Knowledge of Word Formation and Reading Comprehension of EFL Learners

The main goal of teaching English as a foreign language (EFL) in universities is to improve the students’ reading comprehension skill. The books that are designed for this purpose mainly include a section which provides students with an opportunity to get familiar with the basic stems, prefixes and suffixes of English language. Students are supposed to memorize the meaning of the given stems and affixes and do the related exercises in order to make general language competence over the appearance of items and guess the meaning of the new combinations of the familiar components, (i.e., taught stems and affixes) in particular contexts. The purpose of the study reported in this book is to investigate the relationship between the students’ knowledge of word formation and their ability to comprehend the unseen texts.