THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENTS MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION

ABSTRACT

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENTS MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION

KINANTI

The problem of this research is focused on students’ morphological awareness and reading comprehension in the second grade of senior high school level. The objective of this study is to find out whether there’s significant correlation between students’ morphological awareness and their reading comprehension. Thirty two students of XI IPA 1 SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung were selected as sample class of this research. The design used was ex-post-facto design in term of co-relational study. The instruments were Morphological Awareness test and Reading Comprehension test.

The result of calculation showed that coefficient correlation between students’ morphological awareness and their reading comprehension was 0.729 at significant level of 0.01. The coefficient correlation is higher than the critical value of r table (0.729>0.449). Further, simple regression was done to analyze how far the contribution of morphological awareness to students’ reading comprehension. The result shows the coefficient determination was 0.515. is interpreted that morphological awareness influenced 51.5% toward reading comprehension. Therefore, it can be concluded that there is significant correlation between students’ morphological awareness and their reading comprehension at second grade of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung. It implies that morphological awareness can be applied as they strategy of increasing students’ reading comprehension.

THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN STUDENTS’ MORPHOLOGICAL AWARENESS AND THEIR READING COMPREHENSION

(A Script)

By Kinanti

A Script

Submitted in a Partial Fullfilment of The Requirement for S-1 Degree

in

The Language and Art Departmrnt of Teacher Training and Education Faculty

ENGLISH EDUCATION STUDY PROGRAM ARTS AND LANGUAGE EDUCATION DEPARTMENT

TEACHER TRAINING AND EDUCATION FACULTY LAMPUNG UNIVERSITY

CURRICULUM VITAE

Kinanti was born in Cianjur, Jawa Barat on June 12th 1993. She is the firts child of lovely couple Dede Sukandi and Heni Wardiani. She has one sister namely Pilanti.

She began her formal study at SDN 3 Agung Raya, Perumnas Way Halim and graduated in 2005. Then, she continued her junior high school at SMPN 21 Bandar Lampung and graduated in 2008. After graduating from junior high school, she continued her study at SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung in 2008 and finished in 2011.

Having graduated from the senior high school, at the same year, she decided to continue her study at English Education Study Program of Lampung University in 2011.

DEDICATIONS

By affecting my praise and gratitude to Allah SWT for blessing me,

I’d proudly dedIcated thIs script to :

 The extraordinary Sundanesse couples, my rulers, my lives, my everything: My parents Dede Sukandi and Heni

Wardiani, may God love you as you love me all the days and the nights.

Motto

N a y it

, I a ay a a .

Gerard Way

A a y a a y a a . A a y a a y.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

In the name of Allah, the beneficent and merciful. All praise is merely to The Mightiest Allah SWT, the lord of the world, for the gracious mercies and tremendous blessing that enabled me to accomplish this script entitled “The Relationship between Students’ Morphological Awareness and Their Reading Comprehension”. This script is submitted as a compulsory fulfillment of the requirements for S1 degree of English Education Study Program at Teacher Training and Education Faculty, University of Lampung.

It is important to be known that the script would never have come into existence without any supports, encouragements, and assistance by several gorgeous persons. It is the great honor for the researcher to make acknowledgement of indebtedness to convey her sincere gratitude to:

1. Prof. Ag. Bambang Setiyadi, M.A., Ph.D., as the writer‟s first advisor, for his willingness to give assistance, ideas, encouragement, and scientific knowledge within this time during this script writing process. Then the best sincere gratitude is also extended to Mr. Ujang Suparman, M.A., Ph.D. for his patience, suggestions, and also revisions during the accomplishment of this script.

2. Deep gratitude to my inspiring examiner, Dra. Hartati Hasan, M. Hum, who has given me valuable input for the improvement of this bachelor script.

3. Furthermore, the writer would like to say thanks to the headmaster of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung, who has given the writer permission to do the research and all beloved students of XI IPA 1, 2 and 3 their good cooperation.

4. For my beloved parents, Heni Wardiani and Dede Sukandi, thanks for supporting and for the prayers all day and all night. And also to my one and only sister, Pilanti for her cheers in cheer me up every time I got tired in finishing my script.

5. Special thanks to writer‟s beloved ones Gerry, Opa, Cia and Wul for their loves, caring and uncountable jokes that is coloring the day.

6. Thanks to all parts of English Department 2011, all friends, chairmen, and Mamang Reja as big brother of us.

7. Big thanks to Mput, Aya, Adit, Randi, Toriq, Ines, and Iis for the supports and prayers.

8. KKN Pesisir Utara, especially KKN Padang Rindu: Ismi, Mba Pit, Ambar, Pipit, Septi, Najib, Suroto, Rio, Topan, Bapak-Ibu Peratin, Bu Bidan, Kak Faisal, Dwi, and Ul, students and teachers of SMAN 1 Pesisir Utara, Bu Ochi, Pak Wiji, Ibu Wiji, Tea, and Galih.

Hopefully, this script would give a positive contribution to the educational development and for those who are interested to conduct the further reseach.

Bandar Lampung, 2015 The Writer

CONTENTS

Page

ABSTRACT... i

APPROVAL... ii

CURRICULUM VITAE... iii

DEDICATION... iv

MOTTO... v

ACKNOWLEDMENTS... vi

CONTENTS... viii

LIST OF TABLES... x

LIST OF APPENDICES... xi

I.INTRODUCTION... 1

1.1. Background of the Problems... 1

1.2. Identification of the Problems………... 5

1.3. Limitation of the Problem………... 5

1.4. Formulation of the Research Questions... 6

1.5. Objectives of the Research ... 6

1.6. Uses of the Research... 6

1.7. Scope of the Research... 6

1.8. Definition of Terms... 7

II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION... 9

2.1. Review of Previous Research………... 9

2.2. Review of Related Literature………. 13

2.2.1. Morphology... 13

2.2.2. Morphological Awareness... 22

2.2.3. Measuring English Morphological Awareness…... 23

2.2.4. Reading... 24

2.2.5. The Role of Morphological Awareness in Reading 28 2.3. Theoretical Assumption... 30

2.4. Hypothesis... 32

III. METHOD... 33

3.1. Setting of the Research... 33

3.2. Design of the Research………... 34

3.3. Population and Sample... 34

3.8. Data Analysis... 48

3.9. Hypothesis Testing... 48

IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION... 49

4.1. Results... 49

4.1.1. Results of Try Out of Morphological Awareness Test... 51

4.1.2. Results of Try Out Reading Comprehension Test 52 4.1.3.Results of Morphological Awareness Test (MA) 53 4.1.4. Results of Reading Comprehension Test (RC)... 54

4.1.5. Correlation between Students‟s Morphological Awareness and Their Reading Comprehension…... 56

4.1.6. Hypothesis Testing………... 60

4.2. Discussion……….. 61

V. CONCLUSION AND SUGGESTIONS………... 68

5.1. Conclusion……… 68

5.2. Suggestion………. 69

REFERENCES………... 71

LIST OF TABLES

Page Table 1.Table of Specification of Morphological Awareness Test……….. 39 Table 2.Table of Specification of Reading Comprehension Test………… 41 Table 3.Students‟ Morphological Awareness Test Scores... 53 Table 4.Students‟ Reading Comprehension (RC) Test Scores... 54

LIST OF APPENDICES

Page

Appendix 1 Research Schedule………. 75

Appendix 2 Upper And Lower Morphological Awareness Try Out Test Tabulation... 76

Appendix 3 Upper And Lower Reading Comprehension Try Out Test Tabulation……….. 78

Appendix 4 The Difficulty Level of Tests………. 80

Appendix 5 Discrimination Power of Tests………... 83

Appendix 6 Reliability of Tests……… 86

Appendix 7 The Computation of Reliability of the Test……….. 88

Appendix 8 Result of Students‟ Morphological Awareness Test……. 90

Appendix 9 Result of Students‟ Reading Comprehension Test………… 91

Appendix 10 The Students‟ Morphological Awareness and Reading Comprehension Scores……….. 92

Appendix 11 Correlation Morphological Awareness (MA) and Reading Comprehension (RC)……….. 93

Appendix 12 Correlation Morphological Awareness (MA) Test Parts and Reading Comprehension (RC)……… 94

Appendix 13 Pearson Product-Moment Correlation Coefficient Table of Critical Values………. 95

Appendix 14 Morphological Awareness Test………. 96

Appendix 15 Reading Comprehension Test………... 102 Students‟ Morphological Awareness Work Sheets

Students‟ Reading Comprehension Work Sheets Research License

I. INTRODUCTION

This chapter deals with an introduction to this research. It consists of background of the research, identification of the problems, limitation of the problems, formulation of the research questions, objectives of the research, uses, scope and definition of terms that are used in this research.

1.1. Background of the Research

Morphology is one of the often-overlooked building blocks for reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling. Research is now demonstrating the importance of strong morphological teaching as early as first and second grade (Apel & Lauraence, 2011), where traditionally it has been the focus in middle and high school years. In addition, there is evidence that students learn orthography (phonics), phonology, and morphology in concert rather than in stages, when learning how to read and write. Students with strong morphological skills possess a distinct advantage over students who use a "whole word approach" to decode words (Kirby, 2011).

Morphological awareness refers to the learners‟ knowledge of morphemes and morphemic structure, allowing them to reflect and manipulate morphological structure of words (Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle & Stone, 2003). Morphological awareness is defined as the ability to use the knowledge of word formation rules and the pairings between sounds and meanings (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). This

statement strengthens the argument that morphological awareness is important for students. With morphological awareness, learners are able to learn morphemes and morphemic boundaries by disassembling complex words into meaningful parts (e.g. childhoods = child + -hood + -s), learning the meanings of roots, affixes (child= baby, -hood= the state of being, -s= to indicate plural nouns), and reassembling the meaningful parts into new meanings (motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood).

There is increasing interest in morphological awareness as a crucial dimension of vocabulary knowledge, especially in reading. In the first place, morphemes have semantic, phonological and syntactic properties (e.g. –s in the verb rides indicates that the action does is only one person who does the action in the present time) (Singson, Mahony and Mann, 2000) that express the role of a given word in the reading context. For another thing, words are organized in the mental lexicon according to their phonological properties with morphological knowledge as a framework for storing words (Sandra, 1994).

In line with morphological awareness, another variable discusses in this research is reading. Reading is a complex cognitive process of decoding symbols in order to construct or derive meaning (reading comprehension). It is a means of language acquisition, of communication, and of sharing information and ideas. Like all language, it is a complex interaction between the text and the reader which is shaped by the reader‟s prior knowledge, experiences, attitude, and language community which is culturally and socially situated.

The reading process requires continuous practice, development, and refinement. In addition, reading requires creativity and critical analysis.

Consumers of literature make ventures with each piece, innately deviating from literal words to create images that make sense to them in the unfamiliar places the texts describe. There are no concrete laws in reading, but rather allows readers an escape to produce their own products introspectively. This promotes deep exploration of texts during interpretation (De Certeau, 1984).

Reading materials differ in content, style and purpose, and students adjust their reading style accordingly (reading sub-skills). The content areas typically included in this definition are science, social studies/history and math, but any area outside of English literature instruction constitutes a content area. On the other hands, the style of reading is the way that readers choose to be more understand the passage they are going to read or include also the strategies of it. The purpose of reading is to connect the ideas on the page to what you already know.

The relationship between morphological awareness and reading may be reciprocal or directional (Kuo and Anderson, 2006). In the case the relationship being reciprocal, both reading and morphological awareness can contribute to the development of one another. In directional term, morphological awareness leads to reading proficiency, but not the other way around. Previously, there were researcher conducted to find out wether morphological awareness and vocabulary is related, Badriya Al Farsi from The University of Queensland has found a correlation between both of them. In the same way with that previous research, this research is going to fine wether morphological awareness and reading comprehension in senior high school students is related or not. Another previous reseach comes from Lisa Kay Maag‟s dissertation from University of Florida. In

that dissertation mentioned the test for measuring morphology skill contained three sections, which were called; Subtest 1: Checklist, Subtest 2: Morphology Skill, and Subtest 3: Definitions. The items on the list ranged from fairly common words (apparently, dependable, and expensive) to words of low frequency (impiety, indefatigable, and redacting).

Based on the interview with the English teacher of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung in pre observation activity, the teacher mentioned that generally students‟ reading comprehension is the one that takes big part of measuring students‟ language achievements in school, it is proven by a lot of reading tests used in each English examination both nationally or just daily exam. However, students who have a good reading skill, sometimes did not conciously learn about morphology. Sometimes they did not have a specific knowledge of morphemes and morphemic structure but still they might understand the text.

Students‟ morphological awareness may differ from other depending on their process of understanding it in language acquisition. It might be by the formal or informal learning. In the second grade of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung, some students had high score in reading test but on the other hand another had low score. The teacher said that the low ones also have difficulties in determining root of words. Some words with prefixes and suffixes seem become list of difficult words for them. In addition, in every test which contain of reading passage, it takes time for them to read it. They find it hard to gain the details needed from the passages in their test.

Based on the statements above, the researcher is interested in investigating and observing the correlation between students‟ morphological awareness and

their reading comprehension. Beside of that it was a new thing to observe, this research also could be useful for teacher to find better way in making students easily understand the passages in their reading tests. In this study, the writer decides to design a problem to be researched with the title: The Relationship between Students‟ Morphological Awareness and Their Reading Comprehension.

1.2. Identification of the Problems

Based on the background above, the researcher would like to identify the problems as follow:

1. Students had low morphological awareness. 2. Students were hard to find root of words.

3. Students argued that words with prefixes and suffixes are difficult words.

4. Students found it was hard to pass their reading test. 5. Students did not understand the ideas conveyed in texts.

1.3. Limitation of the Problems

In line with identification of problems, the researcher limited the problems into, students‟:

1. Morphological awareness. 2. Reading comprehension.

1.4. Formulation of the Research Question

Based on the background, identification, and limitation of the problems above, the problem arise was:

Is there any relationship between students' morphological awareness and their reading comprehension?

1.5. Objectives of The Research

Formulated from the research question above, the objective of this reasearch was: To find out the relationship between students' morphological awareness and their reading comprehension.

1.6. Uses of the Research

This finding of research is intended to, theoretically, support the previous theories and researchers related to morphological awareness. Furthermore, for the practical use, many ESL/EFL teachers and students get benefitted from what has been provided in this research. For the other researchers, this research can be used as a reference for similar matter.

1.7. Scope of the Research

The scope is focused on result of sample from 11th grade SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung (one sample class) students‟ score of reading and their score in three sections of morphological awareness test. The topic of reading will always based on students‟ interest in order to make a conducive process of reading it.

1.8. Definition of Terms Morphology:

Morphology refers to the study of forms. Linguistics morphology refers to the study of words, their internal structure and the mental process that are involved in word formation (Arnoff and Fudgeman, 2005).

Morphological Awareness :

Morphological awareness is the recognition, understanding, and use of word parts that carry significance. For example, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical inflections (e.g., -s or –es for plurals) are all morphemes which can be added or taken away from a word to alter its meaning. Morphological awareness is defined as the ability to use the knowledge of word formation rules and the pairings between sounds and meanings (Kuo & Anderson, 2006).

Reading:

Nuttall (1989) defines reading as the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols. It means that reading is a result of the interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language and the reader‟s language skills, cognitive skills and the knowledge of the world. In this process the reader tries to recreate the meanings intended by the writer.

Reading Comprehension:

Reading comprehensionrefers to an active process to gain the meaning of current information by relating readers‟ background knowledge to the information provided on printed text.

That was the introduction of this research. It consisted of background of the research, identification of the problems, limitation of the problems, formulation of the research questions, objectives of the research, uses, scope and definition of terms that are used in this research. The next chapter will deal with literature review of this research.

II. THEORETICAL FOUNDATION

This chapter provides review of previous research and review of related literature relates to the research problems. Considering that, sufficient amount of relevant topics review here are morphological awareness, reading and reading comprehension, morphological awareness and reading relationship, theoretical assumption, and hypothesis.

2.1 Review of Previous Research

There had been several correlated studies dealing with morphological awareness. First, Morphological Awareness and Its Relationship to Vocabulary Knowledge and Morphological Complexity among Omani EFL University Students, conducted by Badriya Al-Farsy from The University of Queensland (2008). This study examined the relationship between morphological awareness and vocabulary size in Omani EFL learners. Participants in the study were 54 Omani EFL learners enrolled in an English Intensive Program at the Ibri College of Applied Sciences, Oman. All the participants completed both tests. Morphological awareness was measured using the Morphological Awareness Test adapted from McBride- Chang et al. (2005); the test assessed both analytic and synthetic aspects of morphological knowledge. Analytic refers to breaking down complex words into smaller meanings and synthetic involves reassembling smaller meanings to make up new words. Vocabulary size was measured using a modified

version of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 2001). The test was modified so that there were complex words and simple words, the complex versus simplex contrast allowing a means to assess the effect of morphological knowledge on vocabulary development. The results indicate that, the students‟ overall morphological awareness and vocabulary size were limited, and that a relationship between the two constructs could not be established, owing to the appearance of floor effect in test scores and task difficulty. Although no statistical relationship was established between morphological awareness and vocabulary in this study, it is premature to discount the potential importance of morphological awareness in the L2 vocabulary development, particularly for the type of learner examined in this study.

The second previous study was dealing with morphological awareness in tapping the lexical compounding awareness in Chinese third graders by Phil D. Liu (2010) from Chinese University of Hong Kong. In this research, one hundred twenty-one third-grade Chinese children were assessed with a new morphological awareness task involving open-ended lexical compounding, in addition to completing other measures. With children‟s age, nonverbal intelligence, phonological awareness, and previously established measures of morphological awareness statistically controlled, this compounding production task significantly explained unique variance in both Chinese character reading and vocabulary knowledge. Within this new task, subordinate and coordinative structures were significantly easier to compound than were subject– predicate and verb– object structures. Moreover, novel compounds that made use of verb morphemes were more difficult to manipulate than were those that did not contain verbs. This

newly developed task of compounding production may be optimal for tapping older children‟s morphological awareness in the form of lexical compounding, in both Chinese and possibly other languages. In addition, these results demonstrate that linguistic manipulations within tasks of morphological awareness can influence their difficulty levels.

After that, the third previous related research was a research from Kirby, Deacon, Bowers, Izenberg, Wade-Woolley, and Parrila (2011) of Queens University which concern on children‟s morphological awareness and reading ability. They investigated the effects of morphological awareness on five measures of reading in 103 children from Grades 1 to 3. Morphological awareness was assessed with a word analogy task that included a wide range of morphologic al transf ormations. Results indicated that the new measure had satisfactory reliability, and that morphological awareness was a significant predictor of word reading accuracy and speed, pseudo word reading accuracy, text reading speed, and reading comprehension, after controlling the effects of verbal and nonverbal ability and phonological awa reness. Morphological awareness also explained variance in reading comprehension after further controlling word reading. We conclude that morphological awareness has important roles in word reading and reading comprehension, and we suggest that it should be included more frequently in assessments and instruction.

Kieffer and Lesaux (2008) found that Spanish English as a Second Language (ESL) learners‟derivational awareness had a unique effect on reading comprehension over and above oral vocabulary and wordreading ability. Similar findings surfaced in studies on Korean learners of English as a foreign or second

language (e.g. Wang et al., 2006). On the other hand, Qian‟s (1999) study on Chinese and Korean ESL readers in Canadian universities failed to reveal a unique contribution of derivational knowledge to reading comprehension aftercontrolling for vocabulary knowledge. In Zhang and Koda (2012), advanced Chinese EFL learners‟ derivationalawareness was found to contribute to reading comprehension indirectly through the mediation of lexical inferencingability and vocabulary knowledge, instead of having a direct contribution.

Another previous study came from Lisa Kay Maag‟s dissertation that is concern on measuring morphological awareness in adult readers with the implications of vocabulary development. Morphological awareness is considered a prime force in children‟s vocabulary growth, but this skill has scarcely been measured in adults. This study tested a method for assessing morphological awareness using complex (multimorphemic) words and a two-stage process designed to elicit the explicit morphological knowledge. Participants, 106 college students, indicated which of the complex words they knew and were tested on morphological analysis and on definitions of the words. A standardized test, the Nelson-Denny Reading Test (ND), was also administered. Two metalinguistic scores were derived: MA was calculated for known words for which the morphological base word was identified, and Accuracy was based on known words for which the correct definition was selected. Participants with better ND Vocabulary and Comprehension scores also had higher MA scores and greater metacognitive awareness of their own lexicons. An inadequate vocabulary is one cause of reading problems, and a method that extends MA research to an older

age group allows further research into vocabulary development with implications for remedial strategies.

Related research also came from Seftia Rosalina of Lampung University that found the positive relationship between students‟ morphological awareness and English vocabulary size. Research from Rosalina was one of the most appropriate guidance in this research remembering this research also held in senior high school level students in Lampung, Indonesia.

In sum, all of those researches showed the positive relationship of morphological awareness and some of aspects in learning English in some country like China and across the age from children until adults. However, there were still some issues which had not been investigated, that is, the relationship of morphological awareness and reading comprehension in high school age level. The researcher chooses reading comprehension with the intention to show positive relationship with morphological awareness in study case second grade students of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung.

2.2. Review of Related Literature

In this sub chapter, the researcher provided some literature relates to the research. 2.2.1. Morphology

Morphology refers to the study of forms. Linguistics morphology refers to the study of words, their internal structure and the mental process that are involves in word formation (Arnoff and Fudgeman, 2005). It is „… the study of the hierarchical and relational aspects of words and the operation on lexical items according to the word formation rules to produce other lexical items‟ (Leong and

Parkinson, 1995: 237). One of the parts of morphology is morpheme and will be discussed in the following sections.

A. Morphemes

A morpheme may be defined as the minimal linguistic sign, a grammatical unit in which there is an arbitrary union of the sound and a meaning and could not be further analyzed. Traditionally, words can be divided into minimal linguistic units that bear meanings or grammatical functions (i.e. morphemes). In the line with the traditional definition, Coates (1999: 17) identifies for criteria of what it takes to be a morpheme. A morpheme should have meaning or function (e.g. morpheme pre which has meaning “before” in sentence: He gives some preview before present the presentation), recur in other words with a related meaning (e.g. prefix un in the sentences: He is unbelievable stingy and It was unhappy married), be involved in a pattern of interchange (e.g. suffix est in word longest) and can be substituted with another morpheme such as suffix er in the sentences: Mississippi river is the longest river in the world and Mississippi river is longer than Missouri river.

If we add a morpheme to an utterance, or take one way, by definition we alter the meaning of that utterance, for example, the word “child” can be formed by adding suffixes en, ish and hood in the sentences below:

1. She is beautiful child.

In the sentences above, the word child serves as a noun, which means young human being.

2. Those children are playing in the yard.

In the sentences above children serves as a noun which has meaning as child, but in the form of plural by adding suffix en.

3. Don’t be childish.

In the sentences above, childish serves as an adjective which means behaving like child because suffix ish modify the word child into adjective. 4. He spent his childhood in the village.

In the sentences above childhood serves as a noun which means state or time of being a child because suffix hood modify the word child.

B. Types of Morpheme Morpheme can be classified as:

a. Free morphemes

This kind of morpheme cannot be syntactically split up further, and exists only as a part of single units. Free morphemes are those that can exist in their own (e.g. book in notebooks), whereas bound morphemes cannot (e.g. morpheme s in notebooks).

b. Bound morphemes

Bound morphemes must be attached to another word, and no upper limit to the number per word. Those prefix and suffix morphemes have traditionally been called bound morpheme. The morphemes such as suffix s, as in students, and suffix ed as in carried, which must be attached to another, are bound morphemes (Coates, 1999).

Morphemes are further categorized into lexical morphemes (e.g. –full, –ness, etc.) or grammatical morphemes (e.g. –ed, –s). Grammatical morphemes are part of inflectional morphology that underlies the process involved in building grammatical word forms. Lexical morphemes are part of derivational morphology

that is concerned with the processes involved in building lexical form (Coates, 1999).

C. Inflectional Morphology

Inflectional morphemes are morphemes that never change the syntactic category of the words or morphemes to which they are attached (Fromkin, 2000). Knowledge of inflectional morphology focuses primarily on indicating grammatical change in words (e.g. He was attacked by a dog and He was attacked by tree dogs. The suffix s in dogs indicates the plural form of the base word). They define inflectional morpheme as changes in the form of a word according to its grammatical function, for example in sentences:

1) They talk with me in the living room. 2) They talked with me yesterday.

In the sentences above, talk becomes talked to indicate activity in the past time.

D. Derivational Morphology

In this research, researcher focused on morphological awareness and tried to identify the students‟ ability to use the knowledge of word formation rules. Word formation rule is according to which and affix can be attached to another morpheme in order to form new word. There are several processes of word formation, namely: derivational, compounding, blending, conversion, back formation and clipping (Fromkin, 2000). In this research, the researcher focused on derivation and compounding since they are closely related to morphological

awareness of students in senior high school, because derivation and compounding based on Fromkin is the basic process of word formation.

Derivational process changes the category, or grammatical class of words, when a prefix or suffix is joined to other morphemes (or words) a new word is derived, or formed (Fromkin, 2000). Derivational process concerns change of a word to give additional meaning to the original word (e.g. the word sufficient becomes insufficient). The morpheme “in” adds meaning “not” to word “sufficient” which means not enough.

Derivational morpheme also changes grammatical class from underived word as well (e.g. beauty as noun, becomes beautiful as an adjective). The word beauty changes into beautiful by adding suffix ful make it change from noun into adjective. Derivational morphemes typically occur by the addition of an affix. The derived word is often from the different word class from the original.

E. Affixation

Affix is a bound morpheme that is joined before, after, or within a root or stem. There are two kinds of affixes in English, those that go before and those after the roots (Coates, 1999).

a. Prefixes

A prefix is an affix which is placed before the root of a word. In the other hand, prefixes add before the word to change or to modify meaning. Some prefixes have more than one meaning; therefore the students should always consider the context of the word when determining the meaning. Here are the most common prefixes used in English (Coates, 1999):

a. Prefix a(n)which has meaning “not” or “without” (e.g. anonymous which means without name, asexuality means without sex organs).

b. Prefix co which has meaning “together” (e.g. cooperative which means join together, and coordinated which means making action of work together).

c. Prefix dis which has meaning “apart”, “separation”, “reverse” or “opposite” (e.g. disadvantage, this word means unfavorable condition and

discredit which means caused people think badly about someone or something).

d. Prefix ex which has meaning “former” (e.g. ex-president and ex-boyfriend, which mean former of president and former of boyfriend). e. Prefix extra which has meaning “outside”, “beyond” or “additional” (e.g.

extracurricular which means course which is taken outside the regular course of work at school, and extraordinary which means having power beyond what is usual or ordinary.

f. Prefix i(n) which has meaning “not” (e.g. irrelevant which means not relevant, illogical which means not logical).

g. Prefix kilo which has meaning “thousand” (e.g. kilogram and kilometer

which mean thousand grams and thousand meters).

h. Prefix mis which has meaning “bad” or “wrong” (e.g. misunderstanding

which means failure to understand correctly).

i. Prefix multi which has meaning “many” (e.g. multiculturalism which means has many cultures).

j. Prefix post which has meaning “after” (e.g. post-graduated which means after the graduation).

k. Prefix pre which has meaning “before” (e.g. pre-election which means before the election, and pre-intermediate which means before the intermediate level).

l. Prefix rewhich has meaning “again” (e.g. replay which means play again and regeneration which means give new life to something).

m. Prefix super which has meaning “extremely” or “more than” (e.g. supersonic which means faster than the speed of sound and superlatives

which means the highest quality).

n. Prefix un which has meaning “not” or “opposite” (e.g. unhappy which means not happy, unacceptable which means not acceptable).

b. Suffixes

A suffix is an affix which placed after the root word. Common examples are case endings, which indicate the grammatical case of nouns or adjectives, and verb endings, which form the conjugation of verbs. It is also defined that a suffix is a word part added at the end of a word and/or change the part of speech or the word (Hancock, 1987). For example, one meaning of „to breathe‟ is „to inhale or exhale air‟ and is a verb. Adding the suffix er to „breathe‟ modifies meaning to one that breathes, and the result in the word „breather‟, is a noun.

This is list of common suffixes in English (Coates, 1999):

a. Suffix ablewhich has meaning “capable” or “can do” (e.g. valuable which means useful or worth).

b. Suffix domwhich has meaning “state of condition of” (e.g. freedom which means state of being free).

c. Suffix er/or which changes verb into noun (e.g. writer which means person who write, change verb write into writer as noun).

d. Suffix ful which has meaning “having some or much” (e.g. useful which means having some uses).

e. Suffix hoodwhich has meaning “state/condition of” or “a group of sharing

characteristics” (e.g. childhood means state of being child).

f. Suffix ismwhich has meaning “doctrine”, “act”, “practice”or “condition”

(e.g. plagiarism which means take somebody else and use them as if they were one‟s own).

g. Suffix ist which has meaning “person” (e.g. novelist which means person who writes novel).

h. Suffix ive which make the noun to adjective (e.g. act to active, suffix ive

changes the word act as verb into active as adjective).

i. Suffix ize or ise which means “to cause”, “to be”, or “to become” (e.g. idolize means worship somebody as idol).

j. Suffix lymeans “like” or “having the attributes of”. Suffix ly changes the adjective quick into quickly as adverb, and also changes state as noun into

stately as adjective.

k. Suffix man which has meaning “person” (e.g. fireman which means person whose job is to put out fires).

l. Suffix ship which means “circle” or “state of being” (e.g. friendship

m. Suffix wherewhich means “location” (e.g. everywhere means every place

and somewhere means unknown location).

n. Suffix ymeans “having the quality of” or “inclined to” (e.g. sunny which means having much sunlight).

In addition, prefix and suffix can be use both together with the same root word (e.g. unacceptable, multiculturalism, etc.)

F. Compounding

Based on Coates (1999) some discussion about compounding terms explained in this part. It states that compounding is the combining of two or more independent words. Thus two words joined to make a new and usually more specific word applicable to the circumstances. In a compound several free morphemes are combined, resulting in a word that often derives its meaning from the combination of its components. For example:

a. Word classroom is combination of the word class and room. b. Word skyscraper is combination of the word sky and scraper.

In English, compound are often not written as single word but separated or combined by a hyphen (e.g. dry-cleaner and on-line). Compound words combination examples:

a. Verb combined with noun becomes noun (e.g. talk show)

b. Adjective combined with noun becomes noun (e.g. beautiful girl) c. Preposition combines with noun becomes verb (e.g. overshadowed)

Many compounds exhibit also called modifier-head structure, with one part specifying the other in the terms of meaning. Thus a blackboard is a kind of board not kind of black and talk show is kind of show not kind of talk. The modifier may function in different ways, e.g. a raincoat is not a coat for but against rain.

While the abovementioned examples are endocentric (i.e. the meaning of the compound is derived from the meaning of the parts) there are some compounds where this is not the case. On the other hands, a redhead is not a type of head but a person with red hair. Such compounds are called exocentric, because their meaning is not strictly contained in the components.

2.2.2. Morphological Awareness

By 10 years of age, knowledge about the structure of words is a better predictor of decoding ability than is phonological awareness (Mann & Singson, 2003). Morphological awareness is the recognition, understanding, and use of word parts that carry significance. For example, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical inflections (e.g., -s or –es for plurals) are all morphemes which can be added or taken away from a word to alter its meaning.

Morphological awareness refers to the learners‟ knowledge of morphemes and morphemic structure, allowing them to reflect and manipulate morphological structure of words (Carlisle, 1995; Carlisle & Stone, 2003). Morphological awareness is defined as the ability to use the knowledge of word formation rules and the pairings between sounds and meanings (Kuo & Anderson, 2006). With morphological awareness, learners are able to learn morphemes and morphemic

boundaries by disassembling complex words into meaningful parts (e.g. childhoods = child + -hood + -s), learning the meanings of roots, affixes (child= baby, -hood= the state of being, -s= to indicate plural nouns), and reassembling the meaningful parts into new meanings (motherhood, fatherhood, brotherhood).

Anglin (1993: 58) found that the students could analyze the morphological structure of complex words which they have not actually learned before to figure out the meanings. Morin (2003: 87) proposed the strategy of using morphological knowledge to infer word meanings, and with it, the need to develop morphological awareness in the L2. She characterized morphological awareness as the ability to reflect on and manipulate morphemes and word formation rules in a language. The concept of morphological awareness implies learners‟ strategies of reflecting and manipulating word formation rules to derive the meaning of new words in the absence of communication context. Morphological awareness delineated in this study leads upon learners‟ knowledge of morphemes that enables them to recover the meaning of new complex words by means of morphemes identification or decomposition and to recombine morphemes to construct new meaning by means of morphological structure.

2.2.3. Measuring English Morphological Awareness

Anglin (1993) identified five different morphological word types in English. The five types are: root words (e.g. short, closet), inflected words (e.g. smoking, reports), derived words (e.g. shortish, treelet), literal compounds (e.g. sunburn, birthday), and opaque (idiomatic compounds or lexical idioms, e.g. mouse tail, “a plant of crowfoot family”; pink lady, “a cocktail”).

In this study, four of them were used to investigate students‟ morphological awareness (root words, inflected words, derived words and literal compound). Further discussion on the measuring morphological awareness is provided in the next section.

2.2.4 Reading

Nuttal (1989) defines reading as the meaningful interpretation of printed or written verbal symbols. It means that reading is a result of the interaction between the perception of graphic symbols that represent language and the reader‟s language skills, cognitive skills and the knowledge of the world. In this process the reader tries to recreate the meanings intended by the writer.

Furthermore, Simanjuntak (1988: 15) defines reading as an active process of interacting with print and an instantaneous association of those symbols with the reader‟s existing knowledge. Reading can be defined as the ability to make sense of written or printed symbols to guide the recovery of information from his or her memory and subsequently use this information to construct a plausible interpretation of the written message. Rohani Ariffin (1992:1) in her book entitled Anthropology of Poetry for Young People defines reading as a highly personal activity that is mainly done silently, alone. There is a clear understanding that reading is something related to the activity of acquiring information and it is done either silently or aloud. In order for a person to be able to read, there is in need of other skill to support the reader while reading. Reading is a mental process as mentioned earlier so it needs other skills to be integrated with such as listening, speaking and writing. According to Chitravelu et. al (1995), reading is not a single

skill that we use all the time in the same way but it is multiple skill that used differently with kind of test and fulfilling different purpose.

In reading also known reading comprehension. Comprehension is the complex cognitive process involving the intentional interaction between reader and text to extract meaning. The main purpose for reading is to comprehend the ideas in the material. Schumm (2006:223) says that comprehension process involves an understanding of words and how these words are used to create meaning.

Reading comprehension is a term that represents the process of reading in which readers relate new information from the text being read to his previous knowledge stored their mind in order to gain the meaning and messages of the text. Thompson (2001) adds that in comprehension process, readers bring background knowledge and certain a set of a reading strategies to read a reading task at hand, while the text, on the other hand, provides the reader with factors involved in comprehending and storing information contained in a text ability to use background knowledge, ability to recognize and use rhetorical structure, and ability to use reading strategies. It shows that beside background knowledge, the readers need some capability in inviting and bringing the knowledge toward the text called recognizing and reading strategies. Comprehension can be regarded as a condition where no uncertainty exists. The learners comprehend when they have all questions answered because they have no doubt about alternative interpretations or decisions in their mind. As one reads, he/she constantly asking questions; and and as long as these questions are answered, and his/her uncertainty is reduced, then he/she comprehends.

Furthermore, in the 2006 curriculum, known as School-Based Curriculum (KTSP), the focus of language teaching learning process is a text. There are many kinds of texts that are introduced to the students; one of them is narrative text. The text is applied in four language skills namely listening, speaking, reading and writing. In this case the research would focus only in reading comprehension because it is not as easy as we heard. According to Goodman (1988) reading is a receptive process. It creates an interaction between a writer and a reader. It is a difficult thing since a writer and a reader cannot contact each other, they only communicate through the text. So a reader should try some hard effort to do this language skill.

On reading comprehension, a reader should have knowledge about understanding the reading passage. The common questions on the passages are primly about the main ideas, details, and an inference that can be drawn from passages. According to Nuttal (1982) five aspects of reading which the students should understand to comprehend a text well, they are determining main idea, finding specific information, reference, inference, and vocabulary. The reader tries to interpret word per word, sentence per sentence based on its context and clues (i.e. punctuation) given by the writer on the text. They were explained as follow: 1. Main Idea

Segretto (2002:12) states that main idea of a reading selection is what the passage is mostly about. The example of finding main idea was illustrated into a question as follow: What is main idea of the text about?

2. Supporting Details

Supporting details are the facts and ideas that explain or prove the topic sentence or main idea. Furthermore, Sagretto states that supporting details provide the reader with more information about the main idea or subject of a passage. The question of finding supporting detail was as follow: Who is the character of the text?

3. Inference Meaning

By definition, inference requires that each reader construct a meaning that makes the text a reflection of her experience (Moreillon, 2007:77). An inference is a statement about the unknown on the basis of the known. In other words, an inference is an educated guess. The question containing inference meaning was: It is implied in the passage that..?

4. Vocabulary

Linan (2007) states that the role of vocabulary in reading is clearly understood: vocabulary knowledge, the understanding of word meanings and their use, contributes to reading comprehension and knowledge building. The question consisting vocabulary aspect can be drawn as follow: “The house is huge.” The bold word is the synonym of...

5. Reference

One of sub process in sentence comprehension is referential representation; this process identifies the references that words in a sentence make to external

word. The following question is the example: “...it has big eyes. The bold word refers to...

Furthermore Brassell and Rasinski (2008:18) state that comprehension occurs when a reader is able to act on, respond to, or transform the information that is presented in written text in ways that demonstrate understanding. In the case of autonomous learning the students are expected to find out the main ides, supporting details interfere, vocabulary, and reference by themselves. Before the class begins the students are expected to have preparation about the reading class like dictionary or have study about the text. During the class the students try to analyze, to solve the problem from the text and find out the aspect in reading by themselves. And before the class is over the students have to reflect what they have learnt about the text.

From all the theories mentioned above, it can be concluded that reading is an active process to gain the meaning of current information by relating readers‟ background knowledge to the information provided on printed text.

2.2.5. The Role of Morphological Awareness in Reading

Morphological awareness depends on experience with printed words for refinement, but itself is also functional in the development of reading comprehension ability. Because it entails the ability to perform morphological analysis, morphological awareness has often been found to be contributor to word learning and vocabulary development in that learners can decompose unknown morphologically complex words into their constituent morphemes and apply

morphological rules to derive meanings of unknown words (Wysocki and Jenkins, 1987).

Morphology is one of the often-overlooked building blocks for reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling. Research is now demonstrating the importance of strong morphological teaching as early as first and second grade (Apel & Lauraence, 2011), where traditionally it has been the focus in middle and high school years. In addition, there is evidence that students learn orthography (phonics), phonology, and morphology in concert rather than in stages, when learning how to read and write. Students with strong morphological skills possess a distinct advantage over students who use a "whole word approach" to decode words. With strong morphological skills, students can approach a novel multisyllabic word and break it into parts in order to predict the meaning. This skill helps in all areas of literacy: decoding, spelling, comprehension, and oral language. Many times struggling readers are unable to identify a word they encounter in the text, even though they know it in their oral language.

As a result, their expressive vocabulary remains quite limited compared with proficient readers who incorporate novel vocabulary from their reading into their oral language. Strong readers accomplish this because they recognize the word, infer its meaning, and are able to pronounce it. They efficiently map the vocabulary from their reading with previously known oral vocabulary as well.

More recent research has revealed that, in addition to being important to vocabulary development, morphological awareness is also a significant contributor to reading comprehension (e.g.,Carlisle,2000; Deacon and Kirby, 2004; Ku and Anderson, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006). Because of the inter-relations

between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge on one hand, and vocabulary knowledge and reading compre-hension on the other hand, researchers often controlled for vocabulary knowledge when the unique contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension was examined (Ku and Anderson, 2003; Nagy et al., 2006).

Kieffer and Lesaux (2008) found that Spanish English as a Second Language (ESL) learners‟derivational awareness had a unique effect on reading comprehension over and above oral vocabulary and wordreading ability. Similar findings surfaced in studies on Korean learners of English as a foreign or second language(e.g.,Jeon, 2011; Wang et al., 2006).

On the other hand, Qian‟s (1999) study on Chinese and Korean ESL readers in Canadian universities failed to reveal a unique contribution of derivational knowledge to reading comprehension aftercontrolling for vocabulary knowledge. In Zhang and Koda (2012), advanced Chinese EFL learners‟ derivationalawareness was found to contribute to reading comprehension indirectly through the mediation of lexical inferencingability and vocabulary knowledge, instead of having a direct contribution. .

2.3. Theoretical Assumption

Morphological awareness is the recognition, understanding, and use of word parts that carry significance. For example, root words, prefixes, suffixes, and grammatical inflections (e.g., -s or –es for plurals) are all morphemes which can be added or taken away from a word to alter its meaning. More recent research has revealed that, in addition to being important to vocabulary development,

morphological awareness is also a significant contributor to reading comprehension. Because of the inter-relations between morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge on one hand, and vocabulary knowledge and reading compre-hension on the other hand, researchers often controlled for vocabulary knowledge when the unique contribution of morphological awareness to reading comprehension was examined.

Reading is the process of looking at a series of written symbols and getting meaning from them. When we read, we use our eyes to receive written symbols (letters, punctuation marks and spaces) and we use our brain to convert them into words, sentences and paragraphs that communicate something to us. Reading can be silent (in our head) or aloud (so that other people can hear). In addition, reading is a receptive skill - through it we receive information. But the complex process of reading also requires the skill of speaking, so that we can pronounce the words that we read. In this sense, reading is also a productive skill in that we are both receiving information and transmitting it (even if only to ourselves).

Morphology is one of the often-overlooked building blocks for reading fluency, reading comprehension, and spelling. Students with strong morphological skills possess a distinct advantage over students who use a "whole word approach" to decode words. With strong morphological skills, students can approach a novel multisyllabic word and break it into parts in order to predict the meaning. This skill helps in all areas of literacy: decoding, spelling, comprehension, and oral language. Many times struggling readers are unable to identify a word they encounter in the text, even though they know it in their oral language.

2.4. Hypothesis

In order to answer the mentioned research questions and keeping the safe side at the same time, the following null hypotheses are proposed:

1. There is relationship between students' morphological awareness and their reading comprehension.

Those are the review of previous research and review of related literature relates to the research problems. It was including the explanations about morphological awareness, reading, reading comprehension, morphological awareness and reading relationship, theoretical assumption, and hypothesis. The next chapter will deal with methodology of this research.

III. METHOD

This chapter concerns with setting of the research, research design, data collecting techniques, try out of data collecting techniques, research procedure, data analysis, and hypothesis testing.

3.1. Setting of the Research

The research took place at SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung, located on Jl. Turi Raya, Bandar Lampung. The researcher chose this school because there was no english education research yet conducted here previously and the topic for testing students’ morphological awareness and reading comprehension were important remembering that this school is one that need improvements in many side. So, the researcher expected the results of this study will help the English teacher of SMAN 15 Bandar Lampung in improving the quality of learning English of students, especially in the field of reading and improving morphological awareness.

Furthermore, the research conducted in the second semester of second grade. The time of this research would greatly benefit students considering they will soon face the examination day.

3.2. Research Design

This research was a quantitative study since it was focused on the product (results of the test). In this research, the researcher uses ex post facto design related to the co-relational study. Ex post facto design is a non experimental research technique in which preexisting groups are compared on some dependent variables. It is a type of study that can masquerade as a genuine experiment. It is subtitude for a true experinmental research and can be used to test hypotheses about cause-and-effect or correlational relationship, where it is not practical or ethical to apply a true experimental or even a quasi-experimental design (Simon & Goes, 2013).

In this research, there was no treatment would be used because the reseacher only needed to gather the data related to morphological awareness and reading test from one class (one group) of students. After that, the data analyzed to find out the correlation.

The research design can be represented as follow:

T1 T2

(Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 27)

T1 : morphological awareness test T2 : reading test

3.3. Population and Sample

The population of this research was the second year of the SMA Negeri 15 Bandar Lampung, and the sample was class XI IPA 1. There were 6 classes of second grade which contain of 30-40 students per class. Because this was a correlational

research, researcher used only one class as sample tested by the two data collecting instruments (T1 and T2), but researcher needed one more class for try-outing instruments. The sample will be taking by purposive sampling. The second grade of science 1 has chosen as the population by researcher and English teacher in that school. Purposive sampling is a form of non-probability sampling in which decisions concerning the individuals to be included in the sample are taken by the researcher, based upon a variety of criteria which may include specialist knowledge of the research issue, or capacity and willingness to participate in the research. Some types of research design necessitate researchers taking a decision about the individual participants who would be most likely to contribute appropriate data, both in terms of relevance and depth. This research involved two sections; the first one was where morphological awareness test is given, the second is reading comprehension test.

3.4. Variables

The data of this research are: the result of students’ morphological awareness test score, and the result of students’ reading test. The data will be taken by morphological awareness and reading test sheets.

3.5. Data Collecting Techniques

To collect the data, the researcher uses some technique as follows: 1. Morphological Awareness Test

The morphological awareness test was adapted from McBride-Chang (2005), and was used to test students’ ability to reflect and manipulate morphemic units in

English. Some items were modified by the researcher to make it suits with Indonesian Senior High School students’ English level. The modifications were according to words those were familiar with second grade of senior high school. The test was divided into two sections: Morpheme Identification Awareness and Morphological Structure Awareness. This test required students to make use of linguistic knowledge to derive new meaning. Skill in manipulating language, variously referred to as generativity, creativity, and productivity of language, may be important in learning new meaning within one’s language (Chang, 2005).

A. Morpheme Identification Test

The Morpheme Identification test measured students’ ability to analyze and breakdown complex word into smaller meanings and enabled them to recover meaning of complex word. It was compromised 20 items.

Example:

Cycling to school has one………… It makes you feel hot and sweaty. a. disadvantageous c. advantage

b. disadvantage d. advantageous

The correct answer is b. disadvantage. The students can analyze meaning by breaking it down in to its meaningful components. Disadvantage can be recognized as dis-advantage. Prefix dis- gives negative meaning of word advantage. It is suitable word to fill the blank, because feeling hot and sweaty are one of disadvantage of cycling to school. In this study, the students’ were given a set of complex word and were asked to segment into smaller meaning as they can identify in each word and with it students can guess the meaning of the word intended that appropriate with the sentence given.

B. Morphological Structure Test

The Morphological Structure Test measured students’ productivity, which is the ability to synthesize morphemes to create new meanings. The test consists of 20 items with 10 items of derivational affixes and 10 inflectional affixes.

The participants were presented with a frame sentence that contains the usage of the target morpheme, and then ask to complete the sentence. Each morpheme in a test item receives one point. Here examples for derivation and inflection items:

1. Early in the morning, we can see the sun rising up. What we call this?

The correct response for this item is sunrise. The word sunrise is the combination of word sun and rise.

2. John is playing. Yesterday he did this. What that he do yesterday?

The correct response for this item is played. The changing from playing to played shows that there is grammatical change/inflectional process from simple present progressive tense to past tense.

2. Reading Test

Alderson (2000) states that there is no best method for testing reading. There are many kinds of reading assessment such as multiple choice items, written and oral recall, cloze, sentences completion items, open-ended question, true or false, matching activity, checklist and fill in the blank. It is important to note, that different assessment task may not test the same ability. Individual assessment task

provides limited representation of reading comprehension; however, many reading researchers continue to use only task to measure comprehension.

In this research, the writer used multiple-choice items in increasing students’ reading comprehension. In addition, correct responses could not be determine by looking at the other question on the page. For each multiple-choice questions, there are five possible responses, one correct response and four distracters. All distracters in the multiple-choice question are possible, and multiple-choice question can not be answer correctly by the students without having read and understand relevant parts of the passages. Reading comprehension test is administered after morphological awareness test was given.

3.6. Try Out of data Research Instruments

In order to construct a good research, the data collecting techniques should be try-out first. There are two aspects that must be considered to ensure eligibility of the two tests used in this study; validity and reliability. This section will explain the validity and reliability related to the tests.

A. Validity

Validity is the extent to which a concept, conclusion or measurement is well-founded and corresponds accurately to the real situation (Wikipedia.com).

1. Validity of Morphological Awareness Test

There are two important kinds of validity used to measure the validity of morphological awareness test use in this research, those are; content validity and construct validity.

a. Construct Validity

Content validity is a non-statistical type of validity that involves the systematic examinations of the test content to determine whether it covers a representative sample of the behavior domain to be measured (Anastasi & Urbina, 1997 p. 114). Content validity was extended to which a test measures representative sample of the subject matter contents, the focus of content validity was on adequacy of the sample and simply on the appearance of the test (Hatch and Farhady, 1982). The items in the test of morphological awareness included three of the word types (inflected words, derived words and literal compound). Content validity can be examined from the table of specification below.

Table 1.Table of Specification of Morphological Awareness Test.

No. Morphological Awareness Number of Items Total items (percentage)

1.

Morpheme identification (root words)

1-20 20 (50%)

2.

Morphological structure (inflected words, derived words and literal compound)

21-40 20 (50%)

TOTAL 40 items (100%)

b. Content Validity

Construct validity is necessary for measurement instrument which has several indicators in measuring one aspect or construct (Setiyadi, 2006: 25). Construct validity of the morphological awareness test is the test suitable to check students’

skill in finding the root of complex words provide. Construct validity is concerned with whether the test is actually in line with theory (Schohamy, 1985). This can be found by relating the instruments with the theory of what it means to know certain language skills. In this case, the writer measured students’ morphological awareness and their reading comprehension. Therefore the instruments for measure morphological awareness test which assess the ability to create literal compounds, inflected words, derived words and identifying root words from the complex ones.

2. Validity Reading Test

There are two important kinds of validity used to measure the validity of reading comprehension test use in this research, those are; content validity and construct validity.

a. Construct Validity

Content validity is concerned with whether the test is sufficiently representative and comprehensive for the test. In the content validity, the materials given are suitable with the components of reading comprehension. Content validity is the extent to which a test measures a representative sample of the subject meter content, the focus of content validity is adequacy of the sample and simply on the appearance of the test (Hatch and Farhady, 1982).

The reading test consisted of five reading comprehension contents. To know whether the test has a good content validity, the items of the test would be discussed with the expert (advisors), the researchers’ colleague, and the English

teacher of senior high school. The content validity can be seen from the table of specification below

Table 2.Table of Specification of Reading Comprehension Test.

No. Objectives Item Numbers Total Items

1. Identify the main idea 1, 13, 22 3

2. Vocabulary 3, 7, 12, 14, 16, 29 7

3. Specific Information 4, 6, 15, 18, 19, 20, 21, 25, 26, 27, 28, 30 12

4. Inference 5, 9, 10, 11, 23, 24, 6

5. Reference 2, 17 2

Total 30

b. Content Validity

Nuttal (1985) states that the relation validity of the instrument refers to construct validity in which the question represents five of sort reading skills, i.e. determining main idea, finding the detail information, reference, inference and vocabulary mastery. In this research, the researcher used reading comprehension test that is supposed to be able to be comprehend by the grade XI students of senior higih school. The materials are based on the curriculum that used in senior high school that is Curriculum 2006 (Kurikulum Tingkat Satuan Pendidikan).

B. Reliability of Two Tests

Reliability is the overall consistency of a measure. A measure is said to have a high reliability if it produces similar results under consistent conditions.

The split-half method uses to find the reliability of the morphological awareness test and reading comprehension test by dividing the number of the tests items into two groups for each test, odd and even. Based on Pearson Product Moment formula, the formula can be seen as follows:

∑ ∑ ∑

√[∑ ∑ ] [∑ ∑ ]

r = coefficient reliability between odd and even number X = odd number

Y = even number

n = numbers of students who take part in the test X² = square of X

Y² = square of Y

∑X = total score of odd items ∑Y = total score of even items

(Arikunto, 1997) After the reliability of the half test is calculated, the researcher uses Spearman Brown’s Prophecy formula to measure the reliability of the test as a whole as follows:

rk = the reliability of the whole test rxy

= the reliability of half test

(Hatch and Farhady, 1982: 247) The criteria of the reliability are:

r

k

=

2rxy

0.90 – 1.00 = high 0.50 – 0.89 = moderate 0.00 – 0.49 = low

C. The Difficulty Level of the Test Items

Difficulty level relates to how easy or difficult the item is from the point of view of the students who take the test. It s important since the items, which are too easy (that students get right) can tell us nothing about differences within the test population. To see the level difficulty, the research used the formula as follow:

In which:

LD : level of difficulty

U : the number of upper group who answer correctly L : the number of lower group who answer correctly N : total number of students

The criteria are:

 Less than 0.30 = difficult

 0.30-0.70 = middle (good item)  More than 0.70-1.00 = easy

Based on the statements above, it is clear that all the test item should based on the criteria above and the items which not fulfill the requirements should be omitted or revised.

D. Discrimination Power

Discrimination power refers to the extent to which the item differentiates between high and low level students on the test. A good item according to this criterion is “one in which good students did well, and bad students failed” (Shohamy, 1985: 81). To calculate the discrimination power (DP) of the test items, the researcher used the following formula:

In which,

DP: Discrimination Power

U: the total of correct answer of the higher group L: the total of correct answer of the lower group N: total number of students

(Shohamy, 1985)

The criteria are: 0.00- 0.20 = Poor

5.2. Suggestions

Based on the conclusion of the research, the writer proposes suggestions as follows:

1. For the students, the significant correlation of morphological awareness and reading comprehension suggest the need to apply their understanding of morphology to increase the reading comprehension ability.

2. For the teachers, they should introduce aspects of morphological awareness to the students, or in the other words teacher should give explicit instructions and materials in relation to morphology and word formation even morphology is not yet being one of main part of learning English in Senior High School. The research showed that teaching morphological units implicitly is effective in deriving the learners to unlock the meaning of complex word.

Teaching morphological information can be done with various ways such as, morphological analysis and posters of affixes and related word pictures. Before deciding whether the learners need an explicit morphological analysis to boost their reading comprehension, the learners’ morphological awareness and their vocabulary size should be investigated. 3. Future study should be focused on making better morphological awareness test and finding other language skills correlate to morphological awareness as well (speaking, writing, grammar, or vocabulary). The future study also could make a separation on morphological awareness test (separations in the sections covering root words, inflected words, derived words, literal compound, and idioms). This separation will show whether participants

70

can perform equally for each part and hopefully these modification will give the truer result from the relationship between morphological awareness and reading comprehension.

REFERENCES

Al Farsi, B. 2008. Morphological Awareness and Its Relationship to Vocabulary Knowledge and Morphological Complexity among Omani EFL University Students. The University of Queensland.

Anastasi, A., & Urbina, S. 1997. Psychological Testing. Unites States: Prentice Hall.

Anglin, J. M., Miller, G. A., & Wakefield, P. C. 1993. Vocabulary Development: A Morphological Analysis. Monograph of the Society for Research in Child Development, Vocabulary Development: A morphological Analysis, 58(10), 1- 186.

Apel, K., & Lawrence, J. 2011. Contributions of morphological awareness skills to word-level reading and spelling in first-grade children with and without speech sound disorder. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 54, 1312-1327

Ariffin, R. 1992. Teaching File: An Anthology of Poetry for Young People. Jakarta: Dewan Bahasa dan Pustaka.

Arikunto, S. 1997. Dasar-dasar Evaluasi Pendidikan. Jakarta: Bumi Aksara. Arnoff, M., & Fudeman, K. 2005. What is Morphology? (3- 21). Malden:

Blackwell.

Brassell, D., & Rasinski, T. 2006. Comprehension That Works: Taking Students Beyond Ordinary Understanding to Deep Comprehension. Shell Education.

Carlisle, J. F. 2000. Awareness of The Structure and Meaning of Morphologically Complex Words: Impact on Reading. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 169-190.

Carlisle, J. F. 1995. Morphological awareness and early reading achievement. In L. B. Feldman (Ed.), Morphological aspects of language processing (pp. 189–209). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum.

Carlisle, J. F. 2003. Morphology matters in learning to read: A commentary. Reading Psychology, 24, 291–332.

72

Carlisle, J. F., & Stone, C. A. 2005. Exploring the role of morphemes in word reading. Reading Research Quarterly, 40, 428–449.

Carroll, J. B., Davies, P., & Richman, B. 1971. Word frequency book. New York: Houghton Mifflin.

Chang, C. M., Wagner, R. K., Muse, A., W.,-Y., B., & Chow, H. S. 2005. The Role of Morphological Awareness in Children’s Vocabulary Acuisition in English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 415-435.

Chitravelu, N., 1995. ELT Methodology: Principles and Practice. Selangor: Fajar Bakti Sdn. Bhd.

Clementson, T., Tilbury, A., Hendra, L. A., Rea, D., Doff, A. & Goldstein, B. 2013. English Unlimited. Cambridge University Press.

Coates, R. 1999. Word Structure. London: Routledge.

De Certeau, M. 2002. The Practice of Everyday Life. University of California Press.

Deacon, S. H., & Kirby, J. R. 2011. Morphological Awareness: Just “More Phonological”? The Roles of Morphological And Phonological Awareness in Reading Development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223–238.

Elbro, C., & Arnbak, E. 1996. The Role of Morpheme Recognition and Morphological Awareness in Dyslexia. Annals of Dyslexia, 46, 209–240. Fromkin, V. 2000. Linguistics: An Introduction to Linguistic Theory. Malden,

MA: Blackwell Publishing.

Hancock, O. 1987. Reading Skill for Collage Students. Prentice Hall.

Hatch, E., & Farhady, H. 1982. Research Design and Statistics for Applied Linguistics. Rowley, MA: Newbury House Publishers, Inc.

Heaton, J. B. 1991. Classroom Testing (Longman Keys to Language Teaching). Longman.

Kieffer, M. J., & Lessaux, N. K. 2008. The Role of Derivational Morphology in The Reading Comprehension of Spanish-Speaking English Language Learners. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal. 2008.

Ku, Y-M., & Anderson, R. C. 2003. Development of Morphological Awareness in Chinese and English. Reading and Writing: An InterdisciplinaryJournal, 16, 399- 422.

Kuo, L., & Anderson, R.C. 2006. Morphological awareness and learning to read: A cross-language perspective. Educational Psychologist, 41(3), 161-180.

Leong, C. K., & Parkinson, M. E. 1995. Processing of English Morphological Structure by Poor Reader. The Netherlands: Kluwer Academic Publisher.

Linan, S. T. 2007. Research-based Method of Reading Instruction for English Language Learners. London: Audiobook Publishing.

Liu, P. D. 2010. What Is Morphological Awareness? Tapping Lexical Compounding Awareness in Chinese Third Graders. Educational Psychologist, 102 (1), 62–73.

Maag, L. K., 2007. Measuring Morphological Awareness in Adult Readers: Implication for Vocabulary Development. University of Florida.

Mahony, D., Singson, M., & Mann, V. 2000. Reading ability and sensitivity to morphological relations. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 191–218.

Martin, M.O. 1991. Trends in Children's Reading Literacy Achievement. Chestnut Hill, MA: Boston College.

Moreillon, J. 2007. Collaborative Strategies for Teaching Reading Comprehension. Dallas: Star Bright Books.

Morin, R. 2003. Derivational Morphological Analysis as a Strategy for Vocabulary Acquisition in Spanish. The Modern Language Journal, 87, 200-221.

Mc-Bride- Chang, C., Wagner, R. K., Muse, A., Chow, B. W, & Shu, H. 2005. The role of morphological awareness in children’s vocabulary acquisition in English. Applied Psycholinguistics, 26, 415- 435.

Nagy, W. E., Berninger, V.W., & Abbott, R.C. 2006. Contributions of morphology beyond phonology to literacy outcomes of upper elementary and middle-school students. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 134-147.

Nation, I. S. P. 2001. Learning Vocabulary in Another Language. Cambridge University Press.

Nelson, K. 1988. Constraints on word learning. Cognitive Development, 3, 221– 246.

Nuttall, C. 1989. Teaching Reading Skills in A Foreign Language. Oxford, UK: Heinemann.

O’Grady, W., & de Cuzman, V. P. 1997. Morphology: The Analysis of Word Structure. Contemporary linguistics: an introduction (132- 180). London: Longman.

74

Qian, D. D. 1999. Assessing the Roles of Depth and Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge in Reading Comprehension. Canadian Modern Language Review.

Sandra, D. 1994. The Morphology of The Mental Lexicon: Internal Word Structure Viewed From A Psycholinguistic Perspective. Language and Cognitive Processes, 9, 227–269.

Schumm, J. S. 2006. Reading Assessment and Instruction for All Learners. Guilford Press.

Setiyadi, A.G. Bambang. 2006. Metode Penelitian untuk Pengajaran Bahasa Asing. Yogyakarta: Graha Ilmu.

Segretto, M. 2002. Roadmap to 8th Grade Reading. Toronto: The Princeton Review.

Shohamy, E. 1985. Condition for second language learning. Introduction to a General Theory. Tel-Aviv University.

Simanjuntak, E. G. 1988. Developing Reading Skill for EFL Students. Jakarta: Depdikbud.

Simon, M. K., Goes, J. 2013. Dissertation and Scholarly Research: Recipes for Succes. Seattle, WA: Dissertation Success LLC.

Singson, M., Mahony, D., & Mann, V. 2000. The relationship between reading ability and morphological skills: Evidence from derivational suffixes. Reading and Writing: An Interdisciplinary Journal, 12, 219–253.

Wang, M., Cheng, C., & Chen, S.-W. 2006. Contribution of morphological awareness to Chinese-English biliteracy acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 98, 542– 553.

Wysocki, K., & Jenkins, J. R. 1987. Deriving Word Meanings Through Morphological Generalization. Reading Research Quarterly, 22(1), 66-81.

Zhang, D., & Koda, K. 2012. Awareness of Derivation and Compounding in Chinese-English Biliteracy Acquisition. International Journal of Bilingual Education and Bilingualism, 17, 55-73.