| Volume 4 Index February 2010 |

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Title
Accuracy Order of Selected Grammatical Morphemes in the Monitored Written Compositions of Filipino Adult Language Learners

 Author
Jessie S. Barrot
De La Salle University, Manila, Philippines

Abstract
Studies about morpheme have excited researchers in discovering a“built-in syllabus”. Although accuracy order on the “unmonitored language use” has been established, some variations were obtained depending on the task where the data was elicited (Ellis, 1994). This article asserts that there might be an accuracy order for the“monitored language use”. Very few have tried to identify and
establish an accuracy order for the “monitored language use” particularly of the adult Filipino language learners. Thus, an investigation such as this was conducted. Specifically, this paper presents the accuracy order of selected grammatical morphemes in the students’ narrative and expository essays and their implications for language teaching. Data elicitation was through text reconstruction. In this procedure, the participants watched a movie
and were asked to retell the film producing a narrative essay and to write a film review producing an expository essay. These essays were then analyzed with focus on specific grammatical morphemes in obligatory context. The criterion level of “acquired” accuracy for each grammatical morpheme is 80 percent which was based on the definition that Brown (1973) used in L1 acquisition research (Ellis,
1994). The results reveal that the accuracy order of selected morphemes in the monitored written compositions of Filipino adult language learners displayed variation from the established accuracy order in unmonitored language use (Villiers and de Villiers, 1973, Dulay and Burt, 1973/1974, and Bailey, Madden and Krashen, 1974). Further, this paper presents the pedagogical implications of the accuracy order for syllabus design and national curriculum development.

Key words:- monitored language use, morpheme studies,