LANGUAGE IN INDIA

Strength for Today and Bright Hope for Tomorrow

Volume 17:1 January 2017
ISSN 1930-2940

Managing Editor: M. S. Thirumalai, Ph.D.
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Affixation Knowledge Strategy in Teaching English Vocabulary for Medicine

Giti Karimkhanlooei, Zanjan University of Medical Sciences, Zanjan, Iran
Bahareh Maboudi, Zanjan Islamic Azad University

Abstract

Vocabulary is a subset of all four language skills in the process of language learning; yet the way it is absorbed is probably the least stressed one in the setting of classrooms. The crucial reasons for this ignorance may lie in the lack of emphasis on its teaching. Until recently, there has been less elucidation at this point as an essential element of language proficiency. Further reasons for upholding the need to master vocabulary stems from the fact that vocabulary has an essential role in English language acquisition, which becomes even more prominent for university students.There are theories and techniques for teaching and learning vocabulary set forth in accordance with different perspectives on its mastery among which making use of affixes knowledge and word partsare accounted for as one of the most prevalent strategies corroborated by lots of researchers. This study explores ways to help Iranian EFL learners master vocabulary more straightforwardly and persistently. Resting upon morphemic analysis is considered as one of the strategies which inspirelearners’ vocabulary improvement. In morphemic analysis, students master the ways to analyze words into their meaningful segments eventually leading to the discovery of meaning for the entire word (Ives, Bursuk, & Ives, 1979). Morphemes encompass word roots, prefixes and suffixes as well as inflected endings (Baumann & Kame'enui, 2004). Via enlightenment aboutthese word parts, students apprehend new words and catch meaning which eventually lead to meliorationof reading comprehension skill. In the meantime, this knowledge will positively influence learning English etymology as a way of improving students’ capability to apprehend and absorb English lexicon and internalize theirmeaning easily in their reading comprehension. These notions were the vertebra in setting out this researchover which 70 students of medicine were picked as participants and were randomly assigned to two groups of experimental and treatment. The teaching vocabulary for the experimental group involved analyzing the vocabulary into word parts, i.e., via breaking the words down into their roots, suffixes and prefixes while the control group was taught using traditional approach. Following administration of pre- and post- tests, paired sample and independent t-tests were used to analyze the collected data. The results stood behind the notion thatthe experimental group outperformed the control group. To deal with the second hypothesis, the post test scores were compared with the students’ final test scores and Pearson Correlation was 0.082, which was higher than 0.05 which, in turn, led to the decision that there was no significant relationship between post test and final exam scores.

Keywords: Affixation, Reading comprehension, Vocabulary knowledge

1. Introduction

Vocabulary makes the ground for the quality of learners’ speaking, listening, reading and writing. Wilkins (1972) comments that “. . . while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothingcan be conveyed” (pp. 111–112). Ellis (1997) believes that vocabulary knowledge is a pre requisite to learners’ discourse comprehension, which enables grammatical rules to be modeled in the learners’ mind. In addition, Hudson (2007) states that language is comprised of words and learners’ vocabulary is central in language and its acquisition.

This is only the beginning part of the article. PLEASE CLICK HERE TO READ THE ENTIRE ARTICLE IN PRINTER-FRIENDLY VERSION.

Giti Karimkhanlooei
Zanjan University of Medical Sciences
Zanjan, Iran
Madavi Blvd. Faculty of Medicine
Department of English
P.C. 45139-56111
Zanjan, Iran
ghiti@zums.ac.ir (Corresponding Author)

Bahareh Maboudi
Science and Research Branch, Zanjan Islamic Azad University
Zanjan, Iran
baharmaboudii@yahoo.com
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