Morphological awareness and reading comprehension in a foreign language: A study of young Chinese EFL learners Dongbo Zhang a, * , Keiko Koda b,1 a Department of Teacher Education, Michigan State University, 312 Erickson Hall, 620 Farm Lane, East Lansing, MI 48824, USA b Department of Modern Languages, Carnegie Mellon University, Baker Hall 160, 5000 Forbes Ave., Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Received 16 July 2012; revised 14 August 2013; accepted 25 September 2013 Available online Abstract This study examined foreign language learners’ morphological awareness and its contribution to reading comprehension, focusing on young Chinese EFL learners. Morphological awareness measures covered inflection, derivation, as well as com- pounding. Results showed that the learners’ basic facet of inflectional awareness was better than that of derivational awareness; their compound awareness was better than derivational awareness, for both basic and refined facets; and the advantage of compound awareness over derivational awareness was smaller for the basic facet than for the refined facet. In addition, derivational and compound awareness independently predicted English reading comprehension, over and above vocabulary and grammatical knowledge. These findings were discussed in light of the joint effects of L2 lexical exposure and first language morphological experience on L2 morphological competence, and the importance of morphological awareness to English reading comprehension. Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. Keywords: English as a foreign language; Morphological awareness; Reading comprehension 1. Introduction Morphological awareness, which commonly refers to the ability to reflect upon and manipulate morphemes and the morphological structure of words (Carlisle, 2003; Kuo and Anderson, 2006), is a multi-dimensional competence entailing different aspects and levels of insights that develop in disparate trajectories and necessitate different levels of print experience (Ku and Anderson, 2003; Tyler and Nagy, 1989). Studies on monolingual children have revealed that some morphological insights are acquired very rapidly from spoken language acquisition in early childhood, requiring limited print exposure (Berko, 1958). Other insights, however, develop rather slowly, necessitating considerable exposure to and experience with printed words (e.g., Mahony, 1994; Tyler and Nagy, 1989, 1990). For learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL), due to the lack of pre-literacy spoken language experience that monolingual children have, development of morphological awareness in the early stage of English learning seems * Corresponding author. Tel.: þ1 517 353 4541. E-mail addresses: zhangdo6@msu.edu (D. Zhang), kkoda@andrew.cmu.edu (K. Koda). 1 Tel.: þ1 412 268 8942. 0346-251X/$ - see front matter Ó 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved. http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.system.2013.09.009 www.elsevier.com/locate/system Available online at www.sciencedirect.com ScienceDirect System 41 (2013) 901e913