Considerations towards morphological assessment of English language learners
doi: https://doi.org/10.31810/rsel.53.2.4
Keywords:
Derivational morphology; English as a second language; Spanish as a first language, error analysisAbstract
This paper attempts to give a more complete picture of the morphological acquisition of English as a second language by analyzing the responses obtained from a derivational test, both statistically and with error analysis. The test was administered to 130 university students divided into three proficiency groups and the analyses focused on words created with the suffixes -able and -er. Instead of scoring the answers as «correct/incorrect», they were analyzed on a continuum from «derived» to «invented». The overall aim of the paper is to identify the way in which morphological knowledge is developed considering the suffixes evaluated, the types of errors and language proficiency. The statistical analysis shows significant differences both in the acquisition of suffixes and between proficiency groups. The error analysis suggests that there are differences in the types of errors made considering students’ proficiency levels; e.g., the lowest proficiency group is more likely to add inflectional suffixes instead of derivational suffixes. The relevance of the work is to demonstrate that partial knowledge exists, making us reflect on evaluation issues.
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