Morphological awareness in TOEIC word-form questions: an item-type analysis of EFL learners’ performance and perceptions

Abstract This study investigates Korean EFL learners’ performance on TOEIC-style word-form items from the perspective of morphological competence. Although morphological awareness has been widely discussed in relation to second language reading and vocabulary development, less attention has been paid to how learners handle different morphological item types in standardized grammar and vocabulary tasks. To address this gap, 277 Korean university students completed a 30-item TOEIC-style word-form test covering five item types: nouns, verbs, adjectives, adverbs, and participial/comparative forms. The study also examined the association between test performance and learners’ global perceived reading confidence. A repeated-measures analysis showed that accuracy varied across morphological item types. Noun and verb items showed relatively higher accuracy, whereas participial/comparative items showed comparatively lower accuracy than the other categories. In addition, perceived reading confidence was modestly but positively associated with overall test performance. These findings suggest that TOEIC-style word-form items require learners to integrate morphological, syntactic, and semantic cues under time constraints. The study contributes to L2 morphological assessment research by showing that performance in standardized test contexts is not evenly distributed across morphological categories and that morpho-syntactically complex forms may require more targeted instructional attention. Pedagogically, the findings point to the need for explicit instruction on word-form selection, participial modification, comparative structures, and form-function relationships in TOEIC preparation and broader EFL reading instruction.