprehension of the six AXB structures was not observed until students had completed 20 credit hours of Chinese study. Judging from the rewriting of erroneous sentences, the development of the accurate production of the six AXB structures was slow. The accuracy rate only reached 41% for students who had completed 26 credit hours of Chinese study. The major error that the first- and second-year students committed in rewriting the six AXB structures was to correct irrelevant components in the sentence. For the third-year students, the major error type was avoiding the use of AXB structures. Regression analysis showed that successful comprehension of AXB structures is the strongest predictor for their accurate production. Based on the study results, pedagogical interventions for improving the learning efficiency of separable words are recommended.