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Fowler and Liberman 1995 showed that word reading was significantly correlated with tasks of morphological awareness, even controlling for age and
vocabulary level, among second to fourth graders. Their study focuses on the advantage of morphological awareness in reading especially in elementary level.
In addition, a study by Carlisle and Nomanbhoy 1993 also found that a measure of morphological production significantly predicted word reading in first graders,
once phonological awareness was statistically controlled. Similarly to the previous result of the research, Carlisle and Nomanbhoy stated that the controlled
phonological awareness is useful for elementary language learner as it can be used to predict the word reading. The last study also found that morphological
production measured in first grade was significantly related to word recognition and reading comprehension in second grade, with phonological awareness
controlled as well Carlisle, 1995. Those three studies show that the morphological awareness is beneficial for the reading as it has significant
relationship and can be the way to predict the word reading, especially for the elementary language level.
More specifically, morphological awareness is useful both in receptive and productive skills. In receptive skills, morphological awareness is mainly useful for
guessing the meaning from its structures. In productive skills, morphological awareness is beneficial especially to construct new words.
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B. Conceptual Framework
Vocabulary size is the number of words that have been known by the students after they have learnt the language in certain period of time.
Morphological awareness covers the students’ ability to recognize morphemes of the words and also the ability to manipulate the words’ structure to find the
meaning of new words. Morphological awareness is beneficial to the improvement of the vocabulary size as one of the strategies of the vocabulary
development by enhancing the words’ morphological knowledge of the language learners. Vocabulary size is also essential of the morphological awareness
development as the more vocabulary size the learners have, the more morphological awareness they will learn.
It emerges an assumption that the vocabulary is the base of the morphological awareness. The elements of words are used to construct the
meaning of the words. In addition, the complex words consist of morphemes which can be understood by examining the elements of the construction. In other
hand, morphological awareness enables the learners to create new words by making use the knowledge of the known words and the morphemes.
There is a two-way benefit that the learners can take advantages of vocabulary development. They can learn the elements of the word, and they can
independently form new words from the knowledge of morphemes they have learnt. Morpheme identification awareness enables the learners to know the
meaning of the morphemes that construct the words. The morphemes can be utilized to guess the meaning of other words. In addition, morphological structure
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enables the learners to make use the knowledge of the morpheme to construct new words as a productive performance in writing. Thus, the both abilities are
beneficial in reading as well as in writing. The correlations between the variables are assumed to exist. The
vocabulary size is assumed to correlate to morpheme identification awareness as vocabulary has the key factor for morpheme identification. It is also assumed that
vocabulary size also has correlation to the morphological structure awareness. The ability to construct new word is also determined by the vocabulary and also
morpheme. The last correlation between morpheme identification awareness and morphological structure awareness is assumed to exist as the ability to break down
complex words will be in line with the ability to construct new words. Thus, the framework of the concepts will be presented in figure 1.
Figure 1. Conceptual Framework
Vocabulary Size
Morpheme Identification
Awareness Morphological
Structure Awareness
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CHAPTER III RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This chapter subsequently put an emphasis on the research methodology comprising the type of the study, the setting, research subjects, data of the
research, procedure of data collection, the research procedure, the data collection technique, the research instruments, and the data analysis technique.
A. Type of the Study
The type of the study is quantitative research. They data obtained were quantitative data from three
tests: Vocabulary Level Test, Morpheme
Identification Awareness Test, and Morphological Structure Awareness Test.
B. Setting
The study was conducted in English Department of Muhammadiyah University of Yogyakarta. It is located in Kasihan, Bantul , Yogyakarta.
Muhammadiyah University of Yogyakarta is one of the private universities in Yogyakarta. It was established in 1980. Meanwhile, the English department was
one of the majors in Language Education Faculty. It was established in 2010 so that the department was relatively young compared to other similar majors in
Yogyakarta. English department was a major which produced future English teachers. The curriculum used in English department was KKNI. It was a
