The comprehension of English compound nouns by Arabic-speaking EFL learners

This paper examines the comprehension of English compound nouns by sixty Arabic-speaking EFL learners majoring in English at the University of Jordan, Amman. It explores the problems that these learners may encounter in understanding certain types of compounds, namely, subordinative, attributive and coordinative, based on the notions of endocentricity and exocentricity. Participants whose English proficiency level was advanced took a test to identify the meaning of an underlined compound, without using a dictionary. The responses to the three different types of compounds were analyzed using Two-Way repeated measures ANOVA. The results showed that the differences between endocentric and exocentric subordinative compounds were statistically significant in favor of the former. We argue that endocentric, especially subordinative endocentric compounds, were more easily understood due to their semantic transparency, i.e., the entire compound is a hyponym of its head, and to the similarity of this type of compound in the participants' first language. The study provides some pedagogical implications for teaching compound nouns to EFL learners.

Automated summary

This paper investigates the comprehension of English compound nouns by Arabic-speaking EFL learners majoring in English. The study examines the difficulties that these learners may face in understanding different types of compounds and analyzes the responses using statistical measures. The results show that there are significant differences between endocentric and exocentric subordinative compounds, suggesting that the former are more easily understood due to their semantic transparency and similarity to the participants' first language. The study provides pedagogical implications for teaching compound nouns to EFL learners.