Morphological Awareness of Indonesian Kindergarten Children Aged
5-6: A Case of Inflection
Eri Kurniawan and Mochamad Salim Maridi Nurdiansyah
Universitas Pendidikan Indonesia, Bandung, Indonesia
Keywords: Morphological awareness, language awareness, language acquisition, inflectional morphemes, verbs.
Abstract: The purpose of the study is to provide empirical description of morphological awareness of Indonesian
children aged 5-6 in terms of the ability to identify inflectional morphemes on verbs, specifically on prefix
me(N)-, be(R)-, di-, and ter-. This study employs quantitative descriptive approach. The data are collected
from an instrument called prefix choice task which consists of 15 test items. The participants are 17 children
of a kindergarten in Bandung which consist of nine female children and eight male children. The result shows
that children are able to demonstrate morphological awareness skill, but, the awareness is somehow
incomplete (53%). The aspect of the awareness can be seen from several aspects: sentence forms (active-
passive), verbal forms (transitive-intransitive), type of morphemes, and specific morphemes types. The study
also found that generally female children have better morphological awareness than male children. Unlike
English which can be simply divided into derivational and inflectional awareness, the study also suggests that
the complexity of morphological features of Bahasa Indonesia contributes to the extent of the awareness that
is being measured and further investigations in relation with other language development aspects are
recommended.
1 INTRODUCTION
It is known that the peak of children language
acquisition occurs in age 5, in which, children should
have acquired the full competency of their mother
language and is considered fluent as signified by their
ability to produce complete linguistic structures of the
language i.e. structure of sound, words, and sentence
(Lenneberg 1967; Khrashen, 1973 in Harley, 2001).
As the studies of children language acquisition
increases, researchers begin to observe whether or not
children are aware of the language they are using
which is further labeled as language awareness
(sometimes metalinguistic awareness, see Tunmer
and Herriman, 1984). In English context, the
development of the research is so high that there are
many studies investigating the relationship between
various aspect language awareness and various
literacy skills (i.e. morphological awareness and
reading skills, see Curinga, 2014; Deacon and Kirby,
2004; Wolter, Wood and D’Zatko, 2009;
morphological awareness and vocabulary knowledge,
see Carlisle and Fleming, 2003; Kirby and Bowers,
2009; Gafoor and Remia 2013; Jornlin, 2015). On the
other hand, in context of Bahasa Indonesia, it is found
that the number of evidence in language awareness is
still relatively small (see Kurniawan, Komara, and
Nurdiansyah, 2016; Mazka 2014; Asyani, 2013).
Morphological awareness (MA) can be defined as
the conscious ability to analyze, replicate and
manipulate morphemic elements, involving the
ability to identify base words and their affixed forms
(Carlisle, 1995; Gafoor and Remia, 2013). Apel
(2014) adds that there are four aspects of
morphological awareness which needs to be
considered: 1) MA in spoken or written language; 2)
MA in terms of changes in meaning and grammatical
class (i.e. inflection or derivation); 3) MA in terms of
changes in structure of the morphemes; 4) MA in
terms of word variety and possible morphemes.
However, due to the complexity of morphological
system of Bahasa Indonesia, it appears that there will
be challenges in order to design a well-structured
morphological awareness assessment as the
specificity of the morphological aspects of the
language needs to be clearly defined. In addition,
according to Carlisle (1995), children at age 5 are on
their peak of the development of MA in inflectional
morphemes. Thus, this research attempts to
134
Kurniawan, E. and Nurdiansyah, M.
Morphological Awareness of Indonesian Kindergarten Children Aged 5-6: A Case of Inflection.
DOI: 10.5220/0007163301340139
In Proceedings of the Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference
on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education (CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017) - Literacy, Culture, and Technology in Language Pedagogy and Use, pages 134-139
ISBN: 978-989-758-332-2
Copyright © 2018 by SCITEPRESS – Science and Technology Publications, Lda. All rights reserved

investigate MA of children aged 5-6 in the context of
Bahasa Indonesia.
2 PURPOSE OF THE STUDY
By using quantitative descriptive approach, the
purpose of this research is to provide empirical
description of MA of Indonesian kindergarten
children aged 5-6 in terms of their ability to identify
inflectional morphemes, specifically prefixes in
verbs.
3 PARTICIPANTS AND
LOCATION OF THE STUDY
17 children aged 5 to 6 from total 20 children of the
school which consist of 9 females and 8 male children
participated in the study. The three children refused
to participate. The study took place in a laboratory-
kindergarten school in Bandung.
4 INSTRUMENTS
The instrument is called prefix choice task inspired
by Nagy et al. (2003, in Curinga, 2014) as described
on the following table. The order of the test items is
further randomized in order to prevent the children
from pattern-guessing. The instrument is being read
to the children and they need to choose the correct
form from the choices provided. There are one pilot
items and.
Table 1: Detailed indicators and test items and sample of the test items.
Test Items
1. Kakak sedang menendang bola
2. Adik sedang memakan apel
3. Adik sedang membaca buku
1. Kakak sedang melompat
2. Adik sedang memasak
3. Kakak sedang melukis
1. Kakak sedang berlari
2. Adik sedang bermain
3. Adik sedang berjalan
1. Mobil itu dicuci kakak
2. Tikus itu dikejar kucing
3. Pizza itu dimakan kakak
1. Adik terjatuh dari sepeda
2. Rumah itu terbakar
3. Rumah itu terbalik
5 RESULTS
The general findings show that the kindergarten
children have demonstrated some extent of
morphological awareness in terms of their ability to
identify inflectional morphemes in verbs as presented
below.
Table 2: General findings of the research.
Participants
Items
Answers
Correct
x
StDev
%
17
15
255
134
7.88
3.33
53%
From the table, it can be seen that the extent of
MA of the children is 53%. In other words, the
children are able to answer 7 to 8 correct answers
from the 15 test items. The standard deviation of the
score is 3.33 which represents the varying awareness
among the children. Thus, in contrast with the
language acquisition process which is considered
complete at this age, it can also be said that
presumably the MA of the children is still developing.
Morphological Awareness of Indonesian Kindergarten Children Aged 5-6: A Case of Inflection
135

The detailed analysis of the findings is described on
the following subsections.
5.1 Findings on Sentence rorm: Active-Passive
Table 3: Findings according to sentence forms.
The table above shows the categorized findings based
on sentence form. From the table, it can be seen that
the children demonstrated more awareness in active
sentence (53%) than passive forms (46%).
5.2 Findings on verbal forms: transitive-
intransitive
The table below shows the categorized findings based
on verbal forms.
Table 4: Findings according to verbal forms.
By considering the verbal form of the test items,
it can be seen that moderately children are more
sensitive to inflectional morphemes on transitive
forms (55%) than that of intransitive (51%).
5.3 Findings according to the types morphemes
Table 5: Findings according to morpheme types.
Morphemes
Form
Answers
Correct
%
me(N)-
Active-transitive
51
33
65%
me(N)-
Active-intransitive
51
29
57%
be(R)-
Active-transitive
51
25
49%
di-
Passive-transitive
51
23
45%
ter-
Passive-intransitive
51
24
47%
The above table shows the findings according to
the types of morphemes. It can be seen that children
are more aware to morpheme me(N)- (transitive,
65%; intransitive, 57%) than the others. In addition,
the transitive me(N)- is higher than the intransitive
which confirms the previous findings that children are
more aware of the inflectional morphemes on
transitive sentences.
5.4 Findings according to specific test items
Figure 1: Ascending chart of achievement according to test items.
35%
41% 41% 41% 41%
47%
53% 53% 53% 53%
59%
65% 65%
71% 71%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
Sentence form
Morpheme
Answers
Correct
%
Active
Transitive me(N)-; Intransitive me(N)-; be(R)-
153
87
53%
Passive
di-; ter-
102
47
46%
Verbal form
Morpheme
Answers
Correct
%
Transitive
me(N)-; di-
102
56
55%
Intransitive
me(N)-; ter-; be(R)-
153
78
51%
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
136

On the analysis of the individual test items, it can
be seen that children are somehow demonstrated
higher level of awareness on the test item memakan
and membaca (71%). The lowest items answered
correctly by the children is terjatuh (35%).
5.5 Findings according to incorrect answers
Figure 2: Incorrect answers on the test items.
The incorrect answers are also considered as the
point of analysis. From the above figure, it can be
seen that on morpheme be(R), di- and ter-, the most-
chosen distractor by the children is me(N)-. This
finding somehow confirms the previous finding that
children are more aware on this inflectional
morpheme me(N)-
5.6 General findings on gender
As the number of female and male children is slightly
equal, this research also consider gender as a variable
for comparing the findings.
Table 6: General findings on gender.
Gender
Participants
Average score
StDev
Min
Max
Female
9
8.33
4.42
3
15
Male
8
7.38
1.60
5
9
It appears that female children performed better
than male children as represented by the average
score. This can be seen from the average score of
female children (8.33) which is larger than the score
of male children (7.38). However, it also appears that
a group of female children might have a more varying
awareness than that of male child as represented by
the standard deviation and the gap between the
minimal and maximum score of a child could answer.
5.6.1 Gender on categories: Sentence forms
Table 7: Gender on sentence forms.
Gender
Sentence forms
Active
Passive
Female
62%
46%
Male
51%
46%
The table above shows the comparison between
genders according to the sentence forms. It can be
seen that achievement on passive forms is relatively
equal (46%). On the other hand, female children
achieve better (62%) than male children (51%) on
active forms.
8
2
8
9
2
11
18
2
6
14
5
9
19
3
5
0
5
10
15
20
be(R)- di- ter- be(R)- di- ter- me(N)- di- ter- me(N)- be(R)- ter- me(N)- be(R)- di-
me(N)- (transitive) me(N)- (intranstive) be(R)- di- ter-
Morphological Awareness of Indonesian Kindergarten Children Aged 5-6: A Case of Inflection
137

5.6.2 Gender on categories: Verbal forms
Table 8: Gender on verbal forms.
Gender
Verbal forms
Transitive
Intransitive
Female
61%
52%
Male
52%
50%
In respect of the verbal forms, it can be seen that
the awareness of female children both dominate the
achievement on transitive and intransitive forms than
that male children.
5.6.3 Gender on categories: Types of morphemes
Figure 3: Findings on types of morphemes according to gender.
From the figure, it can be seen that male children
demonstrated better morphological awareness only
on the intransitive be(R)- and intransitive ter-.
5.6.4 Gender on categories: Specific test
items
As there are three test items in every morpheme,
below is the score of the children on each test item
summarized on the figure.
Figure 4: Findings on specific test items according to gender.
The most prominent item answered by female
children is memakan (89%), memasak and dimakan
(78%). On the other hand, on male children, the most
prominent items are membaca and terbalik which is
correctly answered by 6 out of 8 children (75%). The
lowest item answered correctly by female children is
dikejar in which there are only two children could
answer it correctly (22%). On male children, the least
answered item is melompat which is only answered
by 2 out of 7 children (25%). By comparing gender
categories and specific test items, it can be concluded
that some test items are relatively familiar to each
gender category in spite of the results according to
sentence forms and verbal forms
74%
67%
44%
48%
44%
54%
46%
54%
42%
50%
0%
50%
100%
me(N)- (transitive) me(N)- (intranstive) be(R)-(intransitive) di-(transitive) ter- (intransitive)
Female Male
67% 89% 67%
56%
67% 78%
33%
56%
44% 44%
22%
78%
33%
56%
44%
38%
50%
75%
25%
63%
50% 50% 50%
63%
38%
63%
25%
38% 38%
75%
0%
20%
40%
60%
80%
100%
menendang
memakan
membaca
melompat
melukis
memasak
berlari
bermain
berenang
dicuci
dikejar
dimakan
terjatuh
terbakar
terbalik
Transitive Intransitive intransitive transitive intransitive
Female Male
CONAPLIN and ICOLLITE 2017 - Tenth Conference on Applied Linguistics and the Second English Language Teaching and Technology
Conference in collaboration with the First International Conference on Language, Literature, Culture, and Education
138

6 CONCLUSION
From the findings, it can be concluded that the
development of morphological awareness of the
Indonesian kindergarten children aged 5-6 in terms of
their ability to identify inflectional morphemes in
verbs is still in development. Additionally, the extent
of the awareness might vary between individuals
which implies that there are presumably many factors
which could affect the development of the awareness,
one of which is the characteristic of Bahasa Indonesia
which is relatively complicated in terms of
morphological structure. Moreover, due to the
complexity of Bahasa Indonesia, the aspect of
morphological awareness to be observed needs to be
carefully specified because in English, the aspect of
awareness can simply be divided by inflection,
derivation, and compounding. In this research, it can
be seen that the aspect of morphological awareness
can be viewed from: 1), sentence forms, active-
passive; 2) verbal forms, transitive-intransitive; 3)
morphemes types; and 4) specific test items.
REFERENCES
Apel, K. 2014. A comprehensive definition of
morphological awareness. Top Lang Disorders, 34 (3),
pp. 197-209.
Carlisle, J. F. and Fleming, J. 2003. Lexical processing of
morphologically complex words in the elementary
years. Scientific Studies of Reading, 7, pp. 239-253.
Carlisle, J. F. 1995. Morphological awareness and early
reading achievement. In L. B. Feldman (Ed,),
Morphological aspects of language processing
(pp.189-209). Mahwah, NJ: Elbraun.
Curinga, R. 2014. The effect of morphological awareness
on reading comprehension: a study with adolescent
Spanish-English emergent bilinguals. Dissertation and
Theses, 2014-present. City University of New York
Deacon, S. H., and Kirby, J. R. 2004. Morphological
awareness: Just “more phonological”? The roles of
morphological and phonological awareness in reading
development. Applied Psycholinguistics, 25, 223-238.
Gafoor, K. A. and Remia, K. R. 2013. Influence of
phonological awareness, morphological awareness, and
non-verbal ability on reading comprehension in
Malayalam. Guru Journal Behavioural and Social
Sciences, 1 (3) pp. 128-138.
Harley, T. 2010. The psychology of language from data to
theory 2nd edition. Psychology Press Ltd.
Jornlin, M. 2015. The role of morphological awareness in
vocabulary acquisition. Langues Et Linguistique, 35,
pp.57-63
Kirby, J. R. and Bowers, P. N., 2009. Effects on
morphological instruction on vocabulary acquisition.
Read and Writ 23, pp. 515-537.
Tunmer, W. E. and Herriman, M. L. 1984. The development
of metalinguistic awareness: An introduction. In W.E.
Tunmer, C. Pratt, and M. L. Herriman (Eds.),
Metalinguistic awareness in children: Theory,
research, and implications. Springer-Verlag.
Wolter, J.A., Wood, A., and D’Zatko, K. 2009. The
influence of morphological awareness on first-grade
children’s literacy development. Language, Speech,
and Hearing Services in the Schools, 40 (3), pp. 1-13.
Morphological Awareness of Indonesian Kindergarten Children Aged 5-6: A Case of Inflection
139