Word formation research

Subject : orientation to science

Class : G1B
By : Valerie Chu, Thom Coolen and Annabelle Dörenberg
Inleverdatum, docent
(overal wijzigen in compound words, compound forms)

Research question: Can 20 children of group 8 from Montessorischool Weert make a

difference between English existing and non-existing compound words?

Wat is word formation? Wat zijn compound words?

Introduction
The researchers did research about word formation. They did this experiment at the
Montessorischool in Weert. They were interested in the results, because there are different
levels of education in primary school. This way, you get a good picture of the situation.
Hypothesis
Before the researchers started their research, they thought about a hypothesis. They
thought that there is a little difference between boys and girls, because boys are less serious
than girls. When they researching, the boys were laughing and drawing on the papers. The
researches thought there is a difference between school levels. Age also plays a role,
because the older they get, the more they come in contact with English words.
Literature report
The researchers found five scientific articles that they reviewed in this literature report.
Mister A. Humeti is a professor of the State University of Tetova, His research is about ‘types
of words and word formation processes in English’. The perspective of types of words in
morphological perspective, as well as for word formation processes. His main aim of this
research was to show how words are classified according to their position in the world and
to their function in a phrase or sentence. Professor Adejumo works for Department of
General studies on LAUTECH. He shows us how word formation processes work. In his article
he predicts the importance of the word as the building block of the language. Word
formation has been discussed with consideration for the different procedures involved in the
information of the English words. Essentially it is shown that the vocabulary of English
expands through the difference. Professor Richard Norquist did research about different
types of word formation, such as: adding affix, altering their word class, combining them to
produce compounds and adding or deleting the parts from the base that are called blends.
He describes word formation as the ways in which new words are made on the base of other
words. Professor Thomas J. Watson did research about a technique for building lexical
subsystems that can be used to compose dictionaries. When system descriptions give
attention on their lexical processing, two things can be discerned. The first category of lexical
subsystems is that words in the input text can give answer to dictionaries where information
about the words are stored. The second category of lexical subsystems uses ’affix stripping’
to save on word storage or equivalent, to increase the apparent size of their world list. The
systems will only test if a valid ending is attached to a valid word. Professor S. Kemmer of the
Rice University did research about compound forms. Compound words consist of two or
more morphemes. Compound words are written in various ways. But the way the word is
written does not affect its status as a compound. You can make compound forms with
different word types.

The process
(Eerst toelichten: waarom, hoe, planning, taakverdeling, tijd 14 vragen, wat is word formation etc)

On Tuesday 21 November 2017, the researchers went to the Montessorischool Weert. When
they got there, it turned out that only 2 boys and 3 girls could participate, which was less
than the expected 10 boys and 10 girls. After all, the Montessorischool decided to hand the
surveys out themselves and told the researchers to continue the experiment the next day.
We don’t know which people from which classes were taken. On Wednesday 22 November
2017, the surveys were picked up. At the end, 8 boys and 15 girls completed the survey.
These results were used to make a general conclusion. They asked the children English
compound words and the children had to decide if the words are correct or incorrect.

Results
In exercise 1 the researchers asked the children to colour the wrong answers red and the good
answers green. Most of the children found that easy. Most of the children did this exercise well

The chart 1.1 shows the results from the girls. The largest part of the pie chart is blue. That means
that 1/3 of the girls answered 10 correct answers. That is a good score, but there is also a large
orange and a grey part. The orange coloured part is 7 the lowest score that is scored. The grey (and
yellow) part is an average score. When they had 10 (blue) or 11 (green) good they did it very well.
And there was one girl who got 12 good answers. ( WIJZIGEN IN; of the girls / of the boys)

1.1
 1.2

Chart 1.2 is about the boys. The school made a mistake and they only asked 8 boys to do this test.
That is the reason why there isn’t a big difference in correct answers. 1/3 of the boys scored 8 points.
A quarter of the boys scored 9 point, that also is the average score. 13 percent scored 10 points and
again a quarter scored 11, a good score.

The average good answers in exercise 1 is 9,2 for the girls and 9,25 for the boys. That’s a minimal
difference. (NU plotseling naar exercise 2, lezers snappen dit niet) In exercise 2 the researchers asked
the children to write down the wrong answers and improve them. Some children didn’t understand it,
and most of the children found it difficult. Hence the low score.

(herhaling?) In exercise 2 the researchers asked the children to write down the wrong answers and
improve them. Some children didn’t understand it, and most of the children found it difficult. Hence
the low score. As you can see on chart 2 the children scored around the one out of ten. The boys
scored 12 percent and the girls 9 percent. Again a small difference.

The researchers asked the children his preliminary school advice. As you can see on chart 3. There
aren’t big differences between the different levels. You can see that the most of the children who did
this test had mavo or havo advice. On the basis of this research the researchers can say: ’the level
doesn’t matter’.
These pie charts show the percentage
of the boys and the girls who had that
number of good answers.
The researchers made a reflection and asked the children the following questions:

1 How well do you think you have made this test ?

2 Did you find the questions difficult

3 How well did you understand the text ?

They had to put a streak on a line between a crying smiley and a smiling smiley. To indicate how well
it had gone.

On chart 4 you can see the rating that the children are giving. The most of the children think that
they did the test normal, a small group thinks that they haven’t done it so well and another group
think that they did it very well. The question of whether you have found it difficult has no special
result, only that the answers are very divided. Most of the children understand the test, a small
group Indicates that they found it a difficult text.

Interpretation
On the basis of this results the researchers can conclude some things. The first thing they can
conclude is that boys and girls are equally good at differentiating compound nouns, because there is
no special difference, 0,05 is a really small difference. From exercise they can conclude that the
question was too difficult for this children the score was low, probably the question was too unclear.
Unfortunately the children doesn’t have wrote down their age, so there isn’t a result about that. By
the school level they can conclude that the school level doesn’t matter, probably because they get
the same English lessons. At the reflection you saw that the meanings were different. Most of the
children thought they did it okay, and when you compare this with their score you can see they are
right. They understand the text. The children did a good job.

Conclusion

Based on the results of this research you can give conclusions. The hypothesis that researchers have
made at the beginning of the investigation, was that there would be a small difference between boys
and girls. The results indicate that this is correct. In the hypothesis it says that age could have an
influence on the results, unfortunately, something went wrong so no results. Also in the hypothesis is
that the school level plays a role, this is not true. Because the results in every level were all different.
On this basis, the researchers can say that they must partly maintain the hypothesis and reject it in
part.

Discussion

What else can be researched is if group 7 or group 8 is better at separating real and fake English
compound words or maybe it won’t even matter. What we could do better next time is be more clear
to the Montessori school, because they didn’t really understand us very well.