Abstract
Developing morphological awareness is generally recognized as an effective learning strategy and a teaching approach which can lead to the reduction of the learning burden connected with learning L2 vocabulary. Research confirms that morphological awareness is linked to vocabulary size and that it supports its growth.
The present chapter explores how well the theory is reflected in classroom practice by analysing the content of over 100 international ELT coursebooks, 10 teacher training manuals and 17 volumes of vocabulary practice books with the view to finding how much coverage these materials give to developing learners' morphological awareness. The results show that the coursebook coverage is rather lowand unsystematic.
General teacher-training manuals devote minimal space to the topic, with the exception of specialist manuals for vocabulary teaching. The best source of word-formation practice is to be found in vocabulary practice books, which are, however, not extensively used in language classrooms.
Even in them both the quantity and quality of the presented material varies. All materials focus primarily on affixation and do not present research-based findings.
It would thus appear that more attention could be paid to presenting teachers and teacher-trainees with more information on the importance (and hidden dangers) of teaching derivational paradigms, to introducing existing research and reliable coursebook and practice book materials which contain quality exercises and explicit information for students as well as ideas for classroom use.