Contributions of morphological awareness and lexical inferencing ability to L2 vocabulary knowledge among Chinese EFL learners: a structural equation modeling analysis

Abstract The present study investigated the direct and indirect contributions of morphological awareness to vocabulary knowledge among a group of Chinese English as a foreign language (EFL) students in a university in China. Using multiple regression analysis and structural equation modeling analysis, the study found that morphological awareness made significant contributions to vocabulary knowledge after lexical inferencing was controlled for. To be more specific, the prediction of morphological awareness on vocabulary depth was stronger than its prediction on vocabulary breadth. The direct effects of morphological awareness were stronger than its indirect effects on vocabulary. More importantly, the study revealed that the relationships between morphological awareness (morpheme recognition and morpheme discrimination) and vocabulary knowledge were mediated by discourse clues rather than grammar clues.