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Morphological Teaching and Singaporean Children’s English Word Learning

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Quadrilingual Education in Singapore

Part of the book series: Education Innovation Series ((EDIN))

Abstract

This chapter reports some preliminary findings of a semester-long morphological intervention study on Grade 4 children in Singapore, focusing on the development of English derivational awareness and word learning ability, and the relationship between these competencies. Students in two compatible primary schools were pretested at the end of Grade 3 on their derivational awareness and meaning inference ability. During the first semester of Grade 4, students in one school received the intervention, whereas those in the other school were taught with their regular English Language curriculum. At the end of the semester, all students were posttested with the same tasks. One-way ANCOVA controlling for pretest scores revealed low but significant effects of the morphological intervention. Correlation-based analyses found that the relationship of morphological awareness to lexical inference became stronger from Grade 3 to Grade 4.

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Acknowledgments

The study reported in this chapter was based on a research project funded by the Office of Education Research (OER), National Institute of Education (NIE) (OER 24/10 ZDB), to which we express our gratitude. Our thanks are also due to Professors Che Kan Leong and Keiko Koda and Dr. Elizabeth Pang, who offered a lot of help and support at various stages of the project. We also thank the generous support from the teachers and the students in the participating schools and the hard work of many full-time and part-time research assistants. Views expressed in this chapter do not necessarily reflect those of OER or NIE.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, East Lansing, MI, 48824, USA

    Dongbo Zhang

  2. Singapore Centre for Chinese Language, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, Singapore

    Li Li

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  1. Dongbo Zhang
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  2. Li Li
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Correspondence to Dongbo Zhang .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Nanyang Technological University, National Institute of Education, Singapore

    Rita Elaine Silver

  2. Crandall University, Moncton, New Brunswick, Canada

    Wendy D. Bokhorst-Heng

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Zhang, D., Li, L. (2016). Morphological Teaching and Singaporean Children’s English Word Learning. In: Elaine Silver, R., Bokhorst-Heng, W. (eds) Quadrilingual Education in Singapore. Education Innovation Series. Springer, Singapore. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-967-7_12

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-287-967-7_12

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  • Publisher Name: Springer, Singapore

  • Print ISBN: 978-981-287-965-3

  • Online ISBN: 978-981-287-967-7

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