Abstract
Affix knowledge helps learners recognize the meaning of unfamiliar words and expand their vocabulary through the identification of the words that contain them. This study investigates the relationship between the vocabulary size and the affix knowledge of a second language (L2) group of students; and analyzes its influence over some English derivational prefixes and suffixes. Sixty native speakers of Spanish studying EFL were divided into three different groups of vocabulary size before answering an affix knowledge test. The results show there is a significant relationship between vocabulary size and affix knowledge; and indicate that apparently; prefixes are the first category to be acquired by the lowest vocabulary groups; but this trend reverses for the highest vocabulary size group; which presented a significant increase in suffix knowledge.
Estudios de Lingüística Aplicada is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license.