EFL Learners' Receptive Knowledge of Derived Words: The Case of Swedish Adolescents

The study investigated how well Swedish adolescents recognize the meaning of derived words in English and whether this knowledge is determined by learner proficiency, word frequency, or affix type. Participants were 88 school students two proficiency groups: 39 advanced 12th graders 49 intermediate 9th graders. Two tests receptive vocabulary administered. first test had 80 basewords (e.g., maintain) representing 8,000 most frequent words. second 60 that from maintainable). Results showed participants’ extended to quite well: for example, when learners knew a baseword, they its form 91% cases. Other results family frequency but not words, little support was found Bauer Nation’s (1993) hierarchy difficulty. main implication family, which subsumes their related forms under knowledge, an appropriate unit counting L2 pedagogy research with extensive exposure Germanic language.