Deliberate Learning Of Second Language (L2) Vocabulary: Research-Based Guidelines

2017 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 210
Author(s):  
Syarifuddin .
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Word List ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Spoken Discourse ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
Deliberate Learning ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

<p>This article is devoted to overviewing several current studies on L2 vocabulary learning, especially those aimed at investigating and exploring the ways in which deliberate vocabulary learning would be best facilitated, and thus would increase learning. It is argued that knowledge of vocabulary is fundamental in all language use, and becomes an essential part to master second language. A large amount of vocabulary is required to use English both receptively and productively: 8000 – 9000 word families needed in order to adequately comprehend a wide range of written discourse (Nation, 2006), and 2000 – 3000 word families required to get sufficient comprehension of spoken discourse (van Zeeland &amp; Schmitt, 2012). Knowing a lexical item entails several aspects of word knowledge i.e., form, meaning, and use, each of which is further comprised of several sub-aspects of word knowledge. In addition, vocabulary learning is incremental in nature. Taken all these into account, there should be a component of deliberate vocabulary learning in language teaching, regardless of the preferred teaching methods being applied. Most importantly, deliberate learning of vocabulary should be intensively focused on lexical items which fall into both the new GSL word list (Brezina &amp; Gablasova, 2015) and the new AWL word list (Coxhead, 2000). Finally, reviewing current studies on L2 vocabulary learning results in several research-based guidelines for deliberate or intentional vocabulary learning which are discussed throughout the rest of this article.</p><p> </p><p><strong>Keywords: </strong><em>vocabulary learning, vocabulary size, word knowledge, high-frequency words, academic words, deliberately-learning-vocabulary guidelines</em><em> <strong></strong></em></p>

scholarly journals A reassessment of frequency and vocabulary size in L2 vocabulary teaching

2012 ◽  
Vol 47 (4) ◽  
pp. 484-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
Norbert Schmitt ◽  
Diane Schmitt
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Lexical Resources ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Authentic Texts ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
English Usage ◽  
Graded Readers ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

The high-frequency vocabulary of English has traditionally been thought to consist of the 2,000 most frequent word families, and low-frequency vocabulary as that beyond the 10,000 frequency level. This paper argues that these boundaries should be reassessed on pedagogic grounds. Based on a number of perspectives (including frequency and acquisition studies, the amount of vocabulary necessary for English usage, the range of graded readers, and dictionary defining vocabulary), we argue that high-frequency English vocabulary should include the most frequent 3,000 word families. We also propose that the low-frequency vocabulary boundary should be lowered to the 9,000 level, on the basis that 8–9,000 word families are sufficient to provide the lexical resources necessary to be able to read a wide range of authentic texts (Nation 2006). We label the vocabulary between high-frequency (3,000) and low-frequency (9,000+) as mid-frequency vocabulary. We illustrate the necessity of mid-frequency vocabulary for proficient language use, and make some initial suggestions for research addressing the pedagogical challenge raised by mid-frequency vocabulary.

The effects of semantic and thematic clustering on the learning of second language vocabulary

1997 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 138-163 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Tinkham
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Language Teaching ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Psychological Research ◽  
Esl Students ◽  
Interference Theory ◽  
Empirical Justification ◽  
Semantic Clustering ◽  
Wide Range ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

ESL students are often presented much of their new English vocabulary preorganized for them in ‘semantic clusters’, sets of semantically and syntactically similar words, e.g., eye, nose, ear, mouth, chin. Although clustering of this sort facilitates the activities which serve current approaches to language teaching and would seem,at first glance, to facilitate vocabulary learning as well, little or no empirical justification is offered by researchers in support of its employment. In fact, research that might apply, psychological research generated by interference theory, would predict that such clustering of similar items impedes rather than enhances learning. On a more positive note, a more ‘thematic’ manner of organizing new L2 vocabulary is suggested by more recent psychological research which would predict that clusters like frog, green,hop, pond,slippery, croak would be more easily learnt than groups of unassociated words. With these predictions in mind,the reported research explored the effects upon L2 vocabulary learning of both ‘semantic’ and ‘thematic’ clustering. The results provide a wide range of evidence that suggests that semantic clustering does indeed serve as a hindrance while thematic clustering serves as a facilitator of new language vocabulary learning.

scholarly journals Contrasting Similar Words Facilitates Second Language Vocabulary Learning in Children by Sharpening Lexical Representations

2021 ◽  
Vol 12 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peta Baxter ◽  
Mienke Droop ◽  
Marianne van den Hurk ◽  
Harold Bekkering ◽  
Ton Dijkstra ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Learning Task ◽  
The Other ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Learning Method ◽  
Cognitive Mechanisms ◽  
Skilled Readers ◽  
Lexical Representations ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

This study considers one of the cognitive mechanisms underlying the development of second language (L2) vocabulary in children: The differentiation and sharpening of lexical representations. We propose that sharpening is triggered by an implicit comparison of similar representations, a process we call contrasting. We investigate whether integrating contrasting in a learning method in which children contrast orthographically and semantically similar L2 words facilitates learning of those words by sharpening their new lexical representations. In our study, 48 Dutch-speaking children learned unfamiliar orthographically and semantically similar English words in a multiple-choice learning task. One half of the group learned the similar words by contrasting them, while the other half did not contrast them. Their word knowledge was measured immediately after learning as well as 1 week later. Contrasting was found to facilitate learning by leading to more precise lexical representations. However, only highly skilled readers benefitted from contrasting. Our findings offer novel insights into the development of L2 lexical representations from fuzzy to more precise, and have potential implications for education.

scholarly journals L2 Vocabulary Learning and Testing: Student Proficiency and the Use of L1 Translations versus L2 Definitions

2016 ◽  
Vol 21 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 93-104
Author(s):  
Paul Joyce
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
First Language ◽  
Word List ◽  
High Group ◽  
L2 Learners ◽  
Student Proficiency ◽  
L2 Vocabulary ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
Over Time

This study examines the relationship between student proficiency and the use of first language (L1) translations versus second language (L2) definitions in the learning and testing of L2 vocabulary. For this study, 48 Japanese L2 learners of English studied 200 lexical items from the Academic Word List over a ten-week period. The language in which the meaning of the target vocabulary was presented and tested was manipulated such that the learners were given half in their L1 and half in their L2. The results showed that the low proficiency group learnt significantly more vocabulary than the high group. However, while student proficiency did not interact with study language, it was significantly related to testing language. That is, both overall and over time, the higher ability learners did relatively significantly better on the L2 definition tests and worse on the L1 translation tests, and vice-versa. Journal of NELTA, Vol. 21, No. 1-2, 2016, Page: 93-104

scholarly journals The Newspaper Word List: A Specialised Vocabulary for Reading Newspapers

2009 ◽  
Vol 31 (2) ◽  
pp. 159 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mihwa Chung
Keyword(s):  
Foreign Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Proper Names ◽  
Word List ◽  
Special Importance ◽  
Vocabulary Size ◽  
Word Families ◽  
General Service ◽  
Very High

The primary purpose of this study is to identify words that are of special importance for reading newspapers. In the Newspaper Corpus of 579,849 running words, 588 word families are identified as Newspaper Words. These words account for 6.8% of the running words in the corpus. When combined, proper names and 2,521 families of the General Service List of English Words (GSL) and the NWL make up 92.5% of the running words in the corpus. This is lower than the 98% ideal coverage required for understanding a text successfully, but very high given the small vocabulary size. Thus, the NWL will give the best return for vocabulary learning to learners of English as a foreign language who wish to read newspapers as soon as possible. 本研究の目的は新聞を読むのに必要な語彙を特定することである。Newspaperコーパスに記載された579,849語の中から6.8％に上る588語をNewspaper Wordsとして選び出した。固有名詞、General Service List of English Wordsの2,521語、NWLの語彙を総計するとコーパスの92.5％になる。テキストを理解するのに必要とされている98％よりはやや低い数値であるが、NWL全体の総語数を考慮すれば非常に高い値であるということができる。したがってNWLは新聞英語を早く読めるようになりたいと望む英語学習者にとっては最も効率のよいものであるということができる。

Mobile-assisted vocabulary learning: Investigating receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of Chinese EFL learners

ReCALL ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 1-15
Author(s):  
Yan Li ◽  
Christoph A. Hafner
Keyword(s):  
Undergraduate Students ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Mobile Technologies ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
Mobile Platforms ◽  
Efl Learners ◽  
Learning Group ◽  
Chinese University ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

Abstract Considerable research has been conducted on the advancement of mobile technologies to facilitate vocabulary learning and acquisition in a second language (L2). However, whether mobile platforms lead to a comprehensive mastery of both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge has seldom been addressed in previous literature. This study investigated English vocabulary learning from engagement with mobile-based word cards and paper word cards in the context of the Chinese university classroom. A total of 85 undergraduate students were recruited to take part in the study. The students were divided into two groups, a mobile learning group and a paper-based learning group, and tested on two word knowledge components: receptive knowledge of the form–meaning connection and productive knowledge of collocations. Both the digital and non-digital word cards enhanced L2 vocabulary learning, and the results showed that the mobile application (app) promoted greater gains than physical word cards.

scholarly journals Context, word, and student predictors in second language vocabulary learning

2018 ◽  
Vol 40 (1) ◽  
pp. 137-166 ◽  
Author(s):  
EVELIEN MULDER ◽  
MARCO VAN DE VEN ◽  
ELIANE SEGERS ◽  
LUDO VERHOEVEN
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Learning Outcomes ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Vocabulary Knowledge ◽  
Levenshtein Distance ◽  
Context Word ◽  
Learning Gain ◽  
English Sentence ◽  
Contextual Support ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

ABSTRACTWe examined to what extent the variation in vocabulary learning outcomes (vocabulary knowledge, learning gain, and rate of forgetting) in English as a second language (L2) in context can be predicted from semantic contextual support, word characteristics (cognate status, Levenshtein distance, word frequency, and word length), and student characteristics (prior vocabulary knowledge, reading ability, and exposure to English) in 197 Dutch adolescents. Students were taught cognates, false friends, and control words through judging sentences with varying degrees of semantic contextual support using a pretest/posttest between subjects design. Participants were presented with an English target word and its Dutch translation, followed by an English sentence. They were instructed to judge the plausibility of the sentence. Mixed-efffects models indicated that learning gains were higher for sentences with more semantic contextual support and in students with stronger reading comprehension skills. We were the first to show that Levenshtein distance is an important predictor for L2 vocabulary learning outcomes. Furthermore, more accurate as well as faster learning task performance lead to higher learning outcomes. It can thus be concluded that L2 study materials containing semantically supportive contexts and that focus on words with little L1-L2 overlap are most effective for L2 vocabulary learning.

scholarly journals Word Roots in English: Learning English Words through Form and Meaning Similarity

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
◽  
Zheng Wei
Keyword(s):  
High Frequency ◽  
English Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Data Gathering ◽  
Low Frequency ◽  
Word List ◽  
Word Families ◽  
Frequency Criterion ◽  
Etymological Dictionary ◽  
Two Stages

<p>The research first proposes a vocabulary learning technique: the word part technique, and then tests its effectiveness in aiding vocabulary learning and retention. The first part of the thesis centers around the idea that the knowledge of the first 2000 words language learners already possess may give them easier access to words of other frequency levels because the root parts of the low frequency new words share form and meaning similarities with the high frequency known words. The research addresses the issue at two stages: to quantify the information concerning the number of words able to be accessed through the analysis of the word roots, and to analyze the pedagogical usefulness of the accessible words. A Comprehensive Etymological Dictionary of the English Language (Klein, 1966) was used as the source to show the possible formal and meaning connections among words. All the words in the first 2000 word list were first looked up individually and all the cognates provided under each of these words were collected and placed under each of the high frequency words if they meet the requirement that their roots share more than one letter and/or more than one phoneme with the roots of the first 2000 known words. After the data was roughly gathered, three criteria were applied to filter the data, namely, the frequency criterion, the meaning criterion and form criterion. In applying the frequency criterion, words with frequency levels lower than the tenth thousand were removed from the data. In applying the meaning criterion, hints were given to show the semantic relations between the higher frequency words and the first 2000 thousand words. The hints were then rated on the scale for measuring meaning transparency. Words that were rated at level 5 on the scale were considered inaccessible; words that were rated at levels 1, 2a, 2b, 2c, and 3a were considered easy to access. In applying the form criterion, calculations were done for each semantically accessible word to show their phonological similarity and orthographic similarity in relation to the known word. The words whose phonological or orthographical similarity scores were larger than 0.5 were considered to be phonologically or orthographically easy to access. Finally the "find" function of Microsoft Word was used to check the data by picking up any words that might have been missed in the first round of data gathering. The above procedures resulted in 2156 word families that are able to be accessed through the meaning and form relations with the first 2000 words in their root parts. Among the 2156 word families, 739 can be accessed easily and are therefore more pedagogically useful and 259 can be accessed, but with difficulty. 21 pedagogically useful form constants were selected because they can give access to more unknown lower frequency words than other form constants. In the second part of the thesis, an experiment was conducted to test the effectiveness of the word part technique in comparison with the keyword technique and self-strategy learning. The results show that with the experienced Chinese EFL learners, the keyword technique is slightly inferior to the word part technique and the self-strategy learning.</p>

Word knowledge, learning and acquisition in a second language: Proposed replications of Elgort (2011) and Qiao and Forster (2017)

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-11
Author(s):  
Irina Elgort
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Word Learning ◽  
Teaching And Learning ◽  
Word Knowledge ◽  
L2 Word Learning ◽  
Alternative Approaches ◽  
To Come ◽  
Prime Lexicality Effect ◽  
The Mind ◽  
L2 Vocabulary

AbstractWhat does it mean to learn a word? How can we tell when a sequence of letters or sounds becomes a word in the mind of the learner? While many second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning studies continue to use traditional vocabulary tests to measure learning (such as multiple choice, translation, gap-fill), these measures tend to come short when researchers want to address theoretical questions about the nature of L2 word knowledge. In the present paper, I argue for conceptualising word learning as lexicalisation, which necessitates the use of alternative approaches to measuring learning. I then propose approximate and conceptual replications of two theoretically motivated L2 word learning studies, Elgort (2011) and Qiao and Forster (2017), that used the Prime Lexicality Effect as a measure of lexicalisation of deliberately learned L2 words.

Indexical information, encoding difficulty, and second language vocabulary learning

2011 ◽  
Vol 32 (2) ◽  
pp. 417-434 ◽  
Author(s):  
MITCHELL S. SOMMERS ◽  
JOE BARCROFT
Keyword(s):  
Second Language ◽  
Vocabulary Learning ◽  
Cognitive Effort ◽  
Information Encoding ◽  
Signal Noise ◽  
Acoustic Variability ◽  
Noise Ratio ◽  
The Difference ◽  
L2 Vocabulary ◽  
Effort Hypothesis

ABSTRACTResearch has demonstrated that second language (L2) vocabulary learning improves when target words are presented in acoustically varied compared with acoustically consistent formats. The present study investigated the extent to which this benefit of acoustic variability is a consequence of difficult encoding demands (cognitive effort hypothesis) versus increased representational quality. Experiment 1 compared L2 vocabulary learning for words produced in normal (easier encoding) or nasal (more difficult encoding) voice. Vocabulary learning was superior in the normal-voice condition, arguing against a simple cognitive effort hypothesis as the basis for improved L2 vocabulary learning with increased acoustic variability. Experiment 2 assessed the resistance of newly acquired L2 word forms to the effects of acoustic degradation. Participants heard six repetitions of each item in either a single-talker or multiple-talker condition. The robustness of the new word-form representations was assessed by measuring the accuracy and latency of L2 to first language (L1) translation as a function of the signal/noise ratio. At all four signal/noise ratios, accuracy and latency of L2 to L1 translation were significantly better for words learned in the multiple-talker as opposed to the single-talker condition. Of particular importance, the difference between single talkers and multiple talkers increased systematically as signal/noise ratio decreased. These findings suggest that the benefits of acoustic variability are a consequence of learners' ability to retain and use indexical information during the earliest stages of word learning and provide support for the representation quality hypothesis.

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