The Awareness of Morphemic Knowledge for Iraqi High School Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition in the EFL Context

The study attempts to assess the awareness of morphemic knowledge among Iraqi high schoollearners in the domain of English Foreign Language (EFL) context. Two tests were employed in this study namely, “Morphological Relatedness Test (MRT)” and “Morphological Structure Test (MST)” adopted and adapted from Curinga (2014). These two tests are essential and crucial instruments employed to measure the students’ morphemic knowledge for this research. The students’ ability was measured by the two tests to reflect and manipulate morphologically complex derived words in English. Twenty Iraqi high schoolstudents were involved to achieve the purpose of the study. The study analysis disclosed that the participants accomplished poorly in both tests of MRT and MST. The findings also revealed that there was no significant difference between the students’ performance on MRT and MST. They were unable to reflect and manipulate efficiently. However, the students’ performance on reflective aspect was a little higher than manipulative aspect. It is true that Iraqi students are suffering from the phenomenon of the morphemic knowledge. They indeed need to be aware of the importance of the morphemic knowledge because this knowledge can drive to construct new words and deconstruct the complex words in addition to the reading comprehension.