Instruction in derivational morphology in the Spanish L2 Classroom: What do teachers believe and do?
Instruction in derivational morphology in the Spanish L2 Classroom: What do teachers believe and do?

Summary/Abstract: Understanding derivational morphology (DM) is beneficial for vocabulary acquisition and reading in a second language (L2) since it facilitates word recognition and retention. Despite this, intermediate Spanish L2 learners tend to show limited explicit knowledge of DM. One of the questions that this raises is how DM is taught in the classroom in the case of a morphologically rich language such as Spanish, and what teachers’ beliefs and practices about this topic are. Five L2 Spanish teachers working at a US university were observed and interviewed. Vocabulary episodes (VEs), that is, speech events where a word or several words were the focus of instruction, that occurred during the observations were transcribed and tallied. From those, less than 10% explicitly dealt with DM. Instruction was mostly unplanned, and, on occasion, ambiguous. Teachers emphasized the meaning of the stem over the whole word and its affixes. The findings of the study provide a basis for encouraging teachers to reflect on their beliefs and practices about teaching DM in their classrooms.

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