English Morpheme Acquisition Order of Malay Secondary School Student (43 - 66)

Abstract

The objective of the study was to determine the English morpheme acquisition order (EMAO) of Malay secondary school students (MSS) in ESL and EFL settings, specifically, to compare whether the acquisition orders are similar as shown in Dulay & Burt‟s (1974a) study on ESL students in ESL setting. Research design considered the two different settings; urban (ESL) and rural (EFL) and 600 subjects were sampled from 12 classrooms from both settings. Written responses based on the two test types: (1) written composition and (2) translation tasks and not oral tests such as the Bilingual Syntax Measure (BSM) used by Burt, Dulay and Hernandez (1973) which were designed to elicit spoken responses. Two methods of analysis were used; Method 1 utilized the strictest target-like use (TLU) by Lightbown, Spada, and Wallace (1980) and Stauble (1981) to determine accurate use and distributional patterns for each of the nine morphemes. Method II used (originally by Brown, 1973) to analyze the Suppliance in Obligatory Context Analysis (SOC). The findings showed that the EMAO-MSS of different age groups in the same setting; urban or rural schools follow the same order of English morpheme acquisition but the order was not similar for the students in a different setting. Only the urban Malay students (ESL) followed the order recorded by Dulay & Burt (1974a).