Is Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Feasible to EFL Learning?

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Luo, Jian-ping

2013-01-01

For learning English as a foreign language, the efficiency of the approach of incidental vocabulary acquisition depends on the word frequency and text coverage. However, the statistics of English corpus reveals that English is a language that has a large vocabulary size but a low word frequency as well as text coverage, which is obviously not in…

Improving Vocabulary of English Language Learners through Direct Vocabulary Instruction

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Hunt, Meghan; Feng, Jay

2016-01-01

This is a report of a professional development project. The purpose of the project was to provide professional development to teachers in vocabulary instructional strategies and to examine vocabulary acquisition of English language learners. The participants were 8 second grade ELL students and 6 second grade teachers. The eight second grade…

Cross-Language Associations in the Development of Preschoolers' Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary.

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Maier, Michelle F; Bohlmann, Natalie L; Palacios, Natalia A

The increasing population of dual language learners (DLLs) entering preschool classrooms highlights a continued need for research on the development of dual language acquisition, and specifically vocabulary skills, in this age group. This study describes young DLL children's ( N = 177) vocabulary development in both English and Spanish simultaneously, and how vocabulary skills in each language relate to one another, during a contextual shift that places greater emphasis on the acquisition of academic English language skills. Findings demonstrated that DLL preschoolers made gains in vocabulary in both languages with more change evidenced in receptive, in comparison to expressive, vocabulary as well as in English in comparison to Spanish. When examining whether children's vocabulary scores in one language at the beginning of preschool interact with their vocabulary scores in the other language to predict vocabulary growth, no significant associations were found for receptive vocabulary. In contrast, the interaction between initial English and Spanish expressive vocabulary scores was negatively related to growth in English expressive vocabulary. This cross-language association suggests that children who have low expressive vocabulary skills in both languages tend to grow faster in their English expressive vocabulary. The study extends previous work on dual language development by examining growth in expressive and receptive vocabulary in both English and Spanish. It also provides suggestions for future work to inform a more comprehensive understanding of DLL children's development in both languages.

Spacing Techniques in Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: Short-Term Gains vs. Long-Term Memory

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Schuetze, Ulf

2015-01-01

This article reports the results of two experiments using the spacing technique (Leitner, 1972; Landauer & Bjork, 1978) in second language vocabulary acquisition. In the past, studies in this area have produced mixed results attempting to differentiate between massed, uniform and expanded intervals of spacing (Balota, Duchek, & Logan,…

STRATEGIES IN IMPROVING READING COMPREHENSION THROUGH VOCABULARY ACQUISITION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Khairil Razali

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary acquisition concerns on how people expand the numbers of words they understand when learning a new language. Knowing words in a second or foreign language is vitally important because the reader will be able to understand the written text well and the speaker will be able to communicate basic ideas through vocabulary even if the person does not understand how to create a grammatically correct sentence. As Madsen argued, “mastering vocabulary is the primary thing that every student should acquire in learning English” (Harold, 1983. Therefore, acquiring a sufficiently large vocabulary is one of the important tasks faced by L2 learners in order to comprehend the written texts in reading as one of the four basic features of language learning.

Cross-Language Associations in the Development of Preschoolers’ Receptive and Expressive Vocabulary

Science.gov (United States)

Maier, Michelle F.; Bohlmann, Natalie L.; Palacios, Natalia A.

2016-01-01

The increasing population of dual language learners (DLLs) entering preschool classrooms highlights a continued need for research on the development of dual language acquisition, and specifically vocabulary skills, in this age group. This study describes young DLL children's (N = 177) vocabulary development in both English and Spanish simultaneously, and how vocabulary skills in each language relate to one another, during a contextual shift that places greater emphasis on the acquisition of academic English language skills. Findings demonstrated that DLL preschoolers made gains in vocabulary in both languages with more change evidenced in receptive, in comparison to expressive, vocabulary as well as in English in comparison to Spanish. When examining whether children's vocabulary scores in one language at the beginning of preschool interact with their vocabulary scores in the other language to predict vocabulary growth, no significant associations were found for receptive vocabulary. In contrast, the interaction between initial English and Spanish expressive vocabulary scores was negatively related to growth in English expressive vocabulary. This cross-language association suggests that children who have low expressive vocabulary skills in both languages tend to grow faster in their English expressive vocabulary. The study extends previous work on dual language development by examining growth in expressive and receptive vocabulary in both English and Spanish. It also provides suggestions for future work to inform a more comprehensive understanding of DLL children's development in both languages. PMID:26807002

EFL Vocabulary Acquisition through Word Cards: Student Perceptions and Strategies

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Wilkinson, Darrell

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in second language proficiency, and learners need to acquire thousands of words in order to become proficient in the target language. As numerous studies have shown that incidental vocabulary acquisition is not sufficient on its own, it is clear that learners must devote considerable time and effort to…

A Study of Multimedia Application-Based Vocabulary Acquisition

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Shao, Jing

2012-01-01

The development of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) has created the opportunity for exploring the effects of the multimedia application on foreign language vocabulary acquisition in recent years. This study provides an overview the computer-assisted language learning (CALL) and detailed a developing result of CALL--multimedia. With the…

Effectiveness of Music on Vocabulary Acquisition, Language Usage, and Meaning for Mainland Chinese ESL Learners

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Li, Xiangming; Brand, Manny

2009-01-01

Using an experimental approach, this study examined the relative effectiveness of varying the use of songs (lyrics and music) on vocabulary acquisition, language usage, and meaning for adult ESL students in the People's Republic of China. While the use of songs is generally enthusiastically endorsed by ESL teachers, few empirical studies have…

Incidental L2 Vocabulary Acquisition "from" and "while" Reading: An Eye-Tracking Study

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Pellicer-Sánchez, Ana

2016-01-01

Previous studies have shown that reading is an important source of incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. However, we still do not have a clear picture of what happens when readers encounter unknown words. Combining offline (vocabulary tests) and online (eye-tracking) measures, the incidental acquisition of vocabulary knowledge…

Naturalistic acquisition in an early language classroom.

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Dahl, Anne; Vulchanova, Mila D

2014-01-01

This study investigated whether it is possible to provide naturalistic second language acquisition (SLA) of vocabulary for young learners in a classroom situation without resorting to a classical immersion approach. Participants were 60 first-grade pupils in two Norwegian elementary schools in their first year. The control group followed regular instruction as prescribed by the school curriculum, while the experimental group received increased naturalistic target language input. This entailed extensive use of English by the teacher during English classes, and also during morning meetings and for simple instructions and classroom management throughout the day. Our hypothesis was that it is possible to facilitate naturalistic acquisition through better quality target language exposure within a normal curriculum. The students' English vocabulary knowledge was measured using the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, version 4 (PPVT-IV, Dunn and Dunn, 2007a), at the beginning and the end of the first year of school. Findings are that (1) early-start second-language (L2) programs in school do not in themselves guarantee vocabulary development in the first year, (2) a focus on increased exposure to the L2 can lead to a significant increase in receptive vocabulary comprehension in the course of only 8 months, and (3) even with relatively modest input, learners in such an early-start L2 program can display vocabulary acquisition comparable in some respects to that of younger native children matched on vocabulary size. The overall conclusion is that naturalistic vocabulary acquisition is in fact possible in a classroom setting.

The efficacy of a vocabulary intervention for dual-language learners with language impairment.

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Restrepo, Maria Adelaida; Morgan, Gareth P; Thompson, Marilyn S

2013-04-01

In this study, the authors evaluated the efficacy of a Spanish-English versus English-only vocabulary intervention for dual-language learners (DLLs) with language impairment compared to mathematics intervention groups and typically developing controls with no intervention. Further, in this study the authors also examined whether the language of instruction affected English, Spanish, and conceptual vocabulary differentially. The authors randomly assigned 202 preschool DLLs with language impairment to 1 of 4 conditions: bilingual vocabulary, English-only vocabulary, bilingual mathematics, or English-only mathematics. Fifty-four DLLs with typical development received no intervention. The vocabulary intervention consisted of a 12-week small-group dialogic reading and hands-on vocabulary instruction of 45 words. Postintervention group differences and linear growth rates were examined in conceptual, English, and Spanish receptive and expressive vocabulary for the 45 treatment words. Results indicate that the bilingual vocabulary intervention facilitated receptive and expressive Spanish and conceptual vocabulary gains in DLLs with language impairment compared with the English vocabulary intervention, mathematics intervention, and no-intervention groups. The English-only vocabulary intervention differed significantly from the mathematics condition and no-intervention groups on all measures but did not differ from the bilingual vocabulary intervention. Vocabulary growth rates postintervention slowed considerably. Results support the idea that bilingual interventions support native- and second-language vocabulary development. English-only intervention supports only English. Use of repeated dialogic reading and hands-on activities facilitates vocabulary acquisition.

Semantic Boggle: A Game for Vocabulary Acquisition

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Toma, Irina; Alexandru, Cristina-Elena; Dascalu, Mihai; Dessus, Philippe; Trausan-Matu, Stefan

2017-01-01

Learning a new language is a difficult endeavor, the main encountered problem being vocabulary acquisition. The learning process can be improved through visual representations of coherent contexts, best represented in serious games. The game described in this paper, Semantic Boggle, is a serious

Comparing Multidimensional and Continuum Models of Vocabulary Acquisition: An Empirical Examination of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale

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Stewart, Jeffrey; Batty, Aaron Olaf; Bovee, Nicholas

2012-01-01

Second language vocabulary acquisition has been modeled both as multidimensional in nature and as a continuum wherein the learner's knowledge of a word develops along a cline from recognition through production. In order to empirically examine and compare these models, the authors assess the degree to which the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS;…

Number-concept acquisition and general vocabulary development.

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Negen, James; Sarnecka, Barbara W

2012-11-01

How is number-concept acquisition related to overall language development? Experiments 1 and 2 measured number-word knowledge and general vocabulary in a total of 59 children, ages 30-60 months. A strong correlation was found between number-word knowledge and vocabulary, independent of the child's age, contrary to previous results (D. Ansari et al., 2003). This result calls into question arguments that (a) the number-concept creation process is scaffolded mainly by visuo-spatial development and (b) that language only becomes integrated after the concepts are created (D. Ansari et al., 2003). Instead, this may suggest that having a larger nominal vocabulary helps children learn number words. Experiment 3 shows that the differences with previous results are likely due to changes in how the data were analyzed. © 2012 The Authors. Child Development © 2012 Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Neural Stimulation Has a Long-Term Effect on Foreign Vocabulary Acquisition.

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Pasqualotto, Achille; Kobanbay, Begüm; Proulx, Michael J

2015-01-01

Acquisition of a foreign language is a challenging task that is becoming increasingly more important in the world nowadays. There is evidence suggesting that the frontal and temporal cortices are involved in language processing and comprehension, but it is still unknown whether foreign language acquisition recruits additional cortical areas in a causal manner. For the first time, we used transcranial random noise stimulation on the frontal and parietal brain areas, in order to compare its effect on the acquisition of unknown foreign words and a sham, or placebo, condition was also included. This type of noninvasive neural stimulation enhances cortical activity by boosting the spontaneous activity of neurons. Foreign vocabulary acquisition was tested both immediately and seven days after the stimulation. We found that stimulation on the posterior parietal, but not the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex or sham stimulation, significantly improved the memory performance in the long term. These results suggest that the posterior parietal cortex is directly involved in acquisition of foreign vocabulary, thus extending the "linguistic network" to this area.

The Role of Repeated Exposure to Multimodal Input in Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary.

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Bisson, Marie-Josée; van Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J

2014-12-01

Prior research has reported incidental vocabulary acquisition with complete beginners in a foreign language (FL), within 8 exposures to auditory and written FL word forms presented with a picture depicting their meaning. However, important questions remain about whether acquisition occurs with fewer exposures to FL words in a multimodal situation and whether there is a repeated exposure effect. Here we report a study where the number of exposures to FL words in an incidental learning phase varied between 2, 4, 6, and 8 exposures. Following the incidental learning phase, participants completed an explicit learning task where they learned to recognize written translation equivalents of auditory FL word forms, half of which had occurred in the incidental learning phase. The results showed that participants performed better on the words they had previously been exposed to, and that this incidental learning effect occurred from as little as 2 exposures to the multimodal stimuli. In addition, repeated exposure to the stimuli was found to have a larger impact on learning during the first few exposures and decrease thereafter, suggesting that the effects of repeated exposure on vocabulary acquisition are not necessarily constant.

Bilinguals' Existing Languages Benefit Vocabulary Learning in a Third Language.

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Bartolotti, James; Marian, Viorica

2017-03-01

Learning a new language involves substantial vocabulary acquisition. Learners can accelerate this process by relying on words with native-language overlap, such as cognates. For bilingual third language learners, it is necessary to determine how their two existing languages interact during novel language learning. A scaffolding account predicts transfer from either language for individual words, whereas an accumulation account predicts cumulative transfer from both languages. To compare these accounts, twenty English-German bilingual adults were taught an artificial language containing 48 novel written words that varied orthogonally in English and German wordlikeness (neighborhood size and orthotactic probability). Wordlikeness in each language improved word production accuracy, and similarity to one language provided the same benefit as dual-language overlap. In addition, participants' memory for novel words was affected by the statistical distributions of letters in the novel language. Results indicate that bilinguals utilize both languages during third language acquisition, supporting a scaffolding learning model.

An overview of the age factor and its pedagogical implications for vocabulary acquisition

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Exp??sito Morillas, Mar??a del Pilar

2011-01-01

This?? research?? deals with??the??age??effects??on??the??acquisition??of??vocabulary??as??a??second??language??in??an??instructed??setting.??The??literature??review??on??the??age??factor??in??reference?? to?? vocabulary?? acquisition??shows?? an?? advantage?? of?? the??late starters?? over the?? early??starters?? in?? instructed?? settings.?? However,?? early??starters?? surpass?? late starters?? in??naturalistic?? settings?? in?? the?? long??run?? when?? the?? basic?? conditions??are??fulfi...

Effects of Hierarchy Vocabulary Exercises on English Vocabulary Acquisition

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Lin, Ching-Ying; Hsu, Wei Shu

2013-01-01

The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of hierarchy vocabulary exercises and copying vocabulary exercises on EFL students' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Two specific factors were probed: (a) vocabulary gains and retention from different exercises; (b) reading comprehension performance through different…

Hypertext Glosses for Foreign Language Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition: Effects of Assessment Methods

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Chen, I-Jung

2016-01-01

This study compared how three different gloss modes affected college students' L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition. The study also compared how results on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition may differ depending on the four assessment methods used. A between-subjects design was employed with three groups of Mandarin-speaking…

Increasing the Vocabulary Acquisition Rate for Third Grade English Language Learners

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Pendergrass, Jennifer D.

2017-01-01

Given the ongoing demographic transformations of U.S classrooms, knowledge of the strategies teachers use to address the vocabulary needs of English language learners (ELLs) is central for improving student outcomes. The problem in a Georgia school system was that ELLs were not building grade-level appropriate vocabulary at a pace comparable to…

Oral Vocabulary and Language Acquisition Strategies to Increase Literacy

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Green, Grace

2017-01-01

This study addresses low literacy achievement in students in kindergarten and first grades. The study was designed to help identify how general education teachers can use specific daily research-based oral vocabulary acquisition strategies to close the literacy gap. This quantitative research helped to determine if the implementation of an oral…

Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom.

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Mieszkowska, Karolina; Łuniewska, Magdalena; Kołak, Joanna; Kacprzak, Agnieszka; Wodniecka, Zofia; Haman, Ewa

2017-01-01

Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children's vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5-6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ) in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests), and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report). The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third) language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills similar to those of

Home Language Will Not Take Care of Itself: Vocabulary Knowledge in Trilingual Children in the United Kingdom

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Karolina Mieszkowska

2017-08-01

Full Text Available Language input is crucial for language acquisition and especially for children’s vocabulary size. Bilingual children receive reduced input in each of their languages, compared to monolinguals, and are reported to have smaller vocabularies, at least in one of their languages. Vocabulary acquisition in trilingual children has been largely understudied; only a few case studies have been published so far. Moreover, trilingual language acquisition in children has been rarely contrasted with language outcomes of bilingual and monolingual peers. We present a comparison of trilingual, bilingual, and monolingual children (total of 56 participants, aged 4;5–6;7, matched one-to-one for age, gender, and non-verbal IQ in regard to their receptive and expressive vocabulary (measured by standardized tests, and relative frequency of input in each language (measured by parental report. The monolingual children were speakers of Polish or English, while the bilinguals and trilinguals were migrant children living in the United Kingdom, speaking English as a majority language and Polish as a home language. The trilinguals had another (third language at home. For the majority language, English, no differences were found across the three groups, either in the receptive or productive vocabulary. The groups differed, however, in their performance in Polish, the home language. The trilinguals had lower receptive vocabulary than the monolinguals, and lower productive vocabulary compared to the monolinguals. The trilinguals showed similar lexical knowledge to the bilinguals. The bilinguals demonstrated lower scores than the monolinguals, but only in productive vocabulary. The data on reported language input show that input in English in bilingual and trilingual groups is similar, but the bilinguals outscore the trilinguals in relative frequency of Polish input. Overall, the results suggest that in the majority language, multilingual children may develop lexical skills

Predictors of second language acquisition in Latino children with specific language impairment.

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Gutiérrez-Clellen, Vera; Simon-Cereijido, Gabriela; Sweet, Monica

2012-02-01

This study evaluated the extent to which the language of intervention, the child's development in Spanish, and the effects of English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure predict differences in the rates of acquisition of English in Latino children with specific language impairment (SLI). In this randomized controlled trial, 188 Latino preschoolers with SLI participated in a small-group academic enrichment program for 12 weeks and were followed up 3 and 5 months later. Children were randomly assigned to either a bilingual or an English-only program. Predictors of English growth included measures of Spanish language skills and English vocabulary, use, proficiency, and exposure. Performance on English outcomes (i.e., picture description and narrative sample) was assessed over time. A series of longitudinal models were tested via multilevel modeling with baseline and posttreatment measures nested within child. Children demonstrated growth on the English outcomes over time. The language of intervention, Spanish skills, English vocabulary, and English use significantly predicted differences in rates of growth across children for specific measures of English development. This study underscores the role of the child's first language skills, the child's level of English vocabulary development, and level of English use for predicting differences in English acquisition in Latino preschoolers with SLI. These factors should be carefully considered in making clinical decisions.

Simultaneous bilingual language acquisition: The role of parental input on receptive vocabulary development.

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Macleod, Andrea An; Fabiano-Smith, Leah; Boegner-Pagé, Sarah; Fontolliet, Salomé

2013-02-01

Parents often turn to educators and healthcare professionals for advice on how to best support their child's language development. These professionals frequently suggest implementing the 'one-parent-one-language' approach to ensure consistent exposure to both languages. The goal of this study was to understand how language exposure influences the receptive vocabulary development of simultaneous bilingual children. To this end, we targeted nine German-French children growing up in bilingual families. Their exposure to each language within and outside the home was measured, as were their receptive vocabulary abilities in German and French. The results indicate that children are receiving imbalanced exposure to each language. This imbalance is leading to a slowed development of the receptive vocabulary in the minority language, while the majority language is keeping pace with monolingual peers. The one-parent-one-language approach does not appear to support the development of both of the child's languages in the context described in the present study. Bilingual families may need to consider other options for supporting the bilingual language development of their children. As professionals, we need to provide parents with advice that is based on available data and that is flexible with regards to the current and future needs of the child and his family.

Incidental Vocabulary Learning in Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review (Aprendizaje incidental de vocabulario en la adquisición de una segunda lengua: una revisión de literatura)

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Restrepo Ramos, Falcon Dario

2015-01-01

This literature review aims to analyze previous studies that address the incidental learning of vocabulary in second language acquisition. The articles included in this literature review look into the understanding of vocabulary learning through incidental means, the relationship of reading and incidental vocabulary learning, and the strategies…

The Road to Language Learning Is Not Entirely Iconic: Iconicity, Neighborhood Density, and Frequency Facilitate Acquisition of Sign Language.

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Caselli, Naomi K; Pyers, Jennie E

2017-07-01

Iconic mappings between words and their meanings are far more prevalent than once estimated and seem to support children's acquisition of new words, spoken or signed. We asked whether iconicity's prevalence in sign language overshadows two other factors known to support the acquisition of spoken vocabulary: neighborhood density (the number of lexical items phonologically similar to the target) and lexical frequency. Using mixed-effects logistic regressions, we reanalyzed 58 parental reports of native-signing deaf children's productive acquisition of 332 signs in American Sign Language (ASL; Anderson & Reilly, 2002) and found that iconicity, neighborhood density, and lexical frequency independently facilitated vocabulary acquisition. Despite differences in iconicity and phonological structure between signed and spoken language, signing children, like children learning a spoken language, track statistical information about lexical items and their phonological properties and leverage this information to expand their vocabulary.

A Review of Multimedia Glosses and Their Effects on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition in CALL Literature

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Mohsen, Mohammed Ali; Balakumar, M.

2011-01-01

This article reviews the literature of multimedia glosses in computer assisted language learning (CALL) and their effects on L2 vocabulary acquisition during the past seventeen years. Several studies have touched on this area to examine the potential of multimedia in a CALL environment in aiding L2 vocabulary acquisition. In this review, the…

Using Mixed-Modality Learning Strategies via e-Learning for Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition

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Yang, Fang-Chuan Ou; Wu, Wen-Chi Vivian

2015-01-01

This study demonstrated an e-learning system, MyEVA, based on a mixed-modality vocabulary strategy in assisting learners of English as a second language (L2 learners) to improve their vocabulary. To explore the learning effectiveness of MyEVA, the study compared four vocabulary-learning techniques, MyEVA in preference mode, MyEVA in basic mode, an…

Neural changes underlying early stages of L2 vocabulary acquisition.

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Pu, He; Holcomb, Phillip J; Midgley, Katherine J

2016-11-01

Research has shown neural changes following second language (L2) acquisition after weeks or months of instruction. But are such changes detectable even earlier than previously shown? The present study examines the electrophysiological changes underlying the earliest stages of second language vocabulary acquisition by recording event-related potentials (ERPs) within the first week of learning. Adult native English speakers with no previous Spanish experience completed less than four hours of Spanish vocabulary training, with pre- and post-training ERPs recorded to a backward translation task. Results indicate that beginning L2 learners show rapid neural changes following learning, manifested in changes to the N400 - an ERP component sensitive to lexicosemantic processing and degree of L2 proficiency. Specifically, learners in early stages of L2 acquisition show growth in N400 amplitude to L2 words following learning as well as a backward translation N400 priming effect that was absent pre-training. These results were shown within days of minimal L2 training, suggesting that the neural changes captured during adult second language acquisition are more rapid than previously shown. Such findings are consistent with models of early stages of bilingualism in adult learners of L2 ( e.g. Kroll and Stewart's RHM) and reinforce the use of ERP measures to assess L2 learning.

Vocabulary Instruction through Books Read in American Sign Language for English-Language Learners with Hearing Loss

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Cannon, Joanna E.; Fredrick, Laura D.; Easterbrooks, Susan R.

2010-01-01

Reading to children improves vocabulary acquisition through incidental exposure, and it is a best practice for parents and teachers of children who can hear. Children who are deaf or hard of hearing are at risk for not learning vocabulary as such. This article describes a procedure for using books read on DVD in American Sign Language with…

Foreign language vocabulary learning: word-type effects during the labeling stage

NARCIS (Netherlands)

de Groot, A.M.B.; van den Brink, R.C.L.; Kail, M.; Hickmann, M.

2010-01-01

This chapter reviews the results of a set of experiments that examined foreign-language (FL) vocabulary learning by late learners, exploiting the paired-associate-learning (PAL) paradigm. The effects on acquisition and retention of the concreteness and frequency of the native-language (L1) words,

The Acquisition of Vocabulary Through Three Memory Strategies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Libia Maritza Pérez

2017-02-01

Full Text Available The present study reports on an action research study that explores the implications of applying three vocabulary strategies: word cards, association with pictures, and association with a topic through fables in the acquisition of new vocabulary in a group of EFL low-level proficiency teenagers in a public school in Espinal, Tolima, Colombia. The participants had never used vocabulary strategies before and struggled to memorize and recall words.  Two types of questionnaires, a researcher’s journal, and vocabulary tests were the instruments used to gather data.  The results showed that these strategies were effective to expand the range of words progressively and improve the ability to recall them. The study also found that these strategies involve cognitive and affective factors that can affect students’ perception about the strategies and their use. The implementation of the strategies highlighted the need to train teachers and learners in strategies intended to teach and learn vocabulary and to include them in the English language program in any school.

Playing with fire: effects of negative mood induction and working memory on vocabulary acquisition.

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Miller, Zachary F; Fox, Jessica K; Moser, Jason S; Godfroid, Aline

2017-08-03

We investigated the impact of emotions on learning vocabulary in an unfamiliar language to better understand affective influences in foreign language acquisition. Seventy native English speakers learned new vocabulary in either a negative or a neutral emotional state. Participants also completed two sets of working memory tasks to examine the potential mediating role of working memory. Results revealed that participants exposed to negative stimuli exhibited difficulty in retrieving and correctly pairing English words with Indonesian words, as reflected in a lower performance on the prompted recall tests and the free recall measure. Emotional induction did not change working memory scores from pre to post manipulation. This suggests working memory could not explain the reduced vocabulary learning in the negative group. We argue that negative mood can adversely affect language learning by suppressing aspects of native-language processing and impeding form-meaning mapping with second language words.

Acquisition of speech rhythm in first language.

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Polyanskaya, Leona; Ordin, Mikhail

2015-09-01

Analysis of English rhythm in speech produced by children and adults revealed that speech rhythm becomes increasingly more stress-timed as language acquisition progresses. Children reach the adult-like target by 11 to 12 years. The employed speech elicitation paradigm ensured that the sentences produced by adults and children at different ages were comparable in terms of lexical content, segmental composition, and phonotactic complexity. Detected differences between child and adult rhythm and between rhythm in child speech at various ages cannot be attributed to acquisition of phonotactic language features or vocabulary, and indicate the development of language-specific phonetic timing in the course of acquisition.

The Exploring Nature of Vocabulary Acquisition and Common Main Gaps in the Current Studies of Vocabulary Acquisition

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Fazeli, Seyed Hossein

2012-01-01

Vocabulary can be a key factor for success, central to a language, and paramount to a language learner. In such situation, the lexicon may be the most important component for learners (Grass and Selinker, 1994), and mastering of vocabulary is an essential component of second/foreign language teaching and learning that has been repeatedly…

The role of verbal and pictorial information in multimodal incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary.

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Bisson, Marie-Josée; van Heuven, Walter J B; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J

2015-01-01

This study used eye tracking to investigate the allocation of attention to multimodal stimuli during an incidental learning situation, as well as its impact on subsequent explicit learning. Participants were exposed to foreign language (FL) auditory words on their own, in conjunction with written native language (NL) translations, or with both written NL translations and pictures. Incidental acquisition of FL words was assessed the following day through an explicit learning task where participants learned to recognize translation equivalents, as well as one week later through recall and translation recognition tests. Results showed higher accuracy scores in the explicit learning task for FL words presented with meaning during incidental learning, whether written meaning or both written meaning and picture, than for FL words presented auditorily only. However, participants recalled significantly more FL words after a week delay if they had been presented with a picture during incidental learning. In addition, the time spent looking at the pictures during incidental learning significantly predicted recognition and recall scores one week later. Overall, results demonstrated the impact of exposure to multimodal stimuli on subsequent explicit learning, as well as the important role that pictorial information can play in incidental vocabulary acquisition.

Effects of a Vocabulary Acquisition and Assessment System on Students' Performance in a Blended Learning Class for English Subject

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Jiyou; Chen, Yuhao; Ding, Zhuhui; Ruan, Meixian

2012-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition and assessment are regarded as the key basis for the instruction of English as a second language. However, it is time-consuming, fallible and repetitive for the school teachers and parents to assess the proficiency of the students' vocabulary acquisition. We customized the open source course management system Moodle to build…

The Effect of Interactivity with a Music Video Game on Second Language Vocabulary Recall

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jonathan DeHaan

2010-06-01

Full Text Available Video games are potential sources of second language input; however, the medium’s fundamental characteristic, interactivity, has not been thoroughly examined in terms of its effect on learning outcomes. This experimental study investigated to what degree, if at all, video game interactivity would help or hinder the noticing and recall of second language vocabulary. Eighty randomly-selected Japanese university undergraduates were paired based on similar English language and game proficiencies. One subject played an English-language music video game for 20 minutes while the paired subject watched the game simultaneously on another monitor. Following gameplay, a vocabulary recall test, a cognitive load measure, an experience questionnaire, and a two-week delayed vocabulary recall test were administered. Results were analyzed using paired samples t-tests and various analyses of variance. Both the players and the watchers of the video game recalled vocabulary from the game, but the players recalled significantly less vocabulary than the watchers. This seems to be a result of the extraneous cognitive load induced by the interactivity of the game; the players perceived the game and its language to be significantly more difficult than the watchers did. Players also reported difficulty simultaneously attending to gameplay and vocabulary. Both players and watchers forgot significant amounts of vocabulary over the course of the study. We relate these findings to theories and studies of vocabulary acquisition and video game-based language learning, and then suggest implications for language teaching and learning with interactive multimedia.

Powerful Vocabulary Acquisition through Texts Comparison

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Mohammad Reza Hasannejad

2015-03-01

Full Text Available This study aimed to investigate if dual version reading comprehension had a positive effect on Intermediate EFL students’ general vocabulary acquisition, receptive and productive knowledge of vocabulary and students’ synonymous power of words. Two groups were selected - the experimental group and the control group. The study included: (1 four pretests (2 the dual version reading comprehension, and (3 four posttests. It was found that there was no significant difference between the two groups of students on the pretests. However there was a significant difference between the two groups of the students on the posttests. Overall, the dual version reading comprehension vocabulary-learning made the experimental group learners outperformed the control groups in terms of their performance on four types of vocabulary tests. This indicates that students following dual version reading comprehension were more successful in vocabulary acquisition, and developing their receptive knowledge of vocabulary, transferring their receptive knowledge in to the productive knowledge and enhancing the memorization of the synonymous words.

Self-Assessment of Vocabulary and Relevant Language Skills for Evaluation Purposes

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Violeta Janulevičienė

2011-04-01

Full Text Available Learner self-assessment of linguistic performance has been lately used due to its potential to activate the process of learning. Self-assessment raises learner awareness of language use and leads to developing learner responsibility and autonomy. However, usefulness of self-assessment for evaluation purposes has been scarcely researched. This paper examines some aspects of learners’ self-assessment for evaluation purposes at tertiary level. Research focuses on self-assessment of English for Specific Purposes (ESP vocabulary and some language skills relevant for vocabulary retention. Data on learner self-assessment are compared to actual results in tests. The analysis provided points to importance of self-evaluation in language acquisition and suggests practical implications of self-assessment for evaluation.

A Video-Based CALL Program for Proficient and Less-Proficient L2 Learners' Comprehension Ability, Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

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Lin, Lu-Fang

2010-01-01

This study investigates first whether news video in a computer-assisted language learning (CALL) program can foster second language (L2) comprehension and incidental acquisition of adjectives, nouns, and verbs. Second, this study examines the relationship between the participants' vocabulary acquisition and their video comprehension. The…

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition from Stories: Second and Fourth Graders Learn More from Listening than Reading

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Suggate, Sebastian P.; Lenhard, Wolfgang; Neudecker, Elisabeth; Schneider, Wolfgang

2013-01-01

Both reading and language experiences contribute to vocabulary development, but questions remain as to what effect each has and when. This article investigates the effects that reading, telling and sharing a story have on vocabulary acquisition. Children (N = 37) were told nine stories in a randomized, single-blind and counterbalanced 2 × 3 mixed…

The Effects of Play-Based Intervention on Vocabulary Acquisition by Preschoolers at Risk for Reading and Language Delays

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McLeod, Ragan H.; Hardy, Jessica K.; Kaiser, Ann P.

2017-01-01

Closing the vocabulary gap for young children at risk for reading and language delays due to low socioeconomic status may have far reaching effects, as the relationship between early vocabulary knowledge and later academic achievement has been well-established. Vocabulary instruction for young children at risk for reading and language delays…

Does Morphology Play an Important Role in L2 Chinese Vocabulary Acquisition?

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Zhang, Haomin

2016-01-01

The present study examined the role of morphological awareness in second language (L2) Chinese vocabulary acquisition through an investigation of linguistic universality and specificity underlying morphological awareness. Morphological awareness in this study was conceptualized as a universal and sharable cognitive resource as well as a…

Speeding up Vocabulary Acquisition through Action Research

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Ameerchund (Ashraf Maharaj

2017-05-01

Full Text Available Gaining a wider vocabulary is fundamental to language learning. It follows then that the faster students engage and learn new words, the faster will be their proficiency with the target language. Multi-Dimensional Vocabulary Acquisition (or MDVA means approaching new terms / concepts from a variety of perspectives so that the target word is thoroughly analysed, giving students access to all dimensions of the word. There are many dimensions or elements that will help elucidate and unlock meaning, but for the purposes of this chapter new words will be looked at in terms of their antonyms, synonyms and associated words, rhyming counterparts, idiomatic usage, gender considerations, diminutive implications, proverbial usage and likely confusion with other words. In this study the author employs an Action Research methodology where practical classroom exercises involving students’ writing efforts pre- and post MDVA are closely examined. Using the familiar “spiral of cycles” approach, it becomes clear that “unpacking” the target word means that the meaning of many other words associated with the target word becomes explicit. A workshop with faculty is included as part of the practical application of MDVA.

Frequency Effects in Second Language Acquisition: An Annotated Survey

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Kartal, Galip; Sarigul, Ece

2017-01-01

The aim of this study is to investigate the relationship between frequency and language acquisition from many perspectives including implicit and explicit instruction, frequency effects on morpheme acquisition in L2, the relationship between frequency and multi-word constructions, frequency effects on phonetics, vocabulary, gerund and infinitive…

Unsupervised Language Acquisition

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de Marcken, Carl

1996-11-01

This thesis presents a computational theory of unsupervised language acquisition, precisely defining procedures for learning language from ordinary spoken or written utterances, with no explicit help from a teacher. The theory is based heavily on concepts borrowed from machine learning and statistical estimation. In particular, learning takes place by fitting a stochastic, generative model of language to the evidence. Much of the thesis is devoted to explaining conditions that must hold for this general learning strategy to arrive at linguistically desirable grammars. The thesis introduces a variety of technical innovations, among them a common representation for evidence and grammars, and a learning strategy that separates the ``content'' of linguistic parameters from their representation. Algorithms based on it suffer from few of the search problems that have plagued other computational approaches to language acquisition. The theory has been tested on problems of learning vocabularies and grammars from unsegmented text and continuous speech, and mappings between sound and representations of meaning. It performs extremely well on various objective criteria, acquiring knowledge that causes it to assign almost exactly the same structure to utterances as humans do. This work has application to data compression, language modeling, speech recognition, machine translation, information retrieval, and other tasks that rely on either structural or stochastic descriptions of language.

Enhancing Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading: A Hierarchy of Text-Related Exercise Types.

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Wesche, M.; Paribakht, T. Sima

This paper describes a classification scheme developed to examine the effects of extensive reading on primary and second language vocabulary acquisition and reports on an experiment undertaken to test the model scheme. The classification scheme represents a hypothesized hierarchy of the degree and type of mental processing required by various…

Bilingual Language Acquisition in a Minority Context: Using the Irish-English Communicative Development Inventory to Track Acquisition of an Endangered Language

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O'Toole, Ciara; Hickey, Tina M.

2017-01-01

This study investigated the role of language exposure in vocabulary acquisition in Irish, a threatened minority language in Ireland which is usually acquired with English in a bilingual context. Using a bilingual Irish-English adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories) [Fenson, L., V. A. Marchman, D. J. Thal, P. S.…

The Function of Negotiation in Iranian EFL Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition

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Hassan Soleimani

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Negotiation is believed to play a key role in language learning in general and vocabulary learning in particular. The present study aimed at investigating the effect of types of instructions (negotiation, non-negotiation, or in isolation on learning and recalling of new words by Iranian learners. Using a quasi-experimental research design, 39 EFL students of a secondary school were sampled and assigned into three experimental groups: the input plus negotiated group (IPN, the input without negotiated group (IWN, and the elaborative, un-instructed input group (EUI. The first group had the chance for negotiated interaction; the second one received the input without any negotiation with their instructor and the last group received elaborative input without any interaction with their teachers. The groups were rated on their degree of comprehension and the acquisition of vocabulary items. The results revealed that negotiation had a non-significant effect over non-negotiation tasks. However, the results indicated that negotiation was significantly effective against un-instruction task. Thus, in acquisition and retention of new vocabulary, IPN group was not significantly different than IWN group, but they outperformed those learners who used their own strategy to learn new words (EUI.

Vocabulary Theatre: A Peer-Teaching Approach for Academic Vocabulary Acquisition

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Robb, Elizabeth; Sinatra, Richard; Eschenauer, Robert

2014-01-01

This mixed methods counterbalanced study compared the gain score means of two different approaches to vocabulary acquisition--Vocabulary Theater (VT) and Teacher Directed Instruction (TDI) for 8th grade students from three schools in New York. The purpose of the study was to explore the effects of a peer teaching approach on students' vocabulary…

Factors affecting vocabulary acquisition at age 2 in children born between 23 and 28 weeks' gestation.

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Marston, Louise; Peacock, Janet L; Calvert, Sandra A; Greenough, Anne; Marlow, Neil

2007-08-01

Language development is often slower in preterm children compared with their term peers. We investigated factors associated with vocabulary acquisition at 2 years in a cohort of children born at 28 weeks' gestation or less. For children entered into the United Kingdom Oscillation Study, language development was evaluated by using the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories score, completed by parents as part of a developmental questionnaire. The effect of demographic, neonatal, socioeconomic factors, growth, and disability were investigated using multifactorial random effects modelling. Questionnaires were returned by 288 participants (148 males, 140 females). The mean number of words vocalized was 42 (SD 29). Multifactorial analysis showed only four factors were significantly associated with vocabulary acquisition. These were: (1) level of disability (mean words: no disability, 45; other disability, 38; severe disability, 30 [severe disability is defined as at least one extreme response in one of the following clinical domains: neuromotor, vision, hearing, communication, or other physical disabilities]; 95% confidence interval [CI] for the difference between no and severe disability 7- 23); (2) sex (39 males, 44 females; 95% CI 0.4-11); (3) length of hospital stay (lower quartile, 47; upper quartile, 38; 95% CI -12 to -4); and (4) weight SD score at 12 months (lower quartile, 39; upper quartile, 44; 95% CI 1-9). There was no significant association between gestational age and vocabulary after multifactorial analysis. There was no significant effect of any socioeconomic factor on vocabulary acquisition. We conclude that clinical factors, particularly indicators of severe morbidity, dominate the correlates of vocabulary acquisition at age 2 in children born very preterm.

Effect of Technology Enhanced Language Learning on Vocabulary Acquisition of EFL Learners

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Imtiaz Hassan Taj

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The study was conducted to investigate the impact of a model, created with the help of computer and mobile phone, on the EFL vocabulary learning of the students at a public university on a Preparatory Year Program. The study used a quasi-experimental pretest posttest control group design. The participants were 122 students in their first year at a public university. Half of them (N = 61 were male and half were female (N = 61. Six weeks treatment period involved vocabulary learning activities presented through PCs in the language laboratory and receiving multi-glossed vocabulary cards on the mobile phones through a social networking mobile phone application WhatsApp. Findings suggested that performance of treatment group was significantly better than that of control group on achievement posttest. The impact of treatment was found gender neutral as male and female participants benefitted from it alike.

Student and Teacher Perceptions of a Mobile-Based Biology Vocabulary Study Tool for English Language Learners

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Cruz, Maria B.

English language learners studying biology face a dual challenge of mastering both content and language. Teaching ELLs how to engage in scientific discourse using appropriate language to ask, answer, explain, and make predictions about science requires a foundational knowledge of content-specific vocabulary. This study used qualitative interviews with intermediate-level ELLs at an American high school to learn how a supplemental iPod-based vocabulary review tool influenced their perceptions of learning biology vocabulary outside of classroom hours. Interviews with their biology teacher were also used to complement student testimony from the point of view of an educational professional with ELL teaching experience. Past studies in the area of mobile learning have primarily employed questionnaires to gather feedback from participants. This research study adds greater participant voice to the body of literature that encompasses mobile language learning, second language acquisition, and science education by presenting nuanced opinions from both students and teachers. This dissertation concludes with a discussion on the influence that this study could have on further research in the fields of mobile learning, academic vocabulary, and student learning behaviors.

Contrasting contributions of phonological short-term memory and long-term knowledge to vocabulary learning in a foreign language.

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Masoura, Elvira V; Gathercole, Susan E

2005-01-01

The contributions of phonological short-term memory and existing foreign vocabulary knowledge to the learning of new words in a second language were compared in a sample of 40 Greek children studying English at school. The children's speed of learning new English words in a paired-associate learning task was strongly influenced by their current English vocabulary, but was independent of phonological memory skill, indexed by nonword repetition ability. However, phonological memory performance was closely linked to English vocabulary scores. The findings suggest that in learners with considerable familiarity with a second language, foreign vocabulary acquisition is mediated largely by use of existing knowledge representations.

A cross-language study of decontextualized vocabulary comprehension in toddlerhood and kindergarten readiness.

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Friend, Margaret; Smolak, Erin; Liu, Yushuang; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal

2018-04-05

Recent studies demonstrate that emerging literacy depends on earlier language achievement. Importantly, most extant work focuses on parent-reported production prior to 30 months of age. Of interest is whether and how directly assessed vocabulary comprehension in the 2nd year of life supports vocabulary and kindergarten readiness in the 4th year. We first contrasted orthogonal indices of parent-reported production and directly assessed vocabulary comprehension and found that comprehension was a stronger predictor of child outcomes. We then assessed prediction from vocabulary comprehension controlling for maternal education, preschool attendance, and child sex. In 3 studies early, decontextualized vocabulary comprehension emerged as a significant predictor of 4th year language and kindergarten readiness accounting for unique variance above demographic control variables. Further we found that the effect of early vocabulary on 4th year kindergarten readiness was not mediated by 4th year vocabulary. This pattern of results emerged in English monolingual children (N = 48) and replicated in French monolingual (N = 58) and French-English bilingual children (N = 34). Our findings suggest that early, decontextualized vocabulary may provide a platform for the establishment of a conceptual system that supports both later vocabulary and kindergarten readiness, including the acquisition of a wide range of concepts including print and number. Differences between parent-reported and directly assessed vocabulary and the mechanisms by which decontextualized vocabulary may contribute to conceptual development are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2018 APA, all rights reserved).

In search of the best technique for vocabulary acquisition

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Mohammad Mohseni-Far

2008-05-01

Full Text Available Teade plagiaadi kohta / Report of an Act of Plagiarism (6. mai 2012 / 6 May, 2012ERÜ aastaraamatus 4 (2008 lk 121–138 ilmunud Mohammad Mohseni-Far'i artikli "In Search of the Best Technique for Vocabulary Acquisition" näol on tegemist iseenda plagiaadiga. Sama artikkel on 2008. a ilmunud lisaks ERÜ aastaraamatule veel KAKS KORDA ligilähedases sõnastuses ning ligilähedase pealkirjaga. Kuna autor on tegelnud sõnastuse muutmisega, siis järelikult on tegemist teadliku plagiaadiga. Vt ka Check for Plagiarism On the Web.We are sorry to inform that Mohammad Mohseni-Far, the author of 'In Search of the Best Technique for Vocabulary Acquisition' published in ERÜ aastaraamat / EAAL yearbook, Vol. 4 (2008 pp. 121–138, has published the same article TWICE in another journal just by changing the title and a few wordings. The plagiarism is verified, using the Check for Plagiarism On the Web.A Cognitively-oriented Encapsulation of Strategies Utilized for Lexical Development: In search of a flexible and highly interactive curriculum. – Porta Linguarum 9 (2008, 35–42. Techniques and Strategies Utilized for Vocabulary Acquisition: the necessity to design a multifaceted framework with an instructionally wise equilibrium. – Porta Linguarum 8 (2007, 137–152.ERÜ aastaraamatu toimetus / Editors of the EAAL yearbook***The present study is intended to critically examine vocabulary learning/acquisition techniques within second/foreign language context. Accordingly, the purpose of this survey is to concentrate particularly on the variables connected with lexical knowledge and establish a fairly all-inclusive framework which comprises and expounds on the most significant strategies and relevant factors within the vocabulary acquisition context. At the outset, the study introduces four salient variables; learner, task and strategy serve as a general structure of inquiry (Flavell’s cognitive model, 1992. Besides, the variable of context

Exploring vocabulary language in action

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Gardner, Dee

2013-01-01

Routledge Introductions to Applied Linguistics is a series of introductory level textbooks covering the core topics in Applied Linguistics, primarily designed for those beginning postgraduate studies, or taking an introductory MA course as well as advanced undergraduates. Titles in the series are also ideal for language professionals returning to academic study. The books take an innovative 'practice to theory' approach, with a 'back-to-front' structure. This leads the reader from real-world problems and issues, through a discussion of intervention and how to engage with these concerns, before finally relating these practical issues to theoretical foundations. Additional features include tasks with commentaries, a glossary of key terms, and an annotated further reading section. Vocabulary is the foundation of language and language learning and as such, knowledge of how to facilitate learners’ vocabulary growth is an indispensable teaching skill and curricular component. Exploring Vocabulary is designed t...

Memorization versus Semantic Mapping in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

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Khoii, Roya; Sharififar, Samira

2013-01-01

This study investigated the effects of two cognitive strategies, rote memorization and semantic mapping, on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Thirty-eight intermediate female EFL learners divided into two experimental groups participated in this study. Each experimental group used one of the strategies for vocabulary acquisition. After the four-month…

L2 Vocabulary Acquisition in Children: Effects of Learning Method and Cognate Status

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Tonzar, Claudio; Lotto, Lorella; Job, Remo

2009-01-01

In this study we investigated the effects of two learning methods (picture- or word-mediated learning) and of word status (cognates vs. noncognates) on the vocabulary acquisition of two foreign languages: English and German. We examined children from fourth and eighth grades in a school setting. After a learning phase during which L2 words were…

Vocabulary Acquisition through Direct and Indirect Learning Strategies

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Naeimi, Maki; Foo, Thomas Chow Voon

2015-01-01

Vocabulary learning has long been considered as one of the essential components for developing language learning. However, language learners are required to not just concern about memorizing definitions but also integrating vocabulary meaning into their present knowledge. Many strategies such as direct or indirect ones may be integrated to enhance…

The Impact of Vocabulary Enhancement Activities on Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention among Male and Female EFL Learners in Iran

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Sharafi-Nejad, Maryam; Raftari, Shohreh; Bijami, Maryam; Khavari, Zahra; Ismail, Shaik Abdul Malik Mohamed; Eng, Lin Siew

2014-01-01

In general, incidental vocabulary acquisition is represented as the "picking up" of new vocabularies when students are engaged in a variety of reading, listening, speaking, or writing activities. Research has shown when learners read extensively incidental vocabulary acquisition happens. Many EFL students cannot be involved in reading…

Semantic facilitation in bilingual first language acquisition.

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Bilson, Samuel; Yoshida, Hanako; Tran, Crystal D; Woods, Elizabeth A; Hills, Thomas T

2015-07-01

Bilingual first language learners face unique challenges that may influence the rate and order of early word learning relative to monolinguals. A comparison of the productive vocabularies of 435 children between the ages of 6 months and 7 years-181 of which were bilingual English learners-found that monolinguals learned both English words and all-language concepts faster than bilinguals. However, bilinguals showed an enhancement of an effect previously found in monolinguals-the preference for learning words with more associative cues. Though both monolinguals and bilinguals were best fit by a similar model of word learning, semantic network structure and growth indicated that the two groups were learning English words in a different order. Further, in comparison with a model of two-monolinguals-in-one-mind, bilinguals overproduced translational equivalents. Our results support an emergent account of bilingual first language acquisition, where learning a word in one language facilitates its acquisition in a second language. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Effects of Help Options in a Multimedia Listening Environment on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

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Mohsen, Mohammed Ali

2016-01-01

Several types of help options have been incorporated into reading and listening comprehension activities to aid second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition. Textbook authors, teachers, and sometimes even students may pick and choose which help options they wish to use. In this paper, I investigate the effects of two help options in a multimedia…

EST Vocabulary Instruction

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Célia D.S. Bell

2012-05-01

Full Text Available This study aims at contributing to the investigation on the instruction of EST (English for Science and Technology vocabulary, in terms of receptive use of the language. It evaluates the effectiveness of two teaching approaches to the acquisition of vocabulary. The first approach consisted of teaching vocabulary through the use of dictionaries, where the words were merely translated into the learners’ L1 or defined in the target language thus promoting superficial level of word processing. The second approach employed activities promoting deep level of word processing. Data were analysed quantitatively. Results indicated that the two approaches seem to have some equipotentiality, as far as EST vocabulary is concerned.

A study of students' beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and acquisition

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Francis, Michelle Andersen

Using the vocabulary of a discipline is important for students, especially in the sciences (Gee, 2003). Therefore, the extant literature has emphasized the need for more research on vocabulary knowledge and acquisition (Simpson, et al., 2004). This study investigated whether or not community college students' beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and acquisition changed as a result of a one-semester enrollment in a vocabulary-rich biology course. The rationale for the study, a review of the existing research underlying the study, the methodology of the study, and the results and conclusions of the study will be discussed.

Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?

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Duff, Fiona J; Reen, Gurpreet; Plunkett, Kim; Nation, Kate

2015-01-01

Background Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. Methods Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. Results Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. Conclusions Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level – a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of ‘late talkers’ resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to

Variables Predicting Foreign Language Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition in a Linear Hypermedia Environment

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Akbulut, Yavuz

2007-01-01

Factors predicting vocabulary learning and reading comprehension of advanced language learners of English in a linear multimedia text were investigated in the current study. Predictor variables of interest were multimedia type, reading proficiency, learning styles, topic interest and background knowledge about the topic. The outcome variables of…

The Effects of Data-Driven Learning upon Vocabulary Acquisition for Secondary International School Students in Vietnam

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Karras, Jacob Nolen

2016-01-01

Within the field of computer assisted language learning (CALL), scant literature exists regarding the effectiveness and practicality for secondary students to utilize data-driven learning (DDL) for vocabulary acquisition. In this study, there were 100 participants, who had a mean age of thirteen years, and were attending an international school in…

Dynamic neural network reorganization associated with second language vocabulary acquisition: a multimodal imaging study.

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Hosoda, Chihiro; Tanaka, Kanji; Nariai, Tadashi; Honda, Manabu; Hanakawa, Takashi

2013-08-21

It remains unsettled whether human language relies exclusively on innately privileged brain structure in the left hemisphere or is more flexibly shaped through experiences, which induce neuroplastic changes in potentially relevant neural circuits. Here we show that learning of second language (L2) vocabulary and its cessation can induce bidirectional changes in the mirror-reverse of the traditional language areas. A cross-sectional study identified that gray matter volume in the inferior frontal gyrus pars opercularis (IFGop) and connectivity of the IFGop with the caudate nucleus and the superior temporal gyrus/supramarginal (STG/SMG), predominantly in the right hemisphere, were positively correlated with L2 vocabulary competence. We then implemented a cohort study involving 16 weeks of L2 training in university students. Brain structure before training did not predict the later gain in L2 ability. However, training intervention did increase IFGop volume and reorganization of white matter including the IFGop-caudate and IFGop-STG/SMG pathways in the right hemisphere. These "positive" plastic changes were correlated with the gain in L2 ability in the trained group but were not observed in the control group. We propose that the right hemispheric network can be reorganized into language-related areas through use-dependent plasticity in young adults, reflecting a repertoire of flexible reorganization of the neural substrates responding to linguistic experiences.

The Relationship between Learner Autonomy and Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Iranian EFL Learners with Different Language Proficiency Level

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Ebrahim Azimi Mohammad Abadi

2013-05-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary learning is incredibly noteworthy to English language acquisition. It is unfeasible for a learner to communicate without the required vocabulary. In high education levels, learners are habitually forced to become autonomous and make conscious effort to learn vocabulary outside of the classroom. Consequently, the autonomy of the learners plays an important role in developing and enhancing their vocabulary. Learner autonomy is a huge assistance for learners in vocabulary learning since it provides the learners with numerous diverse privileges such as independency from teacher. The researcher investigated whether there is any statistically significant relationship between learner autonomy and vocabulary learning strategies use in Iranian EFL learners with different language proficiency levels. To meet the above purpose, a total number of 190 male and female EFL learners participated in this study. The methodology underlying this study was quantitative (thorough the administration of two questionnaires and two language proficiency test – TOEFL for advanced group, and Nelson for intermediate level. The quantitative data was analyzed using a set of correlational analysis revealing a significant positive correlation between learner autonomy and vocabulary learning strategies use in high proficient group, and a significant positive relationship between these two constructs in low proficient group, however not as strong as in the advanced group.

Age of acquisition effects in vocabulary learning.

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Palmer, Shekeila D; Havelka, Jelena

2010-11-01

Two experiments examined whether the age of acquisition (AoA) of a concept influences the speed at which native English speakers are able to name pictures using a newly acquired second language (L2) vocabulary. In Experiment 1, participants were taught L2 words associated with pictures. In Experiment 2 a second group of participants were taught the same words associated with L1 translations. Following training both groups performed a picture naming task in which they were asked to name pictures using the newly acquired words. Significant AoA effects were observed only in Experiment 1, in that participants were faster at naming pictures representing early acquired relative to late acquired concepts. The results suggest that the AoA of a concept can exert influence over processing which is independent of the AoA of the word form. The results also indicate that different training methods may lead to qualitative differences in the nature of the links formed between words and concepts during the earliest stages of second language learning. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Use of Hypermedia in Implicit Vocabulary Learning

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Patrícia Nora de Souza

2011-07-01

Full Text Available The present work is aimed at investigating the role of hypermedia in implicit vocabulary acquisition in foreign language. On theoretical grounds, the work presents a reflection which contextualizes the discussion on implicit approaches to vocabulary teaching. Besides, a review and a discussion of the literature is carried out, with regard to the advantages of hypermedia in English Language Teaching. Following that, the selection of hypermedia material for implicit vocabulary teaching is presented. This material was used in the data collecting which comprised 75 students. The material was evaluated by the students through a questionnaire. The results show that the use of hypermedia can significantly contribute to implicit vocabulary acquisition.

Do infant vocabulary skills predict school-age language and literacy outcomes?

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Duff, Fiona J; Reen, Gurpreet; Plunkett, Kim; Nation, Kate

2015-08-01

Strong associations between infant vocabulary and school-age language and literacy skills would have important practical and theoretical implications: Preschool assessment of vocabulary skills could be used to identify children at risk of reading and language difficulties, and vocabulary could be viewed as a cognitive foundation for reading. However, evidence to date suggests predictive ability from infant vocabulary to later language and literacy is low. This study provides an investigation into, and interpretation of, the magnitude of such infant to school-age relationships. Three hundred British infants whose vocabularies were assessed by parent report in the 2nd year of life (between 16 and 24 months) were followed up on average 5 years later (ages ranged from 4 to 9 years), when their vocabulary, phonological and reading skills were measured. Structural equation modelling of age-regressed scores was used to assess the strength of longitudinal relationships. Infant vocabulary (a latent factor of receptive and expressive vocabulary) was a statistically significant predictor of later vocabulary, phonological awareness, reading accuracy and reading comprehension (accounting for between 4% and 18% of variance). Family risk for language or literacy difficulties explained additional variance in reading (approximately 10%) but not language outcomes. Significant longitudinal relationships between preliteracy vocabulary knowledge and subsequent reading support the theory that vocabulary is a cognitive foundation of both reading accuracy and reading comprehension. Importantly however, the stability of vocabulary skills from infancy to later childhood is too low to be sufficiently predictive of language outcomes at an individual level - a finding that fits well with the observation that the majority of 'late talkers' resolve their early language difficulties. For reading outcomes, prediction of future difficulties is likely to be improved when considering family

The effect of proficiency level on the rate of receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition

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Şener, Murat

2010-01-01

Ankara : The Department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Bilkent University, 2010. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2010. Includes bibliographical references leaves 99-104. This study investigated the effect of proficiency level on the rate of receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition, in conjunction with an examination of materials and instruction. The study was conducted with the participation of 68 beginner and elementary level students, and their ...

How do verbal short-term memory and working memory relate to the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar? A comparison between first and second language learners.

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Verhagen, Josje; Leseman, Paul

2016-01-01

Previous studies show that verbal short-term memory (VSTM) is related to vocabulary learning, whereas verbal working memory (VWM) is related to grammar learning in children learning a second language (L2) in the classroom. In this study, we investigated whether the same relationships apply to children learning an L2 in a naturalistic setting and to monolingual children. We also investigated whether relationships with verbal memory differ depending on the type of grammar skill investigated (i.e., morphology vs. syntax). Participants were 63 Turkish children who learned Dutch as an L2 and 45 Dutch monolingual children (mean age = 5 years). Children completed a series of VSTM and VWM tasks, a Dutch vocabulary task, and a Dutch grammar task. A confirmatory factor analysis showed that VSTM and VWM represented two separate latent factors in both groups. Structural equation modeling showed that VSTM, treated as a latent factor, significantly predicted vocabulary and grammar. VWM, treated as a latent factor, predicted only grammar. Both memory factors were significantly related to the acquisition of morphology and syntax. There were no differences between the two groups. These results show that (a) VSTM and VWM are differentially associated with language learning and (b) the same memory mechanisms are employed for learning vocabulary and grammar in L1 children and in L2 children who learn their L2 naturalistically. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Early Home Language Use and Later Vocabulary Development

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Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Lesaux, Nonie K.

2011-01-01

This longitudinal study examined the association between early patterns of home language use (age 4.5 years) and vocabulary growth (ages 4.5 to 12 years) in English and Spanish for 180 Spanish-speaking language minority learners followed from ages 4.5 to 12 years. Standardized measures of vocabulary were administered to children from ages 4.5 to…

Expressive vocabulary and auditory processing in children with deviant speech acquisition.

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Quintas, Victor Gandra; Mezzomo, Carolina Lisbôa; Keske-Soares, Márcia; Dias, Roberta Freitas

2010-01-01

expressive vocabulary and auditory processing in children with phonological disorder. to compare the performance of children with phonological disorder in a vocabulary test with the parameters indicated by the same test and to verify a possible relationship between this performance and auditory processing deficits. participants were 12 children diagnosed with phonological disorders, with ages ranging from 5 to 7 years, of both genders. Vocabulary was assessed using the ABFW language test and the simplified auditory processing evaluation (sorting), Alternate Dichotic Dissyllable - Staggered Spondaic Word (SSW), Pitch Pattern Sequence (PPS) and the Binaural Fusion Test (BF). considering performance in the vocabulary test, all children obtained results with no significant statistical. As for the auditory processing assessment, all children presented better results than expected; the only exception was on the sorting process testing, where the mean accuracy score was of 8.25. Regarding the performance in the other auditory processing tests, the mean accuracy averages were 6.50 in the SSW, 10.74 in the PPS and 7.10 in the BF. When correlating the performance obtained in both assessments, considering p>0.05, the results indicated that, despite the normality, the lower the value obtained in the auditory processing assessment, the lower the accuracy presented in the vocabulary test. A trend was observed for the semantic fields of "means of transportation and professions". Considering the classification categories of the vocabulary test, the SP (substitution processes) were the categories that presented the higher significant increase in all semantic fields. there is a correlation between the auditory processing and the lexicon, where vocabulary can be influenced in children with deviant speech acquisition.

Elementary Students' Acquisition of Academic Vocabulary Through Engineering Design

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Kugelmass, Rachel

This study examines how STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) inquiry-based learning through a hands-on engineering design can be beneficial in helping students acquire academic vocabulary. This research took place in a second grade dual- language classroom in a public, suburban elementary school. English language learners, students who speak Spanish at home, and native English speakers were evaluated in this study. Each day, students were presented with a general academic vocabulary focus word during an engineering design challenge. Vocabulary pre-tests and post-tests as well as observation field notes were used to evaluate the student's growth in reading and defining the focus academic vocabulary words. A quiz and KSB (knowledge and skill builder) packet were used to evaluate students' knowledge of science and math content and engineering design. The results of this study indicate that engineering design is an effective means for teaching academic vocabulary to students with varying levels of English proficiency.

A Mixed-Methods Approach to Investigating First- and Second-Language Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through the Reading of Fiction

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Reynolds, Barry Lee

2015-01-01

Adult English-L1 (n = 20) and English-L2 (n = 32) experimental groups were given a novel containing nonce words to read within two weeks to investigate whether the reading of fiction can induce a state of incidental vocabulary acquisition. After reading, an unexpected meaning recall translation assessment measuring acquisition of 49 target nonce…

Japanese Vocabulary Acquisition by Learners in Three Contexts

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Dewey, Dan P.

2008-01-01

This study is an investigation of the development of vocabulary knowledge during study abroad (SA), intensive domestic immersion (IM) and academic-year formal classroom (AY) learning. Its focus was the growth of vocabulary knowledge in Japanese--a language where little SA research has been conducted to date. Unlike most studies addressing…

Language understanding and vocabulary of early cochlear implanted children

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Percy-Smith, L; Busch, GW; Sandahl, M

2013-01-01

The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level.......The aim of the study was to identify factors associated with the level of language understanding, the level of receptive and active vocabulary, and to estimate effect-related odds ratios for cochlear implanted children's language level....

The Influence of the Intermediary System of Cognition on Vocabulary Acquisition for Chinese English-Majors

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Luo, Yanyan

2009-01-01

In the article, the author tries to find out the main factors that affect the subject's vocabulary acquisition by an investigation. It is concluded that vocabulary acquisition models and strategies are something external, what really works upon vocabulary acquisition is the intermediary system of cognition including the knowledge structure and…

The Use of Hypermedia in Implicit Vocabulary Learning

OpenAIRE

Patrícia Nora de Souza

2011-01-01

The present work is aimed at investigating the role of hypermedia in implicit vocabulary acquisition in foreign language. On theoretical grounds, the work presents a reflection which contextualizes the discussion on implicit approaches to vocabulary teaching. Besides, a review and a discussion of the literature is carried out, with regard to the advantages of hypermedia in English Language Teaching. Following that, the selection of hypermedia material for implicit vocabulary teaching is prese...

Impacts of Vocabulary Acquisition Techniques Instruction on Students' Learning

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Orawiwatnakul, Wiwat

2011-01-01

The objectives of this study were to determine how the selected vocabulary acquisition techniques affected the vocabulary ability of 35 students who took EN 111 and investigate their attitudes towards the techniques instruction. The research study was one-group pretest and post-test design. The instruments employed were in-class exercises…

Adaptation of a Vocabulary Test from British Sign Language to American Sign Language

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Mann, Wolfgang; Roy, Penny; Morgan, Gary

2016-01-01

This study describes the adaptation process of a vocabulary knowledge test for British Sign Language (BSL) into American Sign Language (ASL) and presents results from the first round of pilot testing with 20 deaf native ASL signers. The web-based test assesses the strength of deaf children's vocabulary knowledge by means of different mappings of…

Intelligent Agent for Acquisition of the Mother Tongue Vocabulary

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Grigor Moldovan

2010-01-01

Full Text Available This paper describes the following: firstly, the basic ideas of a system that simulate how we consider that a child acquires the mother tongue vocabulary and makes the correspondences between objects, words and senses; secondly: the mechanism for a system that can learn the mother tongue vocabulary using observations and, thirdly, how to make an intelligent agent that can behave like a little child, in the process of mother tongue acquisition.

Expressive Vocabulary Acquisition in Children with Intellectual Disability: Speech or Manual Signs?

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Vandereet, Joke; Maes, Bea; Lembrechts, Dirk; Zink, Inge

2011-01-01

Background: The aim of this study was to examine the degree to which children with intellectual disability (ID) depend on manual signs during their expressive vocabulary acquisition, in relation to child and social-environmental characteristics. Method: Expressive vocabulary acquisition in speech and manual signs was monitored over a 2-year period…

The Effects of Word Exposure Frequency and Elaboration of Word Processing on Incidental L2 Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading

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Eckerth, Johannes; Tavakoli, Parveneh

2012-01-01

Research on incidental second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition through reading has claimed that repeated encounters with unfamiliar words and the relative elaboration of processing these words facilitate word learning. However, so far both variables have been investigated in isolation. To help close this research gap, the current study…

The Use of Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Teaching Turkish as a Second Language

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Baskin, Sami; Iscan, Adem; Karagoz, Beytullah; Birol, Gülnur

2017-01-01

Vocabulary learning is the basis of the language learning process in teaching Turkish as a second language. Vocabulary learning strategies need to be used in order for vocabulary learning to take place effectively. The use of vocabulary learning strategies facilitates vocabulary learning and increases student achievement. Each student uses a…

Early vocabulary development in deaf native signers: a British Sign Language adaptation of the communicative development inventories.

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Woolfe, Tyron; Herman, Rosalind; Roy, Penny; Woll, Bencie

2010-03-01

There is a dearth of assessments of sign language development in young deaf children. This study gathered age-related scores from a sample of deaf native signing children using an adapted version of the MacArthur-Bates CDI (Fenson et al., 1994). Parental reports on children's receptive and expressive signing were collected longitudinally on 29 deaf native British Sign Language (BSL) users, aged 8-36 months, yielding 146 datasets. A smooth upward growth curve was obtained for early vocabulary development and percentile scores were derived. In the main, receptive scores were in advance of expressive scores. No gender bias was observed. Correlational analysis identified factors associated with vocabulary development, including parental education and mothers' training in BSL. Individual children's profiles showed a range of development and some evidence of a growth spurt. Clinical and research issues relating to the measure are discussed. The study has developed a valid, reliable measure of vocabulary development in BSL. Further research is needed to investigate the relationship between vocabulary acquisition in native and non-native signers.

Development and transfer of vocabulary knowledge in Spanish-speaking language minority preschool children.

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Goodrich, J Marc; Lonigan, Christopher J; Kleuver, Cherie G; Farver, Joann M

2016-09-01

In this study we evaluated the predictive validity of conceptual scoring. Two independent samples of Spanish-speaking language minority preschoolers (Sample 1: N = 96, mean age = 54·51 months, 54·3% male; Sample 2: N = 116, mean age = 60·70 months, 56·0% male) completed measures of receptive, expressive, and definitional vocabulary in their first (L1) and second (L2) languages at two time points approximately 9-12 months apart. We examined whether unique L1 and L2 vocabulary at time 1 predicted later L2 and L1 vocabulary, respectively. Results indicated that unique L1 vocabulary did not predict later L2 vocabulary after controlling for initial L2 vocabulary. An identical pattern of results emerged for L1 vocabulary outcomes. We also examined whether children acquired translational equivalents for words known in one language but not the other. Results indicated that children acquired translational equivalents, providing partial support for the transfer of vocabulary knowledge across languages.

Extensive Reading of Children’s Literature in First, Second, and Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

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Dominic Cheetham

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Extensive reading of children’s literature can be seen as one of the most powerful means to acquiring a large working vocabulary for both first language learners and second language learners. However, for foreign language learners, children’s literature has a less positive image. For foreign language learners the most commonly recommended reading is of graded readers. Corpus research has shown that work for children has a wide range of rare words, comparable to adult literature, and this leads to the argument that children’s literature puts too great a comprehension and memory strain on foreign language learners, and is an inefficient learning tool compared to graded readers. This paper reviews existing research and examines the arguments for children’s literature in language learning in terms of some features of naturalistic child reading behaviour, and the stylistic choices of writers for children. Replication of child reading behaviours in conjunction with the aid to comprehension and memory inherent in stylistic choices, combined with motivational and practical considerations, are argued to make children’s literature an equal, if not superior choice as extended reading material for foreign language learners.

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition as Student Performance Determinant in Undergraduate Research Modules

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West, Joyce

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge plays an important role in determining a person's language proficiency level. This study investigates the role vocabulary plays in determining students' performance within research modules at private higher education institutions (HEIs). The discipline-specific vocabulary in this study includes target words, sampled from an…

Socioeconomic status, parental education, vocabulary and language skills of children who stutter.

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Richels, Corrin G; Johnson, Kia N; Walden, Tedra A; Conture, Edward G

2013-01-01

The purpose of this project was to investigate the possible relation between standardized measures of vocabulary/language, mother and father education, and a composite measure of socioeconomic status (SES) for children who do not stutter (CWNS) and children who stutter (CWS). Participants were 138 CWNS and 159 CWS between the ages of 2;6 and 6;3 and their families. The Hollingshead Four Factor Index of Social Position (i.e., Family SES) was used to calculate SES based on a composite score consisting of weighted values for paternal and maternal education and occupation. Statistical regression analyses were conducted to investigate the relation between parental education and language and vocabulary scores for both the CWNS and CWS. Correlations were calculated between parent education, Family SES, and stuttering severity (e.g., SSI-3 score, % words stuttered). Results indicated that maternal education contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWNS and for participants from both groups whose Family SES was in the lowest quartile of the distribution. However, paternal education generally contributed the greatest amount of variance in vocabulary and language scores for the CWS. Higher levels of maternal education were associated with more severe stuttering in the CWS. Results are generally consistent with existing literature on normal language development that indicates maternal education is a robust predictor of the vocabulary and language skills of preschool children. Thus, both father and mothers' education may impact the association between vocabulary/language skills and childhood stuttering, leading investigators who empirically study this association to possibly re-assess their participant selection (e.g., a priori control of parental education) and/or data analyses (e.g., post hoc covariation of parental education). The reader will be able to: (a) describe the influence of socioeconomic status on the development of

Using VocabularySpellingCity with Adult ESOL Students in Community College

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Krause, Tim

2018-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition is central to language learning, and many instructors believe that technology can facilitate this core activity. While numerous websites and apps offer language-learning activities and games, not all provide evidence that their content and techniques are effective. VocabularySpellingCity (VSC), however, commissioned a study…

The Effects of Hypertext Glosses on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition: A Meta-Analysis

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Yun, Jeehwan

2011-01-01

This study examines (1) the effects of hypertext gloss use on L2 vocabulary acquisition in computerized reading contexts; (2) which specific combination of either text-only (single) or text + visual (multiple) hypertext glosses is more effective on L2 vocabulary acquisition; and (3) potential moderators to systematically account for between study…

Vocabulary acquisition in deaf and hard-of-hearing children: Research and interventions

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Hermans, D.; Wauters, L.N.; Willemsen, M.; Knoors, H.E.T.; Marschark, M.; Spencer, P.E.

2016-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is fundamental to communication, language learning, and acquiring knowledge of the world. Deaf and hard-of-hearing (DHH) children face considerable challenges in acquiring age-appropriate vocabulary knowledge. The enhancement of children's vocabulary knowledge is therefore one

LEARNING GERMAN AS A THIRD LANGUAGE THROUGHS ESL. STRATEGIES TO DEVELOP VOCABULARY

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Carmen-Daniela CARAIMAN

2016-06-01

Full Text Available This article aims at revealing advantages of studying German (acquired as an L3 by a speaker who has a high level of knowledge in English (acquired as an L2. Those interested in learning German as a third language through ESL may benefit from a set of facilities that could fasten the process of learning vocabulary and enhance the disambiguation process in case of synonymy, false friends and pseudo-Anglicism. The approach we have adopted in the present paper is a practical one. We have appreciated that the process of assimilating German as an L3 through ESL could offer another benefit to learners, i.e. the possibility of simultaneously activating and practicing both foreign languages that they either master or intend to master. In the present paper, we are not going to refer to the influence of the socio-cultural environment1 on the learners of German as an L3 through English as a Secondary Language, as we are not going to make reference to psycholinguistic elements2 that are characteristic of third language acquisition. After explaining terminology and giving an overview of the theoretical background that we related to when writing the present article, we are going to insist on enumerating some basic strategies that could be successfully used to build and develop vocabulary in German by using English as a secondly acquired foreign language.

Vocabulary Acquisition in L2: Does CALL Really Help?

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Averianova, Irina

2015-01-01

Language competence in various communicative activities in L2 largely depends on the learners' size of vocabulary. The target vocabulary of adult L2 learners should be between 2,000 high frequency words (a critical threshold) and 10,000 word families (for comprehension of university texts). For a TOEIC test, the threshold is estimated to be…

Vocabulary Intervention for Adolescents with Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

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Lowe, Hilary; Henry, Lucy; Müller, Lisa-Maria; Joffe, Victoria L.

2018-01-01

Background: Language disorder and associated vocabulary difficulties can persist into adolescence, and can impact on long-term life outcomes. Previous reviews have shown that a variety of intervention techniques can successfully enhance students' vocabulary skills; however, none has investigated vocabulary intervention specifically for adolescents…

[Lexical development. The construction of different vocabulary tests used in clinical practice].

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Ptok, M; Kühn, D; Miller, S

2014-04-01

During first language acquisition (L1), children need to gather knowledge about the speech sounds and grammar of their mother tongue. Furthermore, communication skills require an adequate vocabulary. Individual profiles of vocabulary acquisition can vary considerably. However, actively using around 50 words by the age of 24 months is considered a milestone in first language acquisition. This is usually followed by the so-called vocabulary spurt, a rapid increase in lexical knowledge. This article provides an overview of the theories of lexical development and discusses how the acquisition of vocabulary may be explained. A selective literature search was conducted in PubMed and Scopus. Current textbooks were also considered. In order to acquire new words, a child has to identify what the new string of speech sounds refers to. The child has to construct a valid concept of the word and subsequently store both word and concept into long-term memory. Several theories have been put forward to explain lexicon organization, the acquisition of concepts and the mechanisms underlying the so-called fast mapping phenomenon in particular. All of these attempt to explain the phenomenon of lexicon acquisition in terms of a model scheme. In the context of the fast mapping mechanism, constraints and assumptions, cognitive, intentionalist and emergence-based theories are discussed. Knowledge of the different theories of vocabulary acquisition is mandatory to understand the construction of the tests used to assess vocabulary skills in clinical practice and to apply these appropriately.

Preschoolers' vocabulary acquisition in Chile: the roles of socioeconomic status and quality of home environment.

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Lohndorf, Regina T; Vermeer, Harriet J; Cárcamo, Rodrigo A; Mesman, Judi

2018-05-01

Preschoolers' vocabulary acquisition sets the stage for later reading ability and school achievement. This study examined the role of socioeconomic status (SES) and the quality of the home environment of seventy-seven Chilean majority and Mapuche minority families from low and lower-middle-class backgrounds in explaining individual differences in vocabulary acquisition of their three-and-a-half-year-old children. Additionally, we investigated whether the relation between SES and receptive and expressive vocabulary was mediated by the quality of the home environment as the Family Investment Model suggests. The quality of the home environment significantly predicted receptive and expressive vocabulary above and beyond ethnicity, SES, parental caregiver status, and quantity of daycare. Furthermore, the quality of the home environment mediated the relation between SES and expressive and receptive vocabulary acquisition.

Predicting expressive vocabulary acquisition in children with intellectual disabilities: a 2-year longitudinal study.

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Vandereet, Joke; Maes, Bea; Lembrechts, Dirk; Zink, Inge

2010-12-01

This study's objectives were to describe expressive vocabulary acquisition in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and to examine specific pre- and early linguistic behaviors used to request and comment, chronological age, cognitive skills, and vocabulary comprehension as predictors of expressive vocabulary. This study included 36 children with ID, age 3;00 (years;months) to 6;05, with an average initial expressive vocabulary of 67 words. Expressive vocabulary acquisition was longitudinally followed over a 2-year period based on 4-monthly administrations of the Dutch version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory/Words and Gestures (I. Zink & M. Lejaegere, 2002). Specific pre- and early linguistic behaviors used to request and comment as well as cognitive skills and vocabulary comprehension were measured at baseline. Individual growth modeling indicated that vocabulary comprehension was the only unique predictor of initial expressive vocabulary. Subsequent vocabulary growth was uniquely predicted by proportion of bimodal gesture + vocalization comments, chronological age, and cognitive skills. The results of this study underscore the great heterogeneity in expressive vocabulary skills in children with ID. The importance of prelinguistic communication, chronological age, cognitive skills, and vocabulary comprehension for explaining differences in expressive vocabulary skills is discussed.

Vocabulary used by ethno-linguistically diverse South African toddlers: a parent report using the language development survey.

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Gonasillan, A; Bornman, J; Harty, M

2013-12-01

The primary aim of this study was to ascertain the relevance of the vocabulary of the Language Development Survey (LDS) for typically developing South African toddlers who attend ethno-linguistically diverse early childhood development centres. The need for exploration of the expressive vocabulary of this population stems from the diverse linguistic contexts to which toddlers are exposed on a day-to-day basis in South Africa. Many parents prefer English as the language of learning and teaching for their child. As a result, toddlers interact with ethno-linguistically diverse peers from a young age, usually within their early childhood development centres. An adapted version of the LDS was presented to 40 middle-class parents in Mpumalanga. Vocabulary commonly used by toddlers was determined and a comparison of parent responses made between the present study and the original American-based survey. Results revealed that nouns were used most often by toddlers, in keeping with research on vocabulary acquisition. Significant correlations between the two groups were evident in 12 of the 14 categories. Parents reported that nouns, verbs, adjectives and words from other word classes were used similarly by toddlers, despite differences in their linguistic exposure. These findings suggest that the LDS is a valuable clinical screening tool for speech-language therapists who deliver services to toddlers within the South African context.

Examining Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition by Person-and Item-Level Factors in Secondary Students

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Cooper, Jennifer LeeAnn

2016-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is central to the process of reading comprehension (Cromely & Azevedo, 2007; Stahl & Nagy, 2005; Stanovich, 1986). The majority of our vocabulary knowledge is postulated to come from the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) while reading (Nagy & Anderson, 1984). Prior studies have estimated an average…

Personalization of Reading Passages Improves Vocabulary Acquisition

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Heilman, Michael; Collins-Thompson, Kevyn; Callan, Jamie; Eskenazi, Maxine; Juffs, Alan; Wilson, Lois

2010-01-01

The REAP tutoring system provides individualized and adaptive English as a Second Language vocabulary practice. REAP can automatically personalize instruction by providing practice readings about topics that match interests as well as domain-based, cognitive objectives. While most previous research on motivation in intelligent tutoring…

A Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging Study of Foreign-Language Vocabulary Learning Enhanced by Phonological Rehearsal: The Role of the Right Cerebellum and Left Fusiform Gyrus

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Makita, Kai; Yamazaki, Mika; Tanabe, Hiroki C.; Koike, Takahiko; Kochiyama, Takanori; Yokokawa, Hirokazu; Yoshida, Haruyo; Sadato, Norihiro

2013-01-01

Psychological research suggests that foreign-language vocabulary acquisition recruits the phonological loop for verbal working memory. To depict the neural underpinnings and shed light on the process of foreign language learning, we conducted functional magnetic resonance imaging of Japanese participants without previous exposure to the Uzbek…

Perceptual Learning Style Matching and L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

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Tight, Daniel G.

2010-01-01

This study explored learning and retention of concrete nouns in second language Spanish by first language English undergraduates (N = 128). Each completed a learning style (visual, auditory, tactile/kinesthetic, mixed) assessment, took a vocabulary pretest, and then studied 12 words each through three conditions (matching, mismatching, mixed…

Using Hypnosis to Enhance Learning Second Language Vocabulary.

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Çetin, Yakup; Çimen, O Arda; Yetkiner, Zeynep Ebrar

2016-04-01

In this article, we measure the effects of hypnosis and suggestions for learning second language vocabulary. Participants (N = 70) were randomly assigned to a hypnosis or a control group. They were pre-tested, and then presented 21 Spanish words, post-tested immediately and 1 week later. The data were analyzed using repeated measures analysis of variance with group (experimental versus control) as the between-subjects factor, and time as the within-subjects factor. The experimental group performed significantly better in both tests. Our results indicate that hypnosis is beneficial for second language vocabulary learning and retrieval.

Nouns and verbs in the vocabulary acquisition of Italian children.

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D'Odorico, Laura; Fasolo, Mirco

2007-11-01

The vocabulary development of 24 Italian children aged between 1;4 and 1;6 at the beginning of the study was longitudinally monitored on a monthly basis using the Italian version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory drawn up by their mothers. This study analyzes data from children for whom two sampling stages were available; the first corresponding to a vocabulary size as close as possible to 200 words (mean 217, range 167-281), the second to a vocabulary size ranging from 400 to 650 words (mean 518, range 416-648). The children's vocabulary composition was analyzed by calculating, for each sampling stage, the percentage of common nouns, verbs and closed-class words. The increase in percentage points of the various lexical items between the first and second sampling stages was also analyzed. Data confirmed the predominance of nouns over verbs and closed-class words at both sampling stages, while verbs and closed-class words showed a higher percentage increase than nouns. The results provide evidence that children who reached the first sampling point at an earlier age had a higher percentage of nouns than children who reached the same stage at an older age. However, in the passage from the first to the second sampling point no relationship emerged between a style of acquisition based on the acquisition of nouns and an increase in the rate of vocabulary growth.

The Impact of Utilising Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) on Vocabulary Acquisition among Migrant Women English Learners

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Ahmad, Kham Sila; Armarego, Jocelyn; Sudweeks, Fay

2017-01-01

Aim/Purpose: To develop a framework for utilizing Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) to assist non-native English migrant women to acquire English vocabulary in a non-formal learning setting. Background: The women in this study migrated to Australia with varied backgrounds including voluntary or forced migration, very low to high levels of…

Vocabulary of preschool children with typical language development and socioeducational variables.

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Moretti, Thaís Cristina da Freiria; Kuroishi, Rita Cristina Sadako; Mandrá, Patrícia Pupin

2017-03-09

To investigate the correlation between age, socioeconomic status (SES), and performance on emissive and receptive vocabulary tests in children with typical language development. The study sample was composed of 60 preschool children of both genders, aged 3 years to 5 years 11 months, with typical language development divided into three groups: G I (mean age=3 years 6 months), G II (mean age=4 years 4 months) and G III (mean age=5 years 9 months). The ABFW Child Language Test - Vocabulary and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) for emissive and receptive language were applied to the preschoolers. The socioeconomic classification questionnaire of the Brazilian Association of Survey Companies (ABEP) was applied to the preschoolers' parents/legal guardians. Data were analyzed according to the criteria of the aforementioned instruments and were arranged in Excel spreadsheet for Windows XP®. A multiple linear regression model was used, adopting a statistical significance level of 5%, to analyze the correlation between age, SES, and performance on the receptive and emissive vocabulary tests. In the ABEP questionnaire, participants were classified mostly into social level C (63.3%), followed by levels B (26.6%) and D (10%). The preschoolers investigated presented emissive and receptive vocabulary adequate for the age groups. No statistically significant difference was found for the variables age and SES regarding emissive and receptive vocabulary. Higher test scores were observed with increased age and SES, for social levels "B" compared with "D" and for "C" with "D". The variables age and socioeconomic status influenced the performance on emissive and receptive vocabulary tests in the study group.

Improving Vocabulary Skills through Assistive Technology: Rick's Story

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Lindsey-Glenn, Pam F.; Gentry, James E.

2008-01-01

This case study examines the use of two assistive technologies, the Franklin Language Master 6000b and Microsoft PowerPoint 2003, as visual support systems to aid in the vocabulary acquisition skills of a student with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The intervention used children's literature and best practices in teaching vocabulary skills in…

Bootstrapping language acquisition.

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Abend, Omri; Kwiatkowski, Tom; Smith, Nathaniel J; Goldwater, Sharon; Steedman, Mark

2017-07-01

The semantic bootstrapping hypothesis proposes that children acquire their native language through exposure to sentences of the language paired with structured representations of their meaning, whose component substructures can be associated with words and syntactic structures used to express these concepts. The child's task is then to learn a language-specific grammar and lexicon based on (probably contextually ambiguous, possibly somewhat noisy) pairs of sentences and their meaning representations (logical forms). Starting from these assumptions, we develop a Bayesian probabilistic account of semantically bootstrapped first-language acquisition in the child, based on techniques from computational parsing and interpretation of unrestricted text. Our learner jointly models (a) word learning: the mapping between components of the given sentential meaning and lexical words (or phrases) of the language, and (b) syntax learning: the projection of lexical elements onto sentences by universal construction-free syntactic rules. Using an incremental learning algorithm, we apply the model to a dataset of real syntactically complex child-directed utterances and (pseudo) logical forms, the latter including contextually plausible but irrelevant distractors. Taking the Eve section of the CHILDES corpus as input, the model simulates several well-documented phenomena from the developmental literature. In particular, the model exhibits syntactic bootstrapping effects (in which previously learned constructions facilitate the learning of novel words), sudden jumps in learning without explicit parameter setting, acceleration of word-learning (the "vocabulary spurt"), an initial bias favoring the learning of nouns over verbs, and one-shot learning of words and their meanings. The learner thus demonstrates how statistical learning over structured representations can provide a unified account for these seemingly disparate phenomena. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Predicting Expressive Vocabulary Acquisition in Children with Intellectual Disabilities: A 2-Year Longitudinal Study

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Vandereet, Joke; Maes, Bea; Lembrechts, Dirk; Zink, Inge

2010-01-01

Purpose: This study's objectives were to describe expressive vocabulary acquisition in children with intellectual disabilities (ID) and to examine specific pre- and early linguistic behaviors used to request and comment, chronological age, cognitive skills, and vocabulary comprehension as predictors of expressive vocabulary. Method: This study…

Using Songs to Enhance L2 Vocabulary Acquisition in Preschool Children

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Coyle, Yvette; Gómez Gracia, Remei

2014-01-01

This article looks at the effects of a teaching sequence of song-based activities on the L2 vocabulary acquisition of a group of five-year-old Spanish child EFL learners. Twenty-five preschool children received three 30-minute lessons organized around the presentation and practice of a well-known children's song. Vocabulary picture tests were…

The Effect of Using Bizarre Images as Mnemonics to Enhance Vocabulary Learning

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Hassan Saleh Mahdi

2018-03-01

Full Text Available Mnemonic is a technique that helps someone remember better. The combination of images with mnemonics can make it more powerful and effective to help language learners remember better and for a longer time. Acquiring L2 vocabulary can be enhanced by using images. In the previous studies, mnemonics were used traditionally, that is, learners were asked to create a mental image to remember a word or any new item. Several studies were conducted to explore the use of mental images as mnemonics for vocabulary learning. However, no study has examined the integration of images as a mnemonic tool for vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, this study aimed at investigating the effect of images as mnemonics on vocabulary acquisition. The study examined the effect of images as a mnemonic tool for vocabulary acquisition in three conditions (i.e. normal images, bizarre images and traditional way of learning vocabulary. Sixty Arab learners of English as a foreign language enrolled in the English Department at Hodeidah University participated in this study and were randomly assigned into three groups. This study used an experimental method in which pre-, post- and delayed post-tests were administered to these groups. The results indicated that mnemonics with the help of images are useful tools to help learners remember many words. Keywords: Bizarre images, Multimedia, Mnemonics, Vocabulary learning, Vocabulary retention.

Posters, Self-Directed Learning, and L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

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Cetin, Yakup; Flamand, Lee

2013-01-01

Posters, either as promotions by various ELT publishing houses or prepared by ELT teachers and students, are widely used on the walls of many foreign language classrooms. Many of them consist of colourful pictures along with L2 vocabulary, grammar, and texts in order to contribute to the foreign language learning process. However, many ELT…

Vocabulary and Writing in a First and Second Language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Albrechtsen, Dorte; Haastrup, Kirsten; Henriksen, Birgit

Book description: Vocabulary and Writing in a First and Second Language is based on a large-scale empirical study. The innovative feature of the research was that the same students were asked to do the same tasks in both languages while reporting their thinking as they went along. Furthermore , t......-depth approach useful in understanding the processes of both first and second language performance......Book description: Vocabulary and Writing in a First and Second Language is based on a large-scale empirical study. The innovative feature of the research was that the same students were asked to do the same tasks in both languages while reporting their thinking as they went along. Furthermore...... the relationship between the skills and describe the level of development for individual learners within the three areas. In all cases, statistical and qualitative analyses are offered, the latter being based on the learners' own 'think-aloud' reports. Both researchers and teachers of language will find this in...

Second Language Learners' Vocabulary Expansion Is Associated with Improved Second Language Vowel Intelligibility

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Bundgaard-Nielsen, Rikke L.; Best, Catherine T.; Kroos, Christian; Tyler, Michael D.

2012-01-01

This paper tests the predictions of the vocabulary-tuning model of second language (L2) rephonologization in the domain of L2 segmental production. This model proposes a facilitating effect of adults' L2 vocabulary expansion on L2 perception and production and suggests that early improvements in L2 segmental production may be positively associated…

Effects of Social Networking on Iranian EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Acquisition

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Fatemeh Khansarian-Dehkordi

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The study aimed to scrutinize social networking effects on Iranian EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition. Eighty Iranian EFL learners at the intermediate level participated in a pretest-posttest study after taking the placement test. They were then divided into an experimental group whose participants were supposed to equip their mobile phones or tablet PCs with a social networking application, that is, Line and form an online group to take part in eighteen virtual instructional sessions. Participants of the control group, however, underwent classroom learning during which target words were presented through routine classroom activities. Results of the independent-samples t-test in the posttest indicated that participants of the experimental group outperformed those of the control group. Results have important implications for both pedagogy and theory, especially socio-cultural theories of second language development.

Human simulations of vocabulary learning.

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Gillette, J; Gleitman, H; Gleitman, L; Lederer, A

1999-12-07

The work reported here experimentally investigates a striking generalization about vocabulary acquisition: Noun learning is superior to verb learning in the earliest moments of child language development. The dominant explanation of this phenomenon in the literature invokes differing conceptual requirements for items in these lexical categories: Verbs are cognitively more complex than nouns and so their acquisition must await certain mental developments in the infant. In the present work, we investigate an alternative hypothesis; namely, that it is the information requirements of verb learning, not the conceptual requirements, that crucially determine the acquisition order. Efficient verb learning requires access to structural features of the exposure language and thus cannot take place until a scaffolding of noun knowledge enables the acquisition of clause-level syntax. More generally, we experimentally investigate the hypothesis that vocabulary acquisition takes place via an incremental constraint-satisfaction procedure that bootstraps itself into successively more sophisticated linguistic representations which, in turn, enable new kinds of vocabulary learning. If the experimental subjects were young children, it would be difficult to distinguish between this information-centered hypothesis and the conceptual change hypothesis. Therefore the experimental "learners" are adults. The items to be "acquired" in the experiments were the 24 most frequent nouns and 24 most frequent verbs from a sample of maternal speech to 18-24-month-old infants. The various experiments ask about the kinds of information that will support identification of these words as they occur in mother-to-child discourse. Both the proportion correctly identified and the type of word that is identifiable changes significantly as a function of information type. We discuss these results as consistent with the incremental construction of a highly lexicalized grammar by cognitively and pragmatically

Associative vocabulary learning: development and testing of two paradigms for the (re-) acquisition of action- and object-related words.

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Freundlieb, Nils; Ridder, Volker; Dobel, Christian; Enriquez-Geppert, Stefanie; Baumgaertner, Annette; Zwitserlood, Pienie; Gerloff, Christian; Hummel, Friedhelm C; Liuzzi, Gianpiero

2012-01-01

Despite a growing number of studies, the neurophysiology of adult vocabulary acquisition is still poorly understood. One reason is that paradigms that can easily be combined with neuroscientfic methods are rare. Here, we tested the efficiency of two paradigms for vocabulary (re-) acquisition, and compared the learning of novel words for actions and objects. Cortical networks involved in adult native-language word processing are widespread, with differences postulated between words for objects and actions. Words and what they stand for are supposed to be grounded in perceptual and sensorimotor brain circuits depending on their meaning. If there are specific brain representations for different word categories, we hypothesized behavioural differences in the learning of action-related and object-related words. Paradigm A, with the learning of novel words for body-related actions spread out over a number of days, revealed fast learning of these new action words, and stable retention up to 4 weeks after training. The single-session Paradigm B employed objects and actions. Performance during acquisition did not differ between action-related and object-related words (time*word category: p = 0.01), but the translation rate was clearly better for object-related (79%) than for action-related words (53%, p = 0.002). Both paradigms yielded robust associative learning of novel action-related words, as previously demonstrated for object-related words. Translation success differed for action- and object-related words, which may indicate different neural mechanisms. The paradigms tested here are well suited to investigate such differences with neuroscientific means. Given the stable retention and minimal requirements for conscious effort, these learning paradigms are promising for vocabulary re-learning in brain-lesioned people. In combination with neuroimaging, neuro-stimulation or pharmacological intervention, they may well advance the understanding of language learning

[First language acquisition research and theories of language acquisition].

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Miller, S; Jungheim, M; Ptok, M

2014-04-01

In principle, a child can seemingly easily acquire any given language. First language acquisition follows a certain pattern which to some extent is found to be language independent. Since time immemorial, it has been of interest why children are able to acquire language so easily. Different disciplinary and methodological orientations addressing this question can be identified. A selective literature search in PubMed and Scopus was carried out and relevant monographies were considered. Different, partially overlapping phases can be distinguished in language acquisition research: whereas in ancient times, deprivation experiments were carried out to discover the "original human language", the era of diary studies began in the mid-19th century. From the mid-1920s onwards, behaviouristic paradigms dominated this field of research; interests were focussed on the determination of normal, average language acquisition. The subsequent linguistic period was strongly influenced by the nativist view of Chomsky and the constructivist concepts of Piaget. Speech comprehension, the role of speech input and the relevance of genetic disposition became the centre of attention. The interactionist concept led to a revival of the convergence theory according to Stern. Each of these four major theories--behaviourism, cognitivism, interactionism and nativism--have given valuable and unique impulses, but no single theory is universally accepted to provide an explanation of all aspects of language acquisition. Moreover, it can be critically questioned whether clinicians consciously refer to one of these theories in daily routine work and whether therapies are then based on this concept. It remains to be seen whether or not new theories of grammar, such as the so-called construction grammar (CxG), will eventually change the general concept of language acquisition.

An Experimental Study on the Effects of Different Reading Tasks on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

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Xu, Jianping

2009-01-01

This empirical study was undertaken to test the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer and Hulstijn, 2001) by examining the impact of three tasks on vocabulary acquisition. It was designed to test and develop the involvement load hypothesis by examining the impact of different reading tasks on the L2 vocabulary acquisition. The results show that…

The Role of Perception, Language, and Preference in the Developmental Acquisition of Basic Color Terms

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Pitchford, N. J.; Mullen, K. T.

2005-01-01

When learning basic color vocabulary, young children show a selective delay in the acquisition of brown and gray relative to other basic color terms. In this study, we first establish the robustness of this finding and then investigate the extent to which perception, language, and color preference may influence color conceptualization.…

The relationship between executive functioning and language: Examining vocabulary, syntax, and language learning in preschoolers attending Head Start.

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White, Lisa J; Alexander, Alexandra; Greenfield, Daryl B

2017-12-01

Early childhood marks a time of dynamic development within language and cognitive domains. Specifically, a body of research focuses on the development of language as related to executive functions, which are foundational cognitive skills that relate to both academic achievement and social-emotional development during early childhood and beyond. Although there is evidence to support the relationship between language and executive functions, existing studies focus mostly on vocabulary and fail to examine other components of language such as syntax and language learning skills. To address this gap, this study examined the relationship between executive functioning (EF) and three aspects of language: syntax, vocabulary, and language learning. A diverse sample of 182 children (67% Latino and 33% African American) attending Head Start were assessed on both EF and language ability. Findings demonstrated that EF related to a comprehensive latent construct of language composed of vocabulary, syntax, and language learning. EF also related to each individual component of language. This study furthers our understanding of the complex relationship between language and cognitive development by measuring EF as it relates to various components of language in a sample of preschoolers from low-income backgrounds. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Role-Play Game-Enhanced English for a Specific-Purpose Vocabulary-Acquisition Framework

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Lu, Fang-Chen; Chang, Ben

2016-01-01

With the advantages of an engaged and authentic role-play game (RPG), this study aims to develop an RPG-enhanced English for specific purposes (ESP) vocabulary-acquisition framework, providing teachers and students a systematic way to incorporate RPG into ESP learning. The framework is composed of five parts: goal, three-level vocabulary sets, RPG…

English Vocabulary Acquisition of Bilingual Learners at the Primary and Secondary Levels

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Pholsward, Ruja; Boonprasitt, Donrutai

2015-01-01

This paper reports research findings of English vocabulary acquisition of bilingual learners at the levels of Primary 6 and Secondary 3 at Satit Bilingual School of Rangsit University. The purpose was to find out the extent to which learners at these levels have acquired English vocabulary to communicate their ideas about themselves and their…

The Role of Orthotactic Probability in Incidental and Intentional Vocabulary Acquisition L1 and L2

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Bordag, Denisa; Kirschenbaum, Amit; Rogahn, Maria; Tschirner, Erwin

2017-01-01

Four experiments were conducted to examine the role of orthotactic probability, i.e. the sequential letter probability, in the early stages of vocabulary acquisition by adult native speakers and advanced learners of German. The results show different effects for orthographic probability in incidental and intentional vocabulary acquisition: Whereas…

Teaching Vocabulary to English Language Learners

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Daniels, Sharilyn Fox

2009-01-01

This study determined if the vocabulary gap for English Language Learners (ELLs) and their peers could be bridged through providing home interventions with multiple exposures to words, definitions, model sentences and context. Ninety-one first grade students from a public school in Southern California with a 95% ELL population were researched. ELL…

Modality of Input and Vocabulary Acquisition

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Tetyana Sydorenko

2010-06-01

Full Text Available This study examines the effect of input modality (video, audio, and captions, i.e., on-screen text in the same language as audio on (a the learning of written and aural word forms, (b overall vocabulary gains, (c attention to input, and (d vocabulary learning strategies of beginning L2 learners. Twenty-six second-semester learners of Russian participated in this study. Group one (N = 8 saw video with audio and captions (VAC; group two (N = 9 saw video with audio (VA; group three (N = 9 saw video with captions (VC. All participants completed written and aural vocabulary tests and a final questionnaire.The results indicate that groups with captions (VAC and VC scored higher on written than on aural recognition of word forms, while the reverse applied to the VA group. The VAC group learned more word meanings than the VA group. Results from the questionnaire suggest that learners paid most attention to captions, followed by video and audio, and acquired most words by associating them with visual images. Pedagogical implications of this study are that captioned video tends to aid recognition of written word forms and the learning of word meaning, while non-captioned video tends to improve listening comprehension as it facilitates recognition of aural word forms.

Learning Vocabulary in a Foreign Language: A Computer Software Based Model Attempt

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Yelbay Yilmaz, Yasemin

2015-01-01

This study aimed at devising a vocabulary learning software that would help learners learn and retain vocabulary items effectively. Foundation linguistics and learning theories have been adapted to the foreign language vocabulary learning context using a computer software named Parole that was designed exclusively for this study. Experimental…

Lexical Errors and Accuracy in Foreign Language Writing. Second Language Acquisition

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del Pilar Agustin Llach, Maria

2011-01-01

Lexical errors are a determinant in gaining insight into vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary use and writing quality assessment. Lexical errors are very frequent in the written production of young EFL learners, but they decrease as learners gain proficiency. Misspellings are the most common category, but formal errors give way to semantic-based…

Neural Correlates of High Performance in Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

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Macedonia, Manuela; Muller, Karsten; Friederici, Angela D.

2010-01-01

Learning vocabulary in a foreign language is a laborious task which people perform with varying levels of success. Here, we investigated the neural underpinning of high performance on this task. In a within-subjects paradigm, participants learned 92 vocabulary items under two multimodal conditions: one condition paired novel words with iconic…

E-Book as Facilitator of Vocabulary Acquisition: Support of Adults, Dynamic Dictionary and Static Dictionary

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Korat, Ofra; Levin, Iris; Atishkin, Shifra; Turgeman, Merav

2014-01-01

We investigated the effects of three facilitators: adults' support, dynamic visual vocabulary support and static visual vocabulary support on vocabulary acquisition in the context of e-book reading. Participants were 144 Israeli Hebrew-speaking preschoolers (aged 4-6) from middle SES neighborhoods. The entire sample read the e-book without a…

First Language Acquisition and Teaching

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Cruz-Ferreira, Madalena

2011-01-01

"First language acquisition" commonly means the acquisition of a single language in childhood, regardless of the number of languages in a child's natural environment. Language acquisition is variously viewed as predetermined, wondrous, a source of concern, and as developing through formal processes. "First language teaching" concerns schooling in…

Vocabulary Acquisition for Future Nursing Staff: authenticity in the classroom

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Kirsten Hempkin

2015-11-01

Full Text Available Research suggests that many ESL teachers either modify or supplement the set textbooks they use in class, or develop their own materials for classroom use. Indeed, in recent years, the internet in particular has opened up a rich and at times perhaps baffling array of resources for those ESL practitioners who wish to incorporate authentic materials into their teaching. While the benefits of authentic materials are well-documented, their use is, however, not entirely unproblematic, and as research into the field of material (authentic or otherwise development grows, this raises a number of issues as to the form these materials should take and how they can best be employed. This article presents a set of vocabulary building activities for future nursing staff; these activities are in use at the Faculty of Health Sciences in Maribor. The article explains the rationale behind them in light of the theoretical framework of language acquisition that underpins them.

Using Multiple Intelligences To Improve Retention in Foreign Language Vocabulary Study.

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Anderson, Virginia B.

The report describes an experiment for increasing retention of foreign language vocabulary by using multiple intelligence approaches and memory enhancement tools. The targeted population was approximately 100 seventh- and eighth-grade Latin students. Student difficulty with vocabulary retention had been ascribed to the teacher's emphasis on…

Auditory Perception, Suprasegmental Speech Processing, and Vocabulary Development in Chinese Preschoolers.

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Wang, Hsiao-Lan S; Chen, I-Chen; Chiang, Chun-Han; Lai, Ying-Hui; Tsao, Yu

2016-10-01

The current study examined the associations between basic auditory perception, speech prosodic processing, and vocabulary development in Chinese kindergartners, specifically, whether early basic auditory perception may be related to linguistic prosodic processing in Chinese Mandarin vocabulary acquisition. A series of language, auditory, and linguistic prosodic tests were given to 100 preschool children who had not yet learned how to read Chinese characters. The results suggested that lexical tone sensitivity and intonation production were significantly correlated with children's general vocabulary abilities. In particular, tone awareness was associated with comprehensive language development, whereas intonation production was associated with both comprehensive and expressive language development. Regression analyses revealed that tone sensitivity accounted for 36% of the unique variance in vocabulary development, whereas intonation production accounted for 6% of the variance in vocabulary development. Moreover, auditory frequency discrimination was significantly correlated with lexical tone sensitivity, syllable duration discrimination, and intonation production in Mandarin Chinese. Also it provided significant contributions to tone sensitivity and intonation production. Auditory frequency discrimination may indirectly affect early vocabulary development through Chinese speech prosody. © The Author(s) 2016.

Modelling vocabulary development among multilingual children prior to and following the transition to school entry

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MacLeod, Andrea A. N.; Castellanos-Ryan, Natalie; Parent, Sophie; Jacques, Sophie; Séguin, Jean R.

2017-01-01

Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se. PMID:29354017

Modelling vocabulary development among multilingual children prior to and following the transition to school entry.

Science.gov (United States)

MacLeod, Andrea A N; Castellanos-Ryan, Natalie; Parent, Sophie; Jacques, Sophie; Séguin, Jean R

2018-01-01

Differences between monolingual and multilingual vocabulary development have been observed but few studies provide a longitudinal perspective on vocabulary development before and following school entry. This study compares vocabulary growth profiles of 106 multilingual children to 211 monolingual peers before and after school entry to examine whether: (1) school entry coincides with different rates of vocabulary growth compared to prior to school entry, (2) compared to monolingual peers, multilingual children show different vocabulary sizes or rates of vocabulary growth, (3) the age of onset of second-language acquisition for multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth, and (4) the sociolinguistic context of the languages spoken by multilingual children is associated with vocabulary size or rate of vocabulary growth. Results showed increases in vocabulary size across time for all children, with a steeper increase prior to school entry. A significant difference between monolingual and multilingual children who speak a minority language was observed with regards to vocabulary size at school entry and vocabulary growth prior to school entry, but growth rate differences were no longer present following school entry. Taken together, results suggest that which languages children speak may matter more than being multilingual per se.

The Value of Picture-Book Reading-Based Collaborative Output Activities for Vocabulary Retention

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Sun, Chia-Ho

2017-01-01

This study investigated the effects of three instructional modes: picture-book reading-only (PRO), picture-book reading plus vocabulary instruction (PRVI), and picture-book reading plus reading-based collaborative output activity (PRCOA) on young adult EFL (English as a foreign language) learners' vocabulary acquisition and retention. Eighty…

Core vocabulary in the narratives of bilingual children with and without language impairment.

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Shivabasappa, Prarthana; Peña, Elizabeth D; Bedore, Lisa M

2017-09-22

Children with primary language impairment (PLI) demonstrate deficits in morphosyntax and vocabulary. We studied how these deficits may manifest in the core vocabulary use of bilingual children with PLI. Thirty bilingual children with and without PLI who were matched pairwise (experimental group) narrated two Spanish and two English stories in kindergarten and first grade. Core vocabulary was derived from the 30 most frequently used words in the stories of 65 and 37 typically developing (TD) first graders (normative group) for Spanish and English, respectively. The number of words each child in the experimental group produced out of the 30 identified core vocabulary words and frequency of each of the core words produced each year were analysed. Children with PLI produced fewer core vocabulary words compared to their TD peers after controlling for total words produced. This difference was more pronounced in first grade. They produced core vocabulary words less frequently in kindergarten than their TD peers. Both groups produced core vocabulary words more frequently in English than Spanish. Bilingual children with PLI demonstrate a less productive core vocabulary use compared to their TD peers in both their languages illustrating the nature of their grammatical and lexical-semantic deficits.

Effects of Students' Participation in Authoring of Multimedia Materials on Student Acquisition of Vocabulary.

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Nikolova, Ofelia R.

2002-01-01

Investigated the effects on vocabulary acquisition of student participation in authoring a multimedia institutional module. Sixty-two subjects were randomly assigned to two groups, and each group was randomly assigned to one of two treatments. Showed evidence that students learn vocabulary significantly better when they participate in the creation…

Early Bimodal Stimulation Benefits Language Acquisition for Children With Cochlear Implants.

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Moberly, Aaron C; Lowenstein, Joanna H; Nittrouer, Susan

2016-01-01

Adding a low-frequency acoustic signal to the cochlear implant (CI) signal (i.e., bimodal stimulation) for a period of time early in life improves language acquisition. Children must acquire sensitivity to the phonemic units of language to develop most language-related skills, including expressive vocabulary, working memory, and reading. Acquiring sensitivity to phonemic structure depends largely on having refined spectral (frequency) representations available in the signal, which does not happen with CIs alone. Combining the low-frequency acoustic signal available through hearing aids with the CI signal can enhance signal quality. A period with this bimodal stimulation has been shown to improve language skills in very young children. This study examined whether these benefits persist into childhood. Data were examined for 48 children with CIs implanted under age 3 years, participating in a longitudinal study. All children wore hearing aids before receiving a CI, but upon receiving a first CI, 24 children had at least 1 year of bimodal stimulation (Bimodal group), and 24 children had only electric stimulation subsequent to implantation (CI-only group). Measures of phonemic awareness were obtained at second and fourth grades, along with measures of expressive vocabulary, working memory, and reading. Children in the Bimodal group generally performed better on measures of phonemic awareness, and that advantage was reflected in other language measures. Having even a brief period of time early in life with combined electric-acoustic input provides benefits to language learning into childhood, likely because of the enhancement in spectral representations provided.

Incidental Lexicon Acquisition through Playful Interaction

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Lukas Wilhelm Ansteeg

2015-02-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an educational game which aids learners with foreign lexicon acquisition while entertaining them at the same time. An overview over existing language learning tools is given, and a general platform for educational games for second language acquisition (SLA is described. It introduces a specific prototype video game which teaches Italian vocabulary to the user. The application puts learning at the core of its game mechanics and combines it with a narrative and role-playing elements. In a user study, the game is compared to two other learning methods with focus on long term retention of vocabulary and enjoyment of the exercise. The game is found to perform within 10% of the efficiency of pure vocabulary learning exercises, while being considerably more enjoyable to the user.

Promoting an Interest in Language To Stimulate College Students' Vocabulary Development.

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Wellington, Kathy

1999-01-01

Describes using the book "The Professor and the Madman" (which tells the story of how the "Oxford English Dictionary" came into being) in a college or developmental reading class. Notes it motivates students to take greater interest in language and work on expanding their vocabularies, thus promoting vocabulary development and…

Working Memory and Distributed Vocabulary Learning.

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Atkins, Paul W. B.; Baddeley, Alan D.

1998-01-01

Tested the hypothesis that individual differences in immediate-verbal-memory span predict success in second-language vocabulary acquisition. In the two-session study, adult subjects learned 56 English-Finnish translations. Tested one week later, subjects were less likely to remember those words they had difficulty learning, even though they had…

Vocabulary Acquisition without Adult Explanations in Repeated Shared Book Reading: An Eye Movement Study

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Evans, Mary Ann; Saint-Aubin, Jean

2013-01-01

When preschoolers listen to storybooks, are their eye movements related to their vocabulary acquisition in this context? This study addressed this question with 36 four-year-old French-speaking participants by assessing their general receptive vocabulary knowledge and knowledge of low-frequency words in 3 storybooks. These books were read verbatim…

Evidence for the Task-Induced Involvement Construct in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Digital Gaming

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Reynolds, Barry Lee

2017-01-01

This article reports on an investigation of the suitability of mobile vocabulary games for inducing a state of incidental vocabulary acquisition. Draw Something, a social digital drawing game in which players draw and guess words, was selected as a focus for this investigation. Results from an exploratory factor analysis of the questionnaire data…

Media-Assisted Language Learning for Young Children: Effects of a Word-Learning App on the Vocabulary Acquisition of Two-Year-Olds

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Walter-Laager, Catherine; Brandenberg, Kathrin; Tinguely, Luzia; Schwarz, Jürg; Pfiffner, Manfred R.; Moschner, Barbara

2017-01-01

The intervention study investigated the effects of an interactive word-learning app Learning apps are developed to achieve certain aims. In our case, the intention was to enrich the vocabulary acquisition of young children. Many other apps, such as games, are developed mainly for entertainment. The intention of games apps is to hold the attention…

Corpus-aided language pedagogy : the use of concordance lines in vocabulary instruction

OpenAIRE

Kazaz, İlknur

2015-01-01

Ankara : The Program of Teaching English as a Foreign Language Bilkent University, 2015. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2015. Includes bibliographical references leaves 83-91. This study investigated the effectiveness of the use of a concordance software and concordance lines as a pedagogical tool to learn the target vocabulary of a text book. The purpose of the study was to compare the effects of corpus-aided vocabulary instruction with traditional vocabulary teac...

Incorporating Vocabulary Instruction in Individual Reading Fluency Interventions with English Language Learners

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Johnston, Lauren E.; Mercer, Sterett H.; Geres-Smith, Rhonda

2018-01-01

The purpose of this preliminary study was to determine whether incorporating vocabulary instruction in individual reading fluency interventions for English Language Learners (ELLs) would improve reading comprehension. Two vocabulary instructional procedures were contrasted with a fluency-building only condition in an alternating-treatments design…

Language Acquisition without an Acquisition Device

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O'Grady, William

2012-01-01

Most explanatory work on first and second language learning assumes the primacy of the acquisition phenomenon itself, and a good deal of work has been devoted to the search for an "acquisition device" that is specific to humans, and perhaps even to language. I will consider the possibility that this strategy is misguided and that language…

Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition from an Authentic Novel: Do "Things Fall Apart"?

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Pellicer-Sanchez, Ana; Schmitt, Norbert

2010-01-01

Nation (2006) has calculated that second language (L2) learners require much more vocabulary than previously thought to be functional with language (e.g., 8,000-9,000 word families to read independently). This level is far beyond the highest graded reader, and would be difficult to explicitly teach. One way for learners to be exposed to…

Acquisition of spanish as a second language in first year of Secondary Education

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Mª José Fernández Torralba

2009-05-01

Full Text Available Every day it is more frequent to find in educative centers pupils from other countries with different cultures and languages. Our investigation is focussed in a 3 year student whose mother tongue is Quechua. She presents poor lexicon, and not active participation in class activities. She understands more than she can expres reason why we found a degree of slow down different from other class mates in respect to the manner of communicating in our language. Therefore the restlessness arises to us to foster vocabulary acquisition and the necessary expressions for its normal development and equal her with her class mates.

Schizophrenia and second language acquisition.

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Bersudsky, Yuly; Fine, Jonathan; Gorjaltsan, Igor; Chen, Osnat; Walters, Joel

2005-05-01

Language acquisition involves brain processes that can be affected by lesions or dysfunctions in several brain systems and second language acquisition may depend on different brain substrates than first language acquisition in childhood. A total of 16 Russian immigrants to Israel, 8 diagnosed schizophrenics and 8 healthy immigrants, were compared. The primary data for this study were collected via sociolinguistic interviews. The two groups use language and learn language in very much the same way. Only exophoric reference and blocking revealed meaningful differences between the schizophrenics and healthy counterparts. This does not mean of course that schizophrenia does not induce language abnormalities. Our study focuses on those aspects of language that are typically difficult to acquire in second language acquisition. Despite the cognitive compromises in schizophrenia and the manifest atypicalities in language of speakers with schizophrenia, the process of acquiring a second language seems relatively unaffected by schizophrenia.

The role of verbal and pictorial information in multimodal incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary

OpenAIRE

Bisson, Marie-Josée; Van Heuven, Walter J.B.; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J.

2014-01-01

This study used eye tracking to investigate the allocation of attention to multimodal stimuli during an incidental learning situation, as well as its impact on subsequent explicit learning. Participants were exposed to foreign language (FL) auditory words on their own, in conjunction with written native language (NL) translations, or with both written NL translations and pictures. Incidental acquisition of FL words was assessed the following day through an explicit learning task where partici...

The Language of Mathematics: The Importance of Teaching and Learning Mathematical Vocabulary

Science.gov (United States)

Riccomini, Paul J.; Smith, Gregory W.; Hughes, Elizabeth M.; Fries, Karen M.

2015-01-01

Vocabulary understanding is a major contributor to overall comprehension in many content areas, including mathematics. Effective methods for teaching vocabulary in all content areas are diverse and long standing. Teaching and learning the language of mathematics is vital for the development of mathematical proficiency. Students' mathematical…

Some Techniques for Teaching Vocabulary. ERIC Focus Reports on the Teaching of Foreign Languages, Number 27.

Science.gov (United States)

Michel, Joseph; Patin, Paul

Discussion of techniques for teaching vocabulary in language programs centers on five major areas: (1) "knowing" the word, (2) selection of vocabulary, (3) grading vocabulary for presentation, (4) teaching methods, and (5) vocabulary expansion in advanced levels. Theory of vocabulary instruction is largely supported by writings of Nelson Brooks,…

Does Using Language Games Affect Vocabulary Learning in EFL Classes?

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Beyza Silsüpür

2017-01-01

Full Text Available The present study attempted to investigate the role of using word games in L2 vocabulary acquisition. 12 female participants from Uludag University were selected for control and experimental groups. Additionally, 35 participants from different universities in Turkey were invited to attend the study. First, an online questionnaire about the effect of games on vocabulary learning was administered to 35 participants. And results were analysed.  Secondly, 12 female participants were divided into two groups as control group and experimental group. Both groups were taught certain words, however, a word game known as “Bingo” were utilized for the experimental group. Finally, a vocabulary quiz was administered to both groups to determine the differences between them. The scores obtained from vocabulary quiz showed that the experimental group outperformed the control group in vocabulary quiz. Even so, there was not a significant difference between the results of the quiz. Similarly, the findings of the questionnaire indicated that the participants preferred learning through vocabulary games rather than traditional way. Also, the findings revealed that games reduce negative feelings during the learning process. It was suggested that teachers should reconsider the role of games and appreciate their educational value.

[The early expressive vocabulary size in simultaneous bilingual growing-up infants - a diagnostic relevant criterion?].

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Kiese-Himmel, C; Sellner, L; Bockmann, A-K

2013-08-01

Bilingual young children's early expressive vocabulary size and its composition (as one domain of the language development) should be examined to find out whether children with a risk for delayed language development may be identified in this way. 30 bilingual kindergarten infants from Berlin (with simultaneous language acquisition; second language German) and 30 monolingual German infants from the greater areas of Stuttgart and Heidelberg were pair matched (mean chronological age 22.5 [SD 3.1] months; min 16; max 26). The German expressive vocabulary checklist Elternfragebogen zur Wort-schatzentwicklung im frühen Kindesalter (ELAN; Bockmann & Kiese-Himmel, 2006) was filled out by all parents. In addition, parents of bilingual infants completed the adaption of the German vocabulary checklist Sprachbeurteilung durch Eltern (SBE-2-KT; v. Suchodoletz & Sachse, 2008) for the second mother tongue. The monolinguals' word sum in the ELAN (145.7; SD 75.8) differed significantly (p=0.001) from the bilinguals' word sum (78.3; SD 78.9 words). In contrast, bilinguals did not significantly differ in their overall expressive vocabulary size (ELAN+SBE-2-KT: 101.2; SD 77.0 words) from their monolingual counterparts (ELAN). Because bilinguals had a similar sized overall early vocabulary (both languages) like monolingual German-learning infants, the diagnostic criterion to identify late talkers with 24 months of age (less than 50 German words and no word combinations) should not be applied to bilingually infants with simultaneously double language acquisition. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

The Representation of Bilingual Mental Lexicon and English Vocabulary Acquisition

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Ying, Zhang

2017-01-01

This paper provides an overview of the theories on the organization and development of L1 mental lexicon and the representation mode of bilingual mental lexicon. It analyzes the structure and characteristics of Chinese EFL learners and their problems in English vocabulary acquisition. On the basis of this, it suggests that English vocabulary…

The Effects of Content-Enriched Shared Book Reading versus Vocabulary-Only Discussions on the Vocabulary Outcomes of Preschool Dual Language Learners

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Pollard-Durodola, Sharolyn D.; Gonzalez, Jorge E.; Saenz, Laura; Resendez, Nora; Kwok, Oiman; Zhu, Leina; Davis, Heather

2018-01-01

Research Findings: This study compared the effects of content-based shared book-reading instruction versus an explicit vocabulary-only condition on the vocabulary development of preschool dual language learners (DLLs). Using shared book reading as the mode of instruction, we randomly assigned 48 bilingual preschool teachers and 281…

Language Acquisition and Language Revitalization

Science.gov (United States)

O'Grady, William; Hattori, Ryoko

2016-01-01

Intergenerational transmission, the ultimate goal of language revitalization efforts, can only be achieved by (re)establishing the conditions under which an imperiled language can be acquired by the community's children. This paper presents a tutorial survey of several key points relating to language acquisition and maintenance in children,…

The 'robustness' of vocabulary intervention in the public schools: targets and techniques employed in speech-language therapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Justice, Laura M; Schmitt, Mary Beth; Murphy, Kimberly A; Pratt, Amy; Biancone, Tricia

2014-01-01

This study examined vocabulary intervention-in terms of targets and techniques-for children with language impairment receiving speech-language therapy in public schools (i.e., non-fee-paying schools) in the United States. Vocabulary treatments and targets were examined with respect to their alignment with the empirically validated practice of rich vocabulary intervention. Participants were forty-eight 5-7-year-old children participating in kindergarten or the first-grade year of school, all of whom had vocabulary-specific goals on their individualized education programmes. Two therapy sessions per child were coded to determine what vocabulary words were being directly targeted and what techniques were used for each. Study findings showed that the majority of words directly targeted during therapy were lower-level basic vocabulary words (87%) and very few (1%) were academically relevant. On average, three techniques were used per word to promote deep understanding. Interpreting findings against empirical descriptions of rich vocabulary intervention indicates that children were exposed to some but not all aspects of this empirically supported practice. © 2013 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

Early language processing efficiency predicts later receptive vocabulary outcomes in children born preterm.

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Marchman, Virginia A; Adams, Katherine A; Loi, Elizabeth C; Fernald, Anne; Feldman, Heidi M

2016-01-01

As rates of prematurity continue to rise, identifying which preterm children are at increased risk for learning disabilities is a public health imperative. Identifying continuities between early and later skills in this vulnerable population can also illuminate fundamental neuropsychological processes that support learning in all children. At 18 months adjusted age, we used socioeconomic status (SES), medical variables, parent-reported vocabulary, scores on the Bayley Scales of Infant and Toddler Development (third edition) language composite, and children's lexical processing speed in the looking-while-listening (LWL) task as predictor variables in a sample of 30 preterm children. Receptive vocabulary as measured by the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (fourth edition) at 36 months was the outcome. Receptive vocabulary was correlated with SES, but uncorrelated with degree of prematurity or a composite of medical risk. Importantly, lexical processing speed was the strongest predictor of receptive vocabulary (r = -.81), accounting for 30% unique variance. Individual differences in lexical processing efficiency may be able to serve as a marker for information processing skills that are critical for language learning.

Does frequency count? Parental input and the acquisition of vocabulary.

Science.gov (United States)

Goodman, Judith C; Dale, Philip S; Li, Ping

2008-08-01

Studies examining factors that influence when words are learned typically investigate one lexical category or a small set of words. We provide the first evaluation of the relation between input frequency and age of acquisition for a large sample of words. The MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory provides norming data on age of acquisition for 562 individual words collected from the parents of children aged 0 ; 8 to 2 ; 6. The CHILDES database provides estimates of frequency with which parents use these words with their children (age: 0 ; 7-7 ; 5; mean age: 36 months). For production, across all words higher parental frequency is associated with later acquisition. Within lexical categories, however, higher frequency is related to earlier acquisition. For comprehension, parental frequency correlates significantly with the age of acquisition only for common nouns. Frequency effects change with development. Thus, frequency impacts vocabulary acquisition in a complex interaction with category, modality and developmental stage.

The parasitic model of L2 and L3 vocabulary acquisition: evidence from naturalistic and experimental studies

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Peter Ecke

2014-09-01

Full Text Available This paper reviews evidence for the Parasitic Model of Vocabulary Acquisition for second and third language learners/developing multilinguals. It first describes the model’s predictions about default processes based on the detection and use of similarity at the three stages involved in the development of individual lexical items: (1 the establishing of a form representation, (2 the building of connections to syntactic frame and concept representations, and (3 the strengthening and automatization of representations and access routes. The paper then summarizes both naturalistic and experimental evidence for processes involved at these three stages. Finally it discusses open issues and potential areas for future investigation.

The Receptive-Expressive Gap in the Vocabulary of Young Second-Language Learners: Robustness and Possible Mechanisms

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Gibson, Todd A.; Oller, D. Kimbrough; Jarmulowicz, Linda; Ethington, Corinna A.

2012-01-01

Adults and children learning a second language show difficulty accessing expressive vocabulary that appears accessible receptively in their first language (L1). We call this discrepancy the receptive-expressive gap. Kindergarten Spanish (L1)-English (L2) sequential bilinguals were given standardized tests of receptive and expressive vocabulary in…

Contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure across lifespan.

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Richardson, Fiona M; Thomas, Michael S C; Filippi, Roberto; Harth, Helen; Price, Cathy J

2010-05-01

Using behavioral, structural, and functional imaging techniques, we demonstrate contrasting effects of vocabulary knowledge on temporal and parietal brain structure in 47 healthy volunteers who ranged in age from 7 to 73 years. In the left posterior supramarginal gyrus, vocabulary knowledge was positively correlated with gray matter density in teenagers but not adults. This region was not activated during auditory or visual sentence processing, and activation was unrelated to vocabulary skills. Its gray matter density may reflect the use of an explicit learning strategy that links new words to lexical or conceptual equivalents, as used in formal education and second language acquisition. By contrast, in left posterior temporal regions, gray matter as well as auditory and visual sentence activation correlated with vocabulary knowledge throughout lifespan. We propose that these effects reflect the acquisition of vocabulary through context, when new words are learnt within the context of semantically and syntactically related words.

Incidental second language vocabulary learning from reading novels: a comparison of three mobile modes

OpenAIRE

Fisher, Tony; Sharples, Mike; Pemberton, Richard; Ogata, Hiroaki; Uosaki, Noriko; Edmonds, Phil; Hull, Anthony; Tschorn, Patrick

2012-01-01

This paper reports on a study in which incidental English vocabulary learning from three mobile modes (book, e-book and e-book with user modelling and adaptive vocabulary learning support) was investigated. The study employed a crossover design to test for vocabulary gain from reading three simplified English novels among a group of Japanese high school students, learning English as a second language. Small vocabulary gains were noted; however there was no significant difference between the m...

Integrating language awareness with critical language skills: a legal ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

It argues that this could be achieved through an approach that integrates the teaching of vocabulary and grammar with the teaching of critical language awareness. ... The results indicate how using the integrated approach in question can facilitate not only second-language learners' acquisition of linguistic competence in ...

Expressive vocabulary of children with normal and deviant phonological development.

Science.gov (United States)

Athayde, Marcia de Lima; Mota, Helena Bolli; Mezzomo, Carolina Lisbôa

2010-01-01

expressive vocabulary of children with normal and deviant phonological development. to determine whether alterations presented by children with phonological disorders occur only at the phonological level or if there are any impacts on lexical acquisition; to compare the vocabulary performance of children with phonological disorders to reference values presented by the used test. participants of the study were 36 children of both genders, 14 with phonological disorders (Study group) and 22 with typical language development (Control Group). The ABFW - Vocabulary Test (Befi-Lopes, 2000) was used for assessing the expressive vocabulary of children and later to compare the performance of both groups. the performance of children with phonological disorder in the expressive vocabulary test is similar to that of children with normal phonological development. Most of the children of both groups reached the benchmarks proposed by the test for the different semantic fields. The semantic field Places demonstrated to be the most complex for both groups. the alterations presented by children with phonological disorder area limited to the phonological level, having no impact on the lexical aspect of language.

Comparing Vocabulary Learning of EFL Learners by Using Two Different Strategies: Mobile Learning vs. Flashcards

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Azabdaftari, Behrooz; Mozaheb, Mohammad Amin

2012-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition is one of the most important aspects of language learning. There are a number of techniques and technologies which enhance vocabulary learning in the year 2012, e.g. wordlists, flashcards and m-learning. Mobile phones are among those devices which not only meet the expectations of their users for communication, but are also…

Using Storytelling to Teach Vocabulary in Language Lessons: Does It Work?

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Kirsch, Claudine

2016-01-01

It has long been claimed that stories are a powerful tool for language learning. Storytelling is often used as a discrete pedagogical approach in primary modern foreign language (MFL) lessons in England. There has, however, been little investigation into how storytelling might impact on vocabulary learning in the primary classroom. This article…

Studies in Filipino Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Ramos, Teresita V.

Very little research has been done on first or second language acquisition in the Philippines. Most second language learning studies cited in the literature concern acquisition of English in English-speaking communities, and most American studies of Filipino language acquisition are superficial, consisting primarily of morpheme analysis. The…

Out-of-School English and the possible effect it has on Second Language Acquisition : - a study on how students with different backgrounds acquire the English language outside of school

OpenAIRE

Fallkvist, Anneli

2016-01-01

Second language acquisition is a field that has fascinated linguists for numerous years and is a topic that is very much connected to how English teachers in Sweden try to teach the English language to the students in their classrooms. In 2009 Sundqvist examined what possible effects extramural English could have on learners' oral proficiency and their vocabulary. In her study she found out that extramural English “is an independent variable and a possible path to progress in English” (Sundqv...

Acquisition of a bodily-tactile language as first language

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Ask Larsen, Flemming

2013-01-01

Language acquisition in the bodily-tactile modality is difficult to understand, describe, and support. This chapter advocates a reinterpretation of the gestural and idiosyncratic bodily-tactile communication of people with congenital deafblindness (CDB) in terms of early language acquisition...... towards Tactile Sign Language (TSL). The access to participation in complex TSL culture is crucial for language acquisition. We already know how to transfer the patterns of social interaction into the bodily-tactile modality. This is the fundation on which to build actual linguistic participation. TSL...... as a first language is presently a theoretic possibility. We need more research on how to accommodate TSL to language Development and on how to fit TSL into participation in complex cultural activities....

Vocabulary Breadth and Field Dependence/Independence Cognitive Styles

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Nassim Golaghaei

2011-07-01

Full Text Available This article is primarily bidirectional in that it is concerned with two fields of cognitive styles of field-dependency/independency on one hand and breadth of vocabulary knowledge on the other hand. In other word, this research is primarily intended to investigate the nature of the students' vocabulary knowledge in the field of passive and active knowledge of L2 words as a whole with regard to their preferred cognitive style of field dependency/independency. A group of 60 undergraduate students majoring in the field of English Language Teaching was selected. They were then divided into two groups based on the basis of their preferred cognitive styles of field-dependency / independency. Four types of tests, the 1000 frequency word-level test, the passive version of vocabulary Levels Test, the Productive Version of the Vocabulary Levels Test, and the Group Imbedded Figures Test were administered to the participants. The conclusion drawn after the analysis of the data was that the fieldindependent group outperformed their field-dependent counterparts in dealing with both passive and productive vocabulary levels. Finally, the findings of this research could be interpreted as being supportive of the idea that the field-dependent/independent cognitive style could be considered as an effective factor influencing the learners' vocabulary learning in the field of second language acquisition.

Language input and acquisition in a Mayan village: how important is directed speech?

Science.gov (United States)

Shneidman, Laura A; Goldin-Meadow, Susan

2012-09-01

Theories of language acquisition have highlighted the importance of adult speakers as active participants in children's language learning. However, in many communities children are reported to be directly engaged by their caregivers only rarely (Lieven, 1994). This observation raises the possibility that these children learn language from observing, rather than participating in, communicative exchanges. In this paper, we quantify naturally occurring language input in one community where directed interaction with children has been reported to be rare (Yucatec Mayan). We compare this input to the input heard by children growing up in large families in the United States, and we consider how directed and overheard input relate to Mayan children's later vocabulary. In Study 1, we demonstrate that 1-year-old Mayan children do indeed hear a smaller proportion of total input in directed speech than children from the US. In Study 2, we show that for Mayan (but not US) children, there are great increases in the proportion of directed input that children receive between 13 and 35 months. In Study 3, we explore the validity of using videotaped data in a Mayan village. In Study 4, we demonstrate that word types directed to Mayan children from adults at 24 months (but not word types overheard by children or word types directed from other children) predict later vocabulary. These findings suggest that adult talk directed to children is important for early word learning, even in communities where much of children's early language input comes from overheard speech. © 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Motivation, strategy, and English as a foreign language vocabulary learning: A structural equation modelling study.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Yining; Lin, Chin-Hsi; Zhang, Dongbo; Choi, Yunjeong

2017-03-01

In spite of considerable advancements in our understanding of the different factors involved in achieving vocabulary-learning success, the overall pattern and interrelationships of critical factors involved in L2 vocabulary learning - particularly, the mechanisms through which learners regulate their motivation and learning strategies - remain unclear. This study examined L2 vocabulary learning, focusing on the joint influence of different motivational factors and learning strategies on the vocabulary breadth of adolescent learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in China. The participants were 107 tenth graders (68 females, 39 males) in China. The data were collected via two questionnaires, one assessing students' motivation towards English-vocabulary learning and the other their English vocabulary-learning strategies, along with a test measuring vocabulary breadth. Structural equation modelling (SEM) indicated that learning strategy partially mediated the relationship between motivation (i.e., a composite score of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation) and vocabulary learning. Separate SEM analyses for intrinsic (IM) and extrinsic motivation (EM) revealed that there were significant and positive direct and indirect effects of IM on vocabulary knowledge; and while EM's direct effect over and above that of learning strategies did not achieve significance, its indirect effect was significant and positive. The findings suggest that vocabulary-learning strategies mediate the relationship between motivation and vocabulary knowledge. In addition, IM may have a greater influence on vocabulary learning in foreign-language contexts. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

The "Robustness" of Vocabulary Intervention in the Public Schools: Targets and Techniques Employed in Speech-Language Therapy

Science.gov (United States)

Justice, Laura M.; Schmitt, Mary Beth; Murphy, Kimberly A.; Pratt, Amy; Biancone, Tricia

2014-01-01

This study examined vocabulary intervention--in terms of targets and techniques--for children with language impairment receiving speech-language therapy in public schools (i.e., non-fee-paying schools) in the United States. Vocabulary treatments and targets were examined with respect to their alignment with the empirically validated practice of…

IV. NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB): measuring language (vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding).

Science.gov (United States)

Gershon, Richard C; Slotkin, Jerry; Manly, Jennifer J; Blitz, David L; Beaumont, Jennifer L; Schnipke, Deborah; Wallner-Allen, Kathleen; Golinkoff, Roberta Michnick; Gleason, Jean Berko; Hirsh-Pasek, Kathy; Adams, Marilyn Jager; Weintraub, Sandra

2013-08-01

Mastery of language skills is an important predictor of daily functioning and health. Vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding are relatively quick and easy to measure and correlate highly with overall cognitive functioning, as well as with success in school and work. New measures of vocabulary comprehension and reading decoding (in both English and Spanish) were developed for the NIH Toolbox Cognition Battery (CB). In the Toolbox Picture Vocabulary Test (TPVT), participants hear a spoken word while viewing four pictures, and then must choose the picture that best represents the word. This approach tests receptive vocabulary knowledge without the need to read or write, removing the literacy load for children who are developing literacy and for adults who struggle with reading and writing. In the Toolbox Oral Reading Recognition Test (TORRT), participants see a letter or word onscreen and must pronounce or identify it. The examiner determines whether it was pronounced correctly by comparing the response to the pronunciation guide on a separate computer screen. In this chapter, we discuss the importance of language during childhood and the relation of language and brain function. We also review the development of the TPVT and TORRT, including information about the item calibration process and results from a validation study. Finally, the strengths and weaknesses of the measures are discussed. © 2013 The Society for Research in Child Development, Inc.

Incidental Lexicon Acquisition through Playful Interaction

OpenAIRE

Lukas Wilhelm Ansteeg

2015-01-01

This paper presents an educational game which aids learners with foreign lexicon acquisition while entertaining them at the same time. An overview over existing language learning tools is given, and a general platform for educational games for second language acquisition (SLA) is described. It introduces a specific prototype video game which teaches Italian vocabulary to the user. The application puts learning at the core of its game mechanics and combines it with a narrative and role-playing...

Effective Strategies for Turning Receptive Vocabulary into Productive Vocabulary in EFL Context

Science.gov (United States)

Faraj, Avan Kamal Aziz

2015-01-01

Vocabulary acquisition has been a main concern of EFL English teachers and learners. There have been tons of research to examine the student's level of receptive vocabulary and productive vocabulary, but no research has conducted on how turning receptive vocabulary into productive vocabulary. This study has reported the impact of the teaching…

Nonword repetition in children with cochlear implants: a potential clinical marker of poor language acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

Nittrouer, Susan; Caldwell-Tarr, Amanda; Sansom, Emily; Twersky, Jill; Lowenstein, Joanna H

2014-11-01

Cochlear implants (CIs) can facilitate the acquisition of spoken language for deaf children, but challenges remain. Language skills dependent on phonological sensitivity are most at risk for these children, so having an effective way to diagnose problems at this level would be of value for school speech-language pathologists. The goal of this study was to assess whether a nonword repetition (NWR) task could serve that purpose. Participants were 104 second graders: 49 with normal hearing (NH) and 55 with CIs. In addition to NWR, children were tested on 10 measures involving phonological awareness and processing, serial recall of words, vocabulary, reading, and grammar. Children with CIs performed more poorly than children with NH on NWR, and sensitivity to phonological structure alone explained that performance for children in both groups. For children with CIs, 2 audiological factors positively influenced outcomes on NWR: being identified with hearing loss at a younger age and having experience with wearing a hearing aid on the unimplanted ear at the time of receiving a 1st CI. NWR scores were better able to rule out than to rule in such language deficits. Well-designed NWR tasks could have clinical utility in assessments of language acquisition for school-age children with CIs.

Vocabulary growth rate from preschool to school-age years is reflected in the connectivity of the arcuate fasciculus in 14-year-old children.

Science.gov (United States)

Su, Mengmeng; Thiebaut de Schotten, Michel; Zhao, Jingjing; Song, Shuang; Zhou, Wei; Gong, Gaolang; McBride, Catherine; Ramus, Franck; Shu, Hua

2018-02-06

The acquisition of language involves the functional specialization of several cortical regions. Connectivity between these brain regions may also change with the development of language. Various studies have demonstrated that the arcuate fasciculus was essential for language function. Vocabulary learning is one of the most important skills in language acquisition. In the present longitudinal study, we explored the influence of vocabulary development on the anatomical properties of the arcuate fasciculus. Seventy-nine Chinese children participated in this study. Between age 4 and age 10, they were administered the same vocabulary task repeatedly. Following a previous study, children's vocabulary developmental trajectories were clustered into three subgroups (consistently good, catch-up, consistently poor). At age 14, diffusion tensor imaging data were collected. Using ROI-based tractography, the anterior, posterior and direct segments of the bilateral arcuate fasciculus were delineated in each child's native space. Group comparisons showed a significantly reduced fractional anisotropy in the left arcuate fasciculus of children in the consistently poor group, in particular in the posterior and direct segments of the arcuate fasciculus. No group differences were observed in the right hemisphere, nor in the left anterior segment. Further regression analyses showed that the rate of vocabulary development, rather than the initial vocabulary size, was a specific predictor of the left arcuate fasciculus connectivity. © 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

PROFILING THE VOCABULARY OF NEWS TEXTS AS CAPACITY BUILDING FOR LANGUAGE TEACHERS

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Gusti Astika

2015-01-01

Full Text Available Abstract: The importance of vocabulary in reading has been discussed extensively in the literature. Researchers claim that vocabulary is essential and has a central role in comprehension.   Development in ICT and easy access to information from the internet necessitate language teachers to have relevant knowledge and skills to utilize pedagogical tools to use authentic online materials for learning purposes.  One of such a tool is the Vocabulary Profiler that can be used to categorize lexical words in a text into different frequency levels: high, low, and academic word list. This paper discusses how to use the Vocabulary Profiler to classify words in a text into the different categories.  The utilization of this tool can significantly alleviate the workload of teachers in selecting vocabulary in  reading text which is conventionally based on teachers’ intuition and perception. The sample text in this paper was selected from VOA website which may not be found in the textbooks currently used at schools. The paper ends with some implication for teaching about vocabulary selection.

The Effects of Target Word Properties on the Incidental Acquisition of Vocabulary through Reading

Science.gov (United States)

Reynolds, Barry Lee

2016-01-01

The primary aim of this investigation was to determine what combination of target word variables (frequency, patternedness, length, cognateness, lexicalization) could best predict the difficulty of incidentally acquiring vocabulary through reading. A group of adult English First Language (EL1) (n = 20) and adult English as a Foreign Language (EFL)…

Crosslinguistic Developmental Consistency in the Composition of Toddlers’ Internal State Vocabulary: Evidence from Four Languages

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Susanne Kristen

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Mental state language, emerging in the second and third years of life in typically developing children, is one of the first signs of an explicit psychological understanding. While mental state vocabulary may serve a variety of conversational functions in discourse and thus might not always indicate psychological comprehension, there is evidence for genuine references to mental states (desires, knowledge, beliefs, and emotions early in development across languages. This present study presents parental questionnaire data on the composition of 297 toddler-aged (30-to 32-month-olds children’s internal state vocabulary in four languages: Italian, German, English, and French. The results demonstrated that across languages expressions for physiological states (e.g., hungry and tired were among the most varied, while children’s vocabulary for cognitive entities (e.g., know and think proved to be least varied. Further, consistent with studies on children’s comprehension of these concepts, across languages children’s mastery of volition terms (e.g., like to do and want preceded their mastery of cognition terms. These findings confirm the cross-linguistic consistency of children’s emerging expression of abstract psychological concepts.

The Effects of Foreign Language Motivation in Second Language Acquisition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

WU Miao-ru

2013-01-01

Foreign language motivation is regarded as one source of individual differences in second language acquisition. Learn-ing motivation is a dynamic mechanism which gives rise to learning activities. Learners ’motivation is a decisive factor for the suc-cess of second language acquisition.

Effects of Lexical Modification on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition of Iranian EFL Students

Science.gov (United States)

Negari, Giti Mousapour; Rouhi, Mahdieh

2012-01-01

The present article reports on the results of a study designed to investigate the effects of two types of lexical modification i.e., lexical simplification and elaboration, on incidental vocabulary acquisition of Iranian EFL learners.To this end, four versions of experimental texts containing 20 target words were created: baseline and simplified…

Readers, Players, and Watchers: EFL Students' Vocabulary Acquisition through Digital Video Games

Science.gov (United States)

Ebrahimzadeh, Mohsen

2017-01-01

The present study investigated vocabulary acquisition through a commercial digital video game compared to a traditional pencil-and-paper treatment. Chosen through cluster sampling, 241 male high school students (age 12-18) participated in the study. They were randomly assigned to one of the following groups. The first group, called Readers,…

Predicting vocabulary growth in children with and without specific language impairment: a longitudinal study from 2;6 to 21 years of age.

Science.gov (United States)

Rice, Mabel L; Hoffman, Lesa

2015-04-01

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often have vocabulary impairments. This study evaluates longitudinal growth in a latent trait of receptive vocabulary in affected and unaffected children ages 2;6 (years;months) to 21 years and evaluates as possible predictors maternal education, child gender, and nonverbal IQ. A sample of 519 participants (240 with SLI; 279 unaffected) received an average of 7 annual assessments for a total of 3,012 latent trait Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT) observations. Unconditional and conditional multilevel growth models were estimated to evaluate growth trajectories and predictor relationships over time. Children with SLI had lower levels of receptive vocabulary throughout the age range assessed. They did not close the gap with age peers. Children with higher nonverbal IQs had better PPVT performance, as did children of mothers with higher education. Child gender showed an advantage for young girls that leveled out with age and then became an advantage for boys from ages 10 to 21 years. All children's rate of vocabulary acquisition slowed around 12 years of age. The outcomes of the study have implications for hypothesized causal pathways for individual differences; predictions differ for children under 5 years, 6-10 years, and later ages.

Book Review : A DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF KEY TERMS IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

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Kaswan Kaswan

2014-10-01

, their acquisition might also be affected by the properties of each language. For example, the type of language could influence the order in which children acquire specific parts of the language and could also make some elements harder or easier to acquire. Their acquisition could also be influenced by social interaction and cognitive development. Factors like these could also determine whether language-learners follow the same path, detect and use the same patterns, and make the same inferences about meanings during acquisition.   In sum, first language acquisition (FLA might be affected by a number of factors, such as the properties of language, social interaction and cognitive development. What do those factors mean? First, language  is very complex. It has a sound system that allows us to use a lot of distinct words  or vocabulary, and a series of constructions for relating those words. It allows us to express many ideas, describe events, tell stories, recite poems, deliver a speech, and many other activities that make up the societies we live in. In other words, language is an integral part of everyday life that we rely on to convey needs, wants and expectations, thoughts, concerns and plans (Kaswan, 2014. In addition, language is a complex adaptive system, which emerges bottom-up from interactions of multiple agents in speech communities, rather than a static system composed of top-down grammatical rules or principles. The system is adaptive because it changes to fit new circumstances, which are also themselves continually changing (Atkinson (ed, 2011.   Another factor affecting FLA might be social interaction. Social-interactionist theory emphasizes the parts played by the child’s environment, its social instincts, its pragmatic needs and its relationship with the  car-giver. Those who take this position do not necessarily deny the existence of an innately endowed capacity for language. But they maintain that genetic factors, if they exist, are insufficient

The relationship between students' perceptual learning style preferences, language learning strategies and English language vocabulary size

OpenAIRE

Gorevanova, Anna

2000-01-01

Ankara : The Institute of Economic and Social Sciences Bilkent Univ., 2000. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2000. Includes bibliographical references leaves 54-58 This study investigated the relationship between students’ perceptual learning style preferences, language learning strategies and English language vocabulary size. It is very important for teachers to be aware of students’ preferences in learning to help them be more successful and to avoid conflicts when...

Complexity in language acquisition.

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Clark, Alexander; Lappin, Shalom

2013-01-01

Learning theory has frequently been applied to language acquisition, but discussion has largely focused on information theoretic problems-in particular on the absence of direct negative evidence. Such arguments typically neglect the probabilistic nature of cognition and learning in general. We argue first that these arguments, and analyses based on them, suffer from a major flaw: they systematically conflate the hypothesis class and the learnable concept class. As a result, they do not allow one to draw significant conclusions about the learner. Second, we claim that the real problem for language learning is the computational complexity of constructing a hypothesis from input data. Studying this problem allows for a more direct approach to the object of study--the language acquisition device-rather than the learnable class of languages, which is epiphenomenal and possibly hard to characterize. The learnability results informed by complexity studies are much more insightful. They strongly suggest that target grammars need to be objective, in the sense that the primitive elements of these grammars are based on objectively definable properties of the language itself. These considerations support the view that language acquisition proceeds primarily through data-driven learning of some form. Copyright © 2013 Cognitive Science Society, Inc.

Longitudinal vocabulary development in Australian urban Aboriginal children: Protective and risk factors.

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Short, K; Eadie, P; Descallar, J; Comino, E; Kemp, L

2017-11-01

Vocabulary is a key component of language that can impact on children's future literacy and communication. The gap between Australian Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal children's reading and academic outcomes is well reported and similar to Indigenous/non-Indigenous gaps in other nations. Determining factors that influence vocabulary acquisition over time and may be responsive to treatment is important for improving Aboriginal children's communication and academic outcomes. To determine what factors influence Australian urban Aboriginal children's receptive vocabulary acquisition and whether any of these are risks or protective for vocabulary development. One hundred thirteen Aboriginal children in South Western Sydney from the longitudinal birth cohort Gudaga study were assessed on The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test multiple times: 3 years, just prior to school entry, at the end of the first and second years of formal schooling. Multilevel models were used to determine the effects of 13 fixed and manipulable maternal, child, and family variables drawn from previous research. Higher maternal education was found to be protective at 3 years and over time. The number of children in urban Australian Aboriginal households made an impact on vocabulary development and this varied over time. From 3 to 6 years, those with early poor non-verbal cognitive skills had vocabulary skills that remained below those with stronger non-verbal skills at 3 years. Girls exhibit an earlier advantage in vocabulary acquisition, but this difference is not sustained after 4 years of age. The risk and protective factors for vocabulary development in Australian Aboriginal children are similar to those identified in other studies with some variation related to the number of children in the home. In this limited set of predictors, maternal education, gender, non-verbal cognitive skills, and the number of children in households were all shown to impact on the acquisition of vocabulary to 3�

Impact of Using CALL on Iranian EFL Learners' Vocabulary Knowledge

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Yunus, Melor Md; Salehi, Hadi; Amini, Mahdi

2016-01-01

Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL) integration in EFL contexts has intensified noticeably in recent years. This integration might be in different ways and for different purposes such as vocabulary acquisition, grammar learning, phonology, writing skills, etc. More explicitly, this study is an attempt to explore the effect of using CALL on…

It Is More than Knowledge Seeking: Examining the Effects of OpenCourseWare Lectures on Vocabulary Acquisition in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) Context

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Yang, Hui-Chi; Sun, Yu-Chih

2013-01-01

OpenCourseWare (OCW) has received increasing attention over the past few years in higher education. These courses provide appealing opportunities to view classes taught in well-established universities worldwide. The current study aims to examine how OCW lectures can serve as authentic learning materials to facilitate vocabulary acquisition for…

The Relationship between American Sign Language Vocabulary and the Development of Language-Based Reasoning Skills in Deaf Children

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Henner, Jonathan

2016-01-01

The language-based analogical reasoning abilities of Deaf children are a controversial topic. Researchers lack agreement about whether Deaf children possess the ability to reason using language-based analogies, or whether this ability is limited by a lack of access to vocabulary, both written and signed. This dissertation examines factors that…

Gabriele Stein. Developing Your English Vocabulary: A Systematic New Approach

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Michaël Abecassis

2011-10-01

Full Text Available Gabriele Stein is professor of English linguistics at the University of Heidelberg in Germany and has published widely on lexicography and lexicology. The objective of this book is twofold: to compile a lexical core and to maximise the skills of language students by developing ways of expanding this core. It is intended to function as a teaching aid for teachers of English as well as a self-study book for learners of English as a second language. Lexical knowledge is a crucial part of language acquisition and depends on different external factors such as the age and profession of the learner, his/her goals, expectations and needs in learning a language. Beck et al. (2002 have demonstrated the small extent of the emphasis on the acquisition vocabulary in school curricula.

76 FR 14954 - National Professional Development Program; Office of English Language Acquisition, Language...

Science.gov (United States)

2011-03-18

... Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students; Overview... to provide instruction that accelerates ELs' acquisition of language, literacy, and content knowledge.... Rosalinda Barrera, Assistant Deputy Secretary and Director for English Language Acquisition, Language...

Learning English Vocabulary in a Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL Environment: A Sociocultural Study of Migrant Women

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Kham Sila Ahmad

2015-05-01

Full Text Available This paper reports on a case study of a group of six non-native English speaking migrant women’s experiences learning English vocabulary in a mobile assisted language learning (MALL environment at a small community centre in Western Australia. A sociocultural approach to learning vocabulary was adopted in designing the MALL lessons that the women undertook. The women provided demographic information, responded to questions in a pre-MALL semi-structured interview, attended the MALL lessons, and completed a post-MALL semi-structured interview. This study explores the sociocultural factors that affect migrant women’s language learning in general, and vocabulary in particular. The women’s responses to MALL lessons and using the tablet reveal a positive effect in their vocabulary learning.

Foreign-grammar acquisition while watching subtitled television programmes.

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Van Lommel, Sven; Laenen, Annouschka; d'Ydewalle, Géry

2006-06-01

Past research has shown that watching a subtitled foreign movie (i.e. foreign language in the soundtrack and native language in the subtitles) leads to considerable foreign-language vocabulary acquisition; however, acquisition of the grammatical rules has failed to emerge. The aim of this study was to obtain evidence for the acquisition of grammatical rules in watching subtitled foreign movies. Given an informal context, younger children were predicted to outperform older children in acquiring a foreign language; however, older children will take more advantage of explicit instruction compared with younger children. In Experiment 1, 62 sixth-graders from a primary school and 47 sixth-graders from a secondary school volunteered to participate. The participants in Experiment 2 were 94 sixth-graders from primary schools and 84 sixth-graders from secondary schools. The two experiments manipulated the instructions (incidental- vs. intentional-language learning). Moreover, before the experiments began, some participants explicitly received some of the foreign grammatical rules (presented rules), while the movie contained cases of presented rules as well as cases of rules which had to be inferred (not-presented rules). Rule acquisition through the movie only was not obtained; there was a strong effect of advance rule presentation but only on the items of presented rules, particularly among the older participants. Contrary to vocabulary, grammar may be too complicated to acquire from a rather short movie presentation.

The receptive-expressive gap in the vocabulary of young second-language learners: Robustness and possible mechanisms

OpenAIRE

Gibson, Todd A.; Oller, D. Kimbrough; Jarmulowicz, Linda; Ethington, Corinna A.

2012-01-01

Adults and children learning a second language show difficulty accessing expressive vocabulary that appears accessible receptively in their first language (L1). We call this discrepancy the receptive-expressive gap. Kindergarten Spanish (L1) - English (L2) sequential bilinguals were given standardized tests of receptive and expressive vocabulary in both Spanish and English. We found a small receptive-expressive gap in English but a large receptive-expressive gap in Spanish. We categorized chi...

Iconic Factors and Language Word Order

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Moeser, Shannon Dawn

1975-01-01

College students were presented with an artificial language in which spoken nonsense words were correlated with visual references. Inferences regarding vocabulary acquisition were drawn, and it was suggested that the processing of the language was mediated through a semantic memory system. (CK)

Task-based incidental vocabulary learning in L2 Arabic: The role of proficiency and task performance

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Ayman A. Mohamed

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This study tests the claim that word learning in a second language are contingent upon a task’s involvement load (i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes, as proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001. Fifty-three English-speaking learners of Arabic were assigned to one of three vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the degree of involvement: reading comprehension with glosses (low, fill-in-the-gap task (medium, and sentence writing (high. Ten words, selected based on a pretest, were targeted in the tasks. Results showed a main effect of task, with the sentence writing task yielding the highest rates of vocabulary learning, followed by the gap-fill task, and finally the reading comprehension task. A significant correlation was found between accuracy of performance across participants and their subsequent vocabulary acquisition in the immediate posttest. Within groups, only the performance of the writing group correlated significantly with their posttest scores. Results of the present study validate the hypothesis and point to multiple factors at play in incidental vocabulary acquisition. The study provides further arguments to refine the hypothesis and implement pedagogical practices that accommodate incidental learning in foreign language settings.

Papers in Language Learning and Language Acquisition. AFinLA Yearbook 1980. No. 28.

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Sajavaara, Kari, Ed.; And Others

Papers include: (1) "Language Acquisitional Universals: L1, L2, Pidgins, and FLT" (Henning Wode); (2) "Language Acquisition, Language Learning and the School Curriculum" (Norman F. Davies); (3) "Language Teaching and Acquisition of Communication" (Kari Sajavaara, Jaakko Lehtonen); (4) "On the Distinction between…

The Effect of Context (Humorous vs. Non-humorous on Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention of Iranian EFL Learners

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Mohsen Ghaffari

2012-11-01

Full Text Available For almost four decades, ESL/EFL scholars have been trying to find which learning type, contextualized vs. decontextualized, leads to better vocabulary acquisition and retention. In an attempt to solve this problem, this study tried to examine the possible effectiveness of using humorous context on vocabulary acquisition and retention. Another issue that was undertaken in the present study was comparing the efficiency of contextualized and decontextualized vocabulary learning and retention. For this purpose, 58 Iranian EFL learners were categorized into 3 groups: a humorous, b non-humorous, and c decontextualized. The findings were analyzed using one-way ANOVA and Tukey post hoc test. As the results revealed, the participants in decontextualized group outperformed the participants in both humorous and non-humorous groups. However, it should be noted that the performance of humorous group was significantly better than the performance of non-humorous group.

The Effects of Multimedia Annotations on Iranian EFL Learners’ L2 Vocabulary Learning

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Saeideh Ahangari

2010-05-01

Full Text Available In our modern technological world, Computer-Assisted Language learning (CALL is a new realm towards learning a language in general, and learning L2 vocabulary in particular. It is assumed that the use of multimedia annotations promotes language learners’ vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, this study set out to investigate the effects of different multimedia annotations (still picture annotations, dynamic picture annotations, and written annotations on L2 vocabulary learning. To fulfill this objective, the researchers selected sixty four EFL learners as the participants of this study. The participants were randomly assigned to one of the four groups: a control group that received no annotations and three experimental groups that received:  still picture annotations, dynamic picture annotations, and written annotations. Each participant was required to take a pre-test. A vocabulary post- test was also designed and administered to the participants in order to assess the efficacy of each annotation. First for each group a paired t-test was conducted between their pre and post test scores in order to observe their improvement; then through an ANCOVA test the performance of four groups was compared. The results showed that using multimedia annotations resulted in a significant difference in the participants’ vocabulary learning. Based on the results of the present study, multimedia annotations are suggested as a vocabulary teaching strategy.

75 FR 13751 - Office of English Language Acquisition; Overview Information; Language Enhancement, and Academic...

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2010-03-23

... DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office of English Language Acquisition; Overview Information; Language... Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic Achievement for Limited English Proficient Students (OELA) may... Secretary and Director, Office of English Language Acquisition, Language Enhancement, and Academic...

Let the Music Play!--A Short-Term but No Long-Term Detrimental Effect of Vocal Background Music with Familiar Language Lyrics on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

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de Groot, Annette M. B.; Smedinga, Hilde E.

2014-01-01

Participants learned foreign vocabulary by means of the paired-associates learning procedure in three conditions: (a) in silence, (b) with vocal music with lyrics in a familiar language playing in the background, or (c) with vocal music with lyrics in an unfamiliar language playing in the background. The vocabulary to learn varied in concreteness…

Music and Early Language Acquisition

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Brandt, Anthony; Gebrian, Molly; Slevc, L. Robert

2012-01-01

Language is typically viewed as fundamental to human intelligence. Music, while recognized as a human universal, is often treated as an ancillary ability – one dependent on or derivative of language. In contrast, we argue that it is more productive from a developmental perspective to describe spoken language as a special type of music. A review of existing studies presents a compelling case that musical hearing and ability is essential to language acquisition. In addition, we challenge the prevailing view that music cognition matures more slowly than language and is more difficult; instead, we argue that music learning matches the speed and effort of language acquisition. We conclude that music merits a central place in our understanding of human development. PMID:22973254

How do verbal short-term memory and working memory relate to the acquisition of vocabulary and grammar? : A comparison between first and second language learners

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verhagen, Josje; Leseman, Paul

Previous studies show that verbal short-term memory (VSTM) is related to vocabulary learning, whereas verbal working memory (VWM) is related to grammar learning in children learning a second language (L2) in the classroom. In this study, we investigated whether the same relationships apply to

Morphology and Vocabulary Acquisition: Using Visual Cues from Word Parts to Enhance Recall and Decode Newly Encountered Words

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Bellomo, Tom

2012-01-01

An enhanced replication of an original quasi-experiment (Tom Bellomo, 2009b) was conducted to quantify the extent of long term retention of word parts and vocabulary. Such were introduced as part of a vocabulary acquisition strategy in a developmental reading course at one southeast four-year college. Aside from incorporating changes to the test…

First and second language acquisition: Towards a reconcillation

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Nau Nicole

2015-07-01

Full Text Available For the past two decades, research on first language acquisition on the one side, and on second language acquisition and learning on the other have largely developed separately, probably as a reaction to the failure of earlier attempts to use the same methods or simply transfer insights gained in one of the fields to the other. T his article argues that a reconciliation may be fruitful, provided that different aspects which have often got blurred in the discussion are considered separately. These aspects include the assessment of multilingualism and monolingualism, the age factor and the definition of “first” and “second” language, the understanding of linguistic competence and of completeness of acquisition, different forms of acquisition and learning, and uniformity vs. individual differences in the process of language acquisition. By challenging some widely held views on characteristics of first language acquisition and its differences to second language learning, more fine-grained research questions are revealed, some of which have been addressed in recent studies on language acquisition and multilingualism

The vocabulary profile of Slovak children with primary language impairment compared to typically developing Slovak children measured by LITMUS-CLT.

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Kapalková, Svetlana; Slančová, Daniela

2017-01-01

This study compared a sample of children with primary language impairment (PLI) and typically developing age-matched children using the crosslinguistic lexical tasks (CLT-SK). We also compared the PLI children with typically developing language-matched younger children who were matched on the basis of receptive vocabulary. Overall, statistical testing showed that the vocabulary of the PLI children was significantly different from the vocabulary of the age-matched children, but not statistically different from the younger children who were matched on the basis of their receptive vocabulary size. Qualitative analysis of the correct answers revealed that the PLI children showed higher rigidity compared to the younger language-matched children who are able to use more synonyms or derivations across word class in naming tasks. Similarly, an examination of the children's naming errors indicated that the language-matched children exhibited more semantic errors, whereas PLI children showed more associative errors.

Mobile-Assisted Language Learning: Student Attitudes to Using Smartphones to Learn English Vocabulary

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Davie, Neil; Hilber, Tobias

2015-01-01

This project examines mobile-assisted language learning (MALL) and in particular the attitudes of undergraduate engineering students at the South Westphalia University of Applied Sciences towards the use of the smartphone app Quizlet to learn English vocabulary. Initial data on attitudes to learning languages and to the use of mobile devices to do…

The effect of presentation rate on foreign-language vocabulary learning.

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Zeelenberg, René; de Jonge, Mario; Tabbers, Huib K; Pecher, Diane

2015-01-01

The present study examined the effect of presentation rate on foreign-language vocabulary learning. Experiment 1 varied presentation rates from 1 s to 16 s per pair while keeping the total study time per pair constant. Speakers of English studied Dutch-English translation pairs (e.g., kikker-frog) for 16 × 1 s, 8 × 2 s, 4 × 4 s, 2 × 8 s, or 1 × 16 s. The results showed a nonmonotonic relationship between presentation rate and recall performance for both translation directions (Dutch → English and English → Dutch). Performance was best for intermediate presentation rates and dropped off for short (1 s) or long (16 s) presentation rates. Experiment 2 showed that the nonmonotonic relationship between presentation rate and recall performance was still present after a 1-day retention interval for both translation directions. Our results suggest that a presentation rate in the order of 4 s results in optimal learning of foreign-language vocabulary.

The effects of sign language on spoken language acquisition in children with hearing loss: a systematic review protocol.

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Fitzpatrick, Elizabeth M; Stevens, Adrienne; Garritty, Chantelle; Moher, David

2013-12-06

Permanent childhood hearing loss affects 1 to 3 per 1000 children and frequently disrupts typical spoken language acquisition. Early identification of hearing loss through universal newborn hearing screening and the use of new hearing technologies including cochlear implants make spoken language an option for most children. However, there is no consensus on what constitutes optimal interventions for children when spoken language is the desired outcome. Intervention and educational approaches ranging from oral language only to oral language combined with various forms of sign language have evolved. Parents are therefore faced with important decisions in the first months of their child's life. This article presents the protocol for a systematic review of the effects of using sign language in combination with oral language intervention on spoken language acquisition. Studies addressing early intervention will be selected in which therapy involving oral language intervention and any form of sign language or sign support is used. Comparison groups will include children in early oral language intervention programs without sign support. The primary outcomes of interest to be examined include all measures of auditory, vocabulary, language, speech production, and speech intelligibility skills. We will include randomized controlled trials, controlled clinical trials, and other quasi-experimental designs that include comparator groups as well as prospective and retrospective cohort studies. Case-control, cross-sectional, case series, and case studies will be excluded. Several electronic databases will be searched (for example, MEDLINE, EMBASE, CINAHL, PsycINFO) as well as grey literature and key websites. We anticipate that a narrative synthesis of the evidence will be required. We will carry out meta-analysis for outcomes if clinical similarity, quantity and quality permit quantitative pooling of data. We will conduct subgroup analyses if possible according to severity

Vocabulary Development in European Portuguese: A Replication Study Using the Language Development Survey

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Rescorla, Leslie; Nyame, Josephine; Dias, Pedro

2016-01-01

Purpose: Our objective was to replicate previous cross­linguistic findings by comparing Portuguese and U.S. children with respect to (a) effects of language, gender, and age on vocabulary size; (b) lexical composition; and (c) late talking. Method: We used the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989) with children (18-35 months) learning…

Inter-individual variation among young children growing up in a bidialectal community : the acquisition of dialect and standard Dutch vocabulary.

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Francot, Ryanne; van den Heuij, Kirsten; Blom, Elma; Heeringa, W.J.; Cornips, L.M.E.A.; Buchstaller, Isabella; Siebenhaar, Beat

2017-01-01

This study focuses on the relationship between dialect use and the acquisition of standard Dutch vocabulary by young children in the Dutch province of Limburg. The results of a newly-developed dialect expressive vocabulary task show extensive inter-individual variation that does not support a

Anatomical traces of vocabulary acquisition in the adolescent brain.

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Lee, HweeLing; Devlin, Joseph T; Shakeshaft, Clare; Stewart, Lauren H; Brennan, Amanda; Glensman, Jen; Pitcher, Katherine; Crinion, Jenny; Mechelli, Andrea; Frackowiak, Richard S J; Green, David W; Price, Cathy J

2007-01-31

A surprising discovery in recent years is that the structure of the adult human brain changes when a new cognitive or motor skill is learned. This effect is seen as a change in local gray or white matter density that correlates with behavioral measures. Critically, however, the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms underlying these learning-related structural brain changes remain unknown. Here, we combined brain imaging, detailed behavioral analyses, and white matter tractography in English-speaking monolingual adolescents to show that a critical linguistic prerequisite (namely, knowledge of vocabulary) is proportionately related to relative gray matter density in bilateral posterior supramarginal gyri. The effect was specific to the number of words learned, regardless of verbal fluency or other cognitive abilities. The identified region was found to have direct connections to other inferior parietal areas that separately process either the sounds of words or their meanings, suggesting that the posterior supramarginal gyrus plays a role in linking the basic components of vocabulary knowledge. Together, these analyses highlight the cognitive and anatomical mechanisms that mediate an essential language skill.

Child Language Acquisition: Contrasting Theoretical Approaches

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Ambridge, Ben; Lieven, Elena V. M.

2011-01-01

Is children's language acquisition based on innate linguistic structures or built from cognitive and communicative skills? This book summarises the major theoretical debates in all of the core domains of child language acquisition research (phonology, word-learning, inflectional morphology, syntax and binding) and includes a complete introduction…

Cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects on verbal working memory and vocabulary: testing language-minority children with an immigrant background.

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de Abreu, Pascale M J Engel; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L; Befi-Lopes, Debora M

2013-04-01

In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary (comprehension and production), executive-loaded working memory (counting recall and backward digit recall), and verbal short-term memory (digit recall and nonword repetition). Cross-linguistic task performance was compared within individuals. The language-minority children were also compared with multilingual language-majority children from Luxembourg and Portuguese-speaking monolinguals from Brazil without an immigrant background matched on age, sex, socioeconomic status, and nonverbal reasoning. Results showed that (a) verbal working memory measures involving numerical memoranda were relatively independent of test language and cultural status; (b) language status had an impact on the repetition of high- but not on low-wordlike L2 nonwords; (c) large cross-linguistic and cross-cultural effects emerged for productive vocabulary; (d) cross-cultural effects were less pronounced for vocabulary comprehension with no differences between groups if only L1 words relevant to the home context were considered. The study indicates that linguistic and cognitive assessments for language-minority children require careful choice among measures to ensure valid results. Implications for testing culturally and linguistically diverse children are discussed.

Input and Intake in Language Acquisition

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Gagliardi, Ann C.

2012-01-01

This dissertation presents an approach for a productive way forward in the study of language acquisition, sealing the rift between claims of an innate linguistic hypothesis space and powerful domain general statistical inference. This approach breaks language acquisition into its component parts, distinguishing the input in the environment from…

Functional connectivity changes in second language vocabulary learning.

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Ghazi Saidi, Ladan; Perlbarg, Vincent; Marrelec, Guillaume; Pélégrini-Issac, Mélani; Benali, Habib; Ansaldo, Ana-Inés

2013-01-01

Functional connectivity changes in the language network (Price, 2010), and in a control network involved in second language (L2) processing (Abutalebi & Green, 2007) were examined in a group of Persian (L1) speakers learning French (L2) words. Measures of network integration that characterize the global integrative state of a network (Marrelec, Bellec et al., 2008) were gathered, in the shallow and consolidation phases of L2 vocabulary learning. Functional connectivity remained unchanged across learning phases for L1, whereas total, between- and within-network integration levels decreased as proficiency for L2 increased. The results of this study provide the first functional connectivity evidence regarding the dynamic role of the language processing and cognitive control networks in L2 learning (Abutalebi, Cappa, & Perani, 2005; Altarriba & Heredia, 2008; Leonard et al., 2011; Parker-Jones et al., 2011). Thus, increased proficiency results in a higher degree of automaticity and lower cognitive effort (Segalowitz & Hulstijn, 2005). Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Identifying Core Vocabulary for Urdu Language Speakers Using Augmentative Alternative Communication

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Mukati, Abdul Samad

2013-01-01

The purpose of this research is to identify a core set of vocabulary used by native Urdu language (UL) speakers during dyadic conversation for social interaction and relationship building. This study was conducted in Karachi, Pakistan at an institution of higher education. This research seeks to distinguish between general (nonspecific…

Learning second language vocabulary: neural dissociation of situation-based learning and text-based learning.

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Jeong, Hyeonjeong; Sugiura, Motoaki; Sassa, Yuko; Wakusawa, Keisuke; Horie, Kaoru; Sato, Shigeru; Kawashima, Ryuta

2010-04-01

Second language (L2) acquisition necessitates learning and retrieving new words in different modes. In this study, we attempted to investigate the cortical representation of an L2 vocabulary acquired in different learning modes and in cross-modal transfer between learning and retrieval. Healthy participants learned new L2 words either by written translations (text-based learning) or in real-life situations (situation-based learning). Brain activity was then measured during subsequent retrieval of these words. The right supramarginal gyrus and left middle frontal gyrus were involved in situation-based learning and text-based learning, respectively, whereas the left inferior frontal gyrus was activated when learners used L2 knowledge in a mode different from the learning mode. Our findings indicate that the brain regions that mediate L2 memory differ according to how L2 words are learned and used. Copyright 2009 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Effectiveness of Computer-Based Spaced Repetition in Foreign Language Vocabulary Instruction: A Double-Blind Study

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Chukharev-Hudilainen, Evgeny; Klepikova, Tatiana A.

2016-01-01

The purpose of the present paper is twofold; first, we present an empirical study evaluating the effectiveness of a novel CALL tool for foreign language vocabulary instruction based on spaced repetition of target vocabulary items. The study demonstrates that by spending an average of three minutes each day on automatically generated vocabulary…

Early vocabulary development in children with bilateral cochlear implants.

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Välimaa, Taina; Kunnari, Sari; Laukkanen-Nevala, Päivi; Lonka, Eila

2018-01-01

adjectives remained below 10% in the vocabularies of 1-400 words. There was a significant main effect of time, gender, maternal education and residual hearing with hearing aids before implantation on early receptive vocabulary growth. Time and residual hearing with hearing aids had a significant main effect also on expressive vocabulary growth. Vocabulary development of children with bilateral CIs may be delayed. Thus, early vocabulary development needs to be assessed carefully in order to provide children and families with timely and targeted early intervention for vocabulary acquisition. © 2017 Royal College of Speech and Language Therapists.

The Impact of the "First Language First" Model on Vocabulary Development among Preschool Bilingual Children

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Schwartz, Mila

2014-01-01

The aim of this exploratory study was to examine the role of the "First Language First" model for preschool bilingual education in the development of vocabulary depth. The languages studied were Russian (L1) and Hebrew (L2) among bilingual children aged 4-5 years in Israel. According to this model, the children's first language of…

Effects of Opportunities for Word Retrieval during Second Language Vocabulary Learning

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Barcroft, Joe

2007-01-01

Research suggests that memory for an item improves when one is allowed to retrieve the item (Slamecka & Graf, 1978). This study explored benefits of providing opportunities for target-word retrieval during second language vocabulary learning. English speakers studied new Spanish words while viewing 24 word-picture pairs. They first viewed all 24…

Behavioral correlates of changes in hippocampal gray matter structure during acquisition of foreign vocabulary.

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Bellander, Martin; Berggren, Rasmus; Mårtensson, Johan; Brehmer, Yvonne; Wenger, Elisabeth; Li, Tie-Qiang; Bodammer, Nils C; Shing, Yee-Lee; Werkle-Bergner, Markus; Lövdén, Martin

2016-05-01

Experience can affect human gray matter volume. The behavioral correlates of individual differences in such brain changes are not well understood. In a group of Swedish individuals studying Italian as a foreign language, we investigated associations among time spent studying, acquired vocabulary, baseline performance on memory tasks, and gray matter changes. As a way of studying episodic memory training, the language learning focused on acquiring foreign vocabulary and lasted for 10weeks. T1-weighted structural magnetic resonance imaging and cognitive testing were performed before and after the studies. Learning behavior was monitored via participants' use of a smartphone application dedicated to the study of vocabulary. A whole-brain analysis showed larger changes in gray matter structure of the right hippocampus in the experimental group (N=33) compared to an active control group (N=23). A first path analyses revealed that time spent studying rather than acquired knowledge significantly predicted change in gray matter structure. However, this association was not significant when adding performance on baseline memory measures into the model, instead only the participants' performance on a short-term memory task with highly similar distractors predicted the change. This measure may tap similar individual difference factors as those involved in gray matter plasticity of the hippocampus. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Effects of Adapted Dialogic Reading on Oral Language and Vocabulary Knowledge of Latino Preschoolers at Risk for English Language Delays

Science.gov (United States)

Correa, Vivian I.; Lo, Ya-Yu; Godfrey-Hurrell, Kristi; Swart, Katie; Baker, Doris Luft

2015-01-01

In this single-case design study, we examined the effects of an adapted dialogic reading intervention on the oral language and vocabulary skills of four Latino preschool children who were at risk for English language delays. We used adapted dialogic reading strategies in English and two literacy games that included a rapid naming activity and…

Is vocabulary growth influenced by the relations among words in a language learner's vocabulary?

Science.gov (United States)

Sailor, Kevin M

2013-09-01

Several recent studies have explored the applicability of the preferential attachment principle to account for vocabulary growth. According to this principle, network growth can be described by a process in which existing nodes recruit new nodes with a probability that is an increasing function of their connectivity within the existing network. The current study combined subjective estimates of the age of acquisition (AoA) and associations among words in a large corpus to estimate the organization of semantic knowledge at multiple points in vocabulary growth. Consistent with previous studies, the number of connections or relations among words followed a power law distribution in which relatively few words were highly connected with other words and most words were connected to relatively few words. In addition, the growth in the number of connections of a word was a linear function of its initial number of connections, and the ratio of connections to any two words was relatively constant over time. Finally, number of connections to known words was a reliable predictor of a word's AoA. All of these findings can be shown to be consistent with the preferential attachment principle. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Predicting Ethnic Minority Children's Vocabulary from Socioeconomic Status, Maternal Language and Home Reading Input: Different Pathways for Host and Ethnic Language

Science.gov (United States)

Prevoo, Mariëlle J. L.; Malda, Maike; Mesman, Judi; Emmen, Rosanneke A. G.; Yeniad, Nihal; Van Ijzendoorn, Marinus; Linting, Mariëlle

2014-01-01

When bilingual children enter formal reading education, host language proficiency becomes increasingly important. This study investigated the relation between socioeconomic status (SES), maternal language use, reading input, and vocabulary in a sample of 111 six-year-old children of first- and second-generation Turkish immigrant parents in the…

Using Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition to Enrich the Students Vocabulary Mastery

OpenAIRE

Asmayanti, St

2015-01-01

The research aimed to find out the improvement the students'vocabulary in terms of improving their understanding about of nouns and adjectives. To explain the increase, the researcher used a classroom action research (CAR) which was conducted in two cycles in which each cycle consisted of four meetings.The subject was the students at the eight grade of SMP Askari Pallangga Gowa. The number of samples consisted of 37 students. The research findings indicated that using Incidental Vocabulary Ac...

Effects of Stimulus Characteristics and Background Music on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning and Forgetting

Science.gov (United States)

de Groot, Annette M. B.

2006-01-01

This study examined the effects of three stimulus variables and background music on paired-associate learning of foreign language (FL) vocabulary. The stimulus variables were the frequency and concreteness of the native language (L1) words and the (phonotactical) typicality of the FL words. Sixty-four L1-FL pairs were presented for learning six…

Vocabulary Attrition among Adult English as a Foreign Language Persian Learners

Science.gov (United States)

Asgari, Azadeh; Bin Mustapha, Ghazali

2010-01-01

This study aims to investigate the attrition rate of EFL concrete and abstract vocabulary among continuing and non-continuing Iranian female and male English language learners across different proficiency levels. They are students of a University and majored in different fields (between 20 and 25 years old). There was no treatment in this study…

Supports for Vocabulary Instruction in Early Language and Literacy Methods Textbooks

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Wright, Tanya S.; Peltier, Marliese R.

2016-01-01

The goal of this study was to examine the extent to which the content and recommendations in recently published early language and literacy methods textbooks may support early childhood teachers in learning to provide vocabulary instruction for young children. We completed a content analysis of 9 textbooks with coding at the sentence level.…

Book Review : A DICTIONARY OF LANGUAGE ACQUISITION: A COMPREHENSIVE OVERVIEW OF KEY TERMS IN FIRST AND SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

OpenAIRE

Kaswan Kaswan

2014-01-01

As  with language, language acquisition (LA), particularly second language acquisition (SLA)  is not simple. SLA  is complex  and paradoxical.  SLA is complex because it cannot be scrutinized using a single approach.  SLA  is complex;  nevertheless  it is  a curious fact that the study of  (SLA has historically been dominated by a single broad approach—that which goes by the name of “cognitive (Atkinson (ed), 2011). Among views on acquisition which can be characterized as cognitive are: 1...

THE VOCABULARY TEACHING AND VOCABULARY LEARNING: PERCEPTION, STRATEGIES, AND INFLUENCES ON STUDENTS' VOCABULARY MASTERY

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Dewi Nur Asyiah

2017-11-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary plays pivotal role in foreign language learning. However, vocabulary teaching and vocabulary learning in TEFL seems to be neglected. The study was aimed to investigate how vocabulary teaching and learning are perceived by teacher and students, strategies to teach and learn the vocabulary, and also influences of students’ vocabulary learning strategy on their vocabulary mastery. Accordingly, a mix method design was employed to one English teacher and 30 junior high school students to reveal the issues being investigated. The findings showed that both teacher and students have positive response on vocabulary teaching and learning. Concerning strategies, it was found that teacher mostly employed Fully-contextual strategy, meanwhile Determination and Metacognitive strategy were found as the most favored VLS chosen by students. The study also confirmed that there is a significant relationship between students’ vocabulary learning strategy and their vocabulary mastery (r-value Discovery = .023 and r-value Consolidating = .000, p<.05. It is recommended for EFL teachers to give a bigger portion to vocabulary in the EFL teaching and to teach vocabulary using the combination of fully-contextual and de-contextual strategy. It is also suggested to introduce students to various kinds of vocabulary learning strategies.  

QAL: a language for nuclear physics data acquisition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Perry, D.G.

1979-01-01

QAL is a data-acquisition language designed to facilitate the experimental interface to the LAMPF-designed Q data-acquisition system. The language constructs available are reviewed. The language is designed around the CAMAC standard and provides experimenters a language interface to the hardware which is easy to understand. Software written in the QAL language is modular and simple to modify

A Comparative Study of Paper-based and Computer-based Contextualization in Vocabulary Learning of EFL Students

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Mousa Ahmadian

2015-04-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary acquisition is one of the largest and most important tasks in language classes. New technologies, such as computers, have helped a lot in this way. The importance of the issue led the researchers to do the present study which concerns the comparison of contextualized vocabulary learning on paper and through Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL. To this end, 52 Pre-university EFL learners were randomly assigned in two groups: a paper-based group (PB and a computer-based (CB group each with 26 learners. The PB group received PB contextualization of vocabulary items, while the CB group received CB contextualization of the vocabulary items thorough PowerPoint (PP software. One pretest, posttest, along with an immediate and a delayed posttest were given to the learners. Paired samples t-test of pretest and posttest and independent samples t-test of the delayed and immediate posttest were executed by SPSS software. The results revealed that computer-based contextualization had more effects on vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL learners than paper-based contextualization of the words. Keywords: Computer-based contextualization, Paper-based contextualization, Vocabulary learning, CALL

Lexical Specificity Training Effects in Second Language Learners

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Janssen, Caressa; Segers, Eliane; McQueen, James M.; Verhoeven, Ludo

2015-01-01

Children who start formal education in a second language may experience slower vocabulary growth in that language and subsequently experience disadvantages in literacy acquisition. The current study asked whether lexical specificity training can stimulate bilingual children's phonological awareness, which is considered to be a precursor to…

A Study on the Effects of Meditation on Anxiety and Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

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Önem, E. E.

2015-01-01

This study aimed to find whether meditation can be effective in terms of anxiety and vocabulary learning in a foreign language learning context. To test this, an experimental pre-test and post-test study was designed. 61 students (14 male-47 female) from the English Language Teaching Department of a state university in Turkey were assigned into…

A Research on Second Language Acquisition and College English Teaching

Science.gov (United States)

Li, Changyu

2009-01-01

It was in the 1970s that American linguist S.D. Krashen created the theory of "language acquisition". The theories on second language acquisition were proposed based on the study on the second language acquisition process and its rules. Here, the second language acquisition process refers to the process in which a learner with the…

A Comparison between Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary in Bilingual and Monolingual South African School Beginners: Implications for Bilingual Language Assessment

Science.gov (United States)

Cockcroft, Kate

2016-01-01

This study compared bilingual and monolingual school beginners on measures of simple and complex verbal working memory and receptive and expressive vocabulary. The aim was to determine whether the tests of working memory are fairer measures of language ability than the vocabulary tests for bilingual children when tested in their second language.…

Multimedia Storybooks: Supporting Vocabulary for Students Who Are Deaf/Hard-of-Hearing

Science.gov (United States)

Donne, Vicki; Briley, Margaret L.

2015-01-01

A single case study examined the use of multimedia storybooks on the vocabulary acquisition of 7 preschool students who are deaf/hard of hearing in two classrooms at a school for the deaf in the U.S. Participants also included 3 speech-language pathologists. Students spent an average of 7.1 minutes daily working with the multimedia storybooks and…

EDMODO AS A MEDIA TO TEACH VOCABULARY

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Sutrisno Sadji Evenddy

2016-03-01

Full Text Available This article aims at intoducing how to use Edmodo to teach vocabulary. Vocabulary is a component of English language. When we are speaking and writing, we need to master vocabulary related to certain topic. Therefore vocabulary is important thing in learning language. But, mastering English vocabularies is not easy. Teacher needs a media to make an interesting teaching-learning process. One of the most accepted trends in the field of teaching vocabulary in a foreign language teaching is Computer-Assisted Language Learning (CALL. CALL has several applications that can be used by the teachers in teaching vocabulary. Computer and mobile telephone internet allow immediate connection to a server. In the internet browser the teachers and students can browse Edmodo. One of media is Edmodo. Edmodo is one of social media which can be operated by students, teachers or lecturers, and parents. It is able to be used to post various assignments and students’ learning achievement, actual discussion topics, video, appointments, and to facilitate students’ polls which are related to teaching learning process.

Training in Metacognitive Strategies for Students’ Vocabulary Improvement by Using Learning Journals

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Itala Diaz

2015-01-01

Full Text Available This study examined the effects of metacognitive strategies to help beginning young learners with difficulties increasing and retaining vocabulary. This was a qualitative study in which participants first went through metacognitive strategy instruction to provide awareness of learning strategies. Following this instruction, students underwent a set of five interventions based on the cognitive academic language learning approach instructional model. These interventions, together with journaling progress, were used to train them in the use of the metacognitive strategies planning, monitoring, and evaluating. The findings showed that metacognitive strategy training has positively contributed to vocabulary acquisition skills, as participants were able to raise consciousness about some learning strategies and the use of metacognitive strategies to increase their vocabulary learning.

Effects of Video Caption Modes on English Listening Comprehension and Vocabulary Acquisition Using Handheld Devices

Science.gov (United States)

Hsu, Ching-Kun; Hwang, Gwo-Jen; Chang, Yu-Tzu; Chang, Chih-Kai

2013-01-01

This study investigates the effects of different display modes of video captions on mobile devices, including non-caption, full-caption, and target-word modes, on the English comprehension and vocabulary acquisition of fifth graders. During the one-month experiment, the status of the students' English listening comprehension and vocabulary…

Language Acquisition and Language Learning: Developing the System of External and Internal Perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Zascerinska, Jelena

2010-01-01

Introduction. The use of three-five languages is of the greatest importance in order to form varied cooperative networks for the creation of new knowledge. Aim of the paper is to analyze the synergy between language acquisition and language learning. Materials and Methods. The search for the synergy between language acquisition and language…

Second Language Vocabulary Growth at Advanced Level

Science.gov (United States)

Ozturk, Meral

2016-01-01

This study investigated the receptive vocabulary growth of advanced EFL learners in an English-medium degree programme. The study used the Vocabulary Size Test in a cross-sectional design to measure the vocabulary size of learners at various stages of study. The effect of word frequency on vocabulary development and the presence of an…

Vocabulary Teaching in Foreign Language via Audiovisual Method Technique of Listening and Following Writing Scripts

Science.gov (United States)

Bozavli, Ebubekir

2017-01-01

The objective is hereby study is to compare the effects of conventional and audiovisual methods on learning efficiency and success of retention with regard to vocabulary teaching in foreign language. Research sample consists of 21 undergraduate and 7 graduate students studying at Department of French Language Teaching, Kazim Karabekir Faculty of…

Language acquisition from a biolinguistic perspective.

Science.gov (United States)

Crain, Stephen; Koring, Loes; Thornton, Rosalind

2017-10-01

This paper describes the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. We contrast the biolinguistic approach with a usage-based approach. We argue that the biolinguistic approach is superior because it provides more accurate and more extensive generalizations about the properties of human languages, as well as a better account of how children acquire human languages. To distinguish between these accounts, we focus on how child and adult language differ both in sentence production and in sentence understanding. We argue that the observed differences resist explanation using the cognitive mechanisms that are invoked by the usage-based approach. In contrast, the biolinguistic approach explains the qualitative parametric differences between child and adult language. Explaining how child and adult language differ and demonstrating that children perceive unity despite apparent diversity are two of the hallmarks of the biolinguistic approach to language acquisition. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

A review of theoretical perspectives on language learning and acquisition

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Norbahira Mohamad Nor

2018-01-01

Full Text Available This paper reviews three main theoretical perspectives on language learning and acquisition in an attempt to elucidate how people acquire their first language (L1 and learn their second language (L2. Behaviorist, Innatist and Interactionist offer different perspectives on language learning and acquisition which influence the acceptance of how an L2 should be taught and learned. This paper also explicates the relationship between L1 and L2, and elaborates on the similarities and differences between the two. This paper concludes that there is no one solid linguistic theory which can provide the ultimate explanation of L1 acquisition and L2 learning as there are many interrelated factors that influence the success of language acquisition or language learning. The implication is that teachers should base their classroom management practices and pedagogical techniques on several theories rather than a single theory as learners learn and acquire language differently. It is hoped that this paper provides useful insights into the complex process involved in language acquisition and learning, and contributes to the increased awareness of the process among the stakeholders in the field of language education. Keywords: behaviorist, innatist, interactionist, language acquisition, second language learning

Language acquisition is model-based rather than model-free.

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Wang, Felix Hao; Mintz, Toben H

2016-01-01

Christiansen & Chater (C&C) propose that learning language is learning to process language. However, we believe that the general-purpose prediction mechanism they propose is insufficient to account for many phenomena in language acquisition. We argue from theoretical considerations and empirical evidence that many acquisition tasks are model-based, and that different acquisition tasks require different, specialized models.

Correlations between vocabulary and phonological acquisition: number of words produced versus acquired consonants.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiethan, Fernanda Marafiga; Mota, Helena Bolli; Moraes, Anaelena Bragança de

2016-01-01

To verify the probable correlations between the number of word types and the number of consonants in the general phonological system in children with typical language development. Study participants were 186 children aged one year and six months to five years, 11 months and 29 days who were monolingual Brazilian Portuguese speakers with typical language development. Data collection involved speech, language and hearing assessments and spontaneous speech recordings. Phonology was assessed with regard to the number of acquired consonants in the general phonological system, in each syllable structure and in Implicational Model of Feature Complexity (IMFC) levels. Vocabulary was assessed with regard to number of word types produced. These data were compared across age groups. After that, correlations between the word types produced and the variables established for the phonological system were analyzed. The significance level adopted was 5%. All phonological aspects evaluated presented gradual growth. Word types produced showed a similar behavior, though with a small regression at the age of five years. Different positive correlations occurred between the spoken word types and the variables analyzed in the phonological system. Only one negative correlation occurred with respect to the production of complex onset in the last age group analyzed. The phonology and vocabulary of the study participants present similar behaviors. There are many positive correlations between the word types produced and the different aspects of phonology, except regarding complex onset.

MODEL NATIVIS LANGUAGE ACQUISITION DEVICE (SEBUAH TEORI PEMEROLEHAN BAHASA

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Mamluatul Hasanah

2011-10-01

Full Text Available The ability of using mother tongue has been possessed by every child. They can master the language without getting specific education. In a short time a child has mastered the language to communicate with others. There are many theories of language acquisition. One of them that still exists is The Native Model of Language Acquisition (LAD. This theory was pioneered by Noam Chomsky. In this language naturally. This ability develops automatically when the language is used is Language Acquisition Device (LAD. LAD constitutes a hypothesis of feature of grammatical rules used progressively by a child in accordance with his psychological development.

On Cultivating Students' Motivation in Second Language Acquisition

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

沈小平

2009-01-01

This paper attempts to explore the cultivation of motivation in second language acquisition based on shedding new light on the definition, the importance, and the classification of learners' motivation in second language acquisition.

A Bibliography of Philippine Language Dictionaries and Vocabularies. Special Monograph Issue, Number 30.

Science.gov (United States)

Hendrickson, Gail R., Comp.; Newell, Leonard E., Comp.

This bibliography is a comprehensive listing of dictionaries and vocabularies, published and unpublished, of the Philippine languages. Introductory sections chronicle briefly the histories of Philippine lexicography and Philippine bibliographies, describe the scope of the present work, and outline the organization of the bibliography itself and…

Second Language Acquisition.

Science.gov (United States)

McLaughlin, Barry; Harrington, Michael

1989-01-01

A distinction is drawn between representational and processing models of second-language acquisition. The first approach is derived primarily from linguistics, the second from psychology. Both fields, it is argued, need to collaborate more fully, overcoming disciplinary narrowness in order to achieve more fruitful research. (GLR)

Acquiring, Teaching, and Testing Vocabulary.

Science.gov (United States)

Mobarg, Mats

1997-01-01

Argues that treatment of foreign language vocabulary will vary predictably according to whether the instructional activity is based on a structural or a lexical/collocational view of language. Notes that in a structural approach, vocabulary learning is primarily a frequency- and input-based individual endeavor, while the lexical approach is more…

Second Language Acquisition and Its Pscycho-cultural Implications

OpenAIRE

Waskita, Dana

2009-01-01

Bilingualism or multilingualism may imply socioeconomic advantages. But a further literature study indicates that this may also affect psychological and cultural viewpoints. The acquisition of second language would significantly influence the mentality or perceptual framework of the language users. Consequently, this finding may inspire to the appropriate pedagogical methods in language acquisition.

The effect of shared book reading on the acquisition of expressive vocabulary of a 7 year old who uses AAC.

Science.gov (United States)

Soto, Gloria; Dukhovny, Elena

2008-05-01

Children who have poor expressive vocabularies are at risk of further language delays and reading comprehension difficulties, which will significantly impact their educational achievement. The role of shared book reading in supporting vocabulary growth continues to receive empirical attention in the field of communication disorders. This single-subject study analyzes the effect of an intervention program based on shared book reading in a girl with no functional speech who used augmentative and alternative communication. The study included three literacy activities, a prereading activity to stimulate the girl's prior knowledge about the topic, a shared reading activity, and a postreading activity to assess and support language comprehension. Our findings suggest that the activities and elicitation techniques used by the clinician had a positive effect on the participant's expressive vocabulary.

Using Assistive Technology to Increase Vocabulary Acquisition and Engagement for Students with Learning Disabilities in the High School Science Classroom

Science.gov (United States)

Slemrod, Tal

There is a growing recognition of the importance and effectiveness of instruction in the STEM subjects, including science. The movement towards increased requirements and expectations in science presents a challenge to both students and teachers as many students with Learning Disabilities (LD) often particularly struggle in their science classes. The purpose of this study was to investigate the use of an assistive technology (AT) intervention targeting the acquisition of science vocabulary for adolescents with LD in a general education secondary biology classroom. Participants for this study included 3 secondary students with LD who were enrolled in a biology class. An alternating treatment design was used to compare the effects of a keyword mnemonic vocabulary intervention via index cards or iPod touch on student, vocabulary acquisition, academic engagement and disruptive behavior. All students' acquired the content vocabulary equally well during both conditions. When using the AT, students' engagement increased compared to baseline conditions. It was clear that the students had a strong interest in using AT to increase their grades and engagement, however the teachers had little access and training on using AT to support their students with disabilities.

Internal and external factors in child second language acquisition: introduction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Unsworth, S.; Hulk, A.; Marinis, T.

2011-01-01

An introduction to the journal is presented in which the editor discusses various articles published within the issue including one on morphosyntactic development and vocabulary, one on acquisition of grammatical gender, and one on the importance of the low proficiency in immigrant families..

Age of acquisition predicts rate of lexical evolution.

Science.gov (United States)

Monaghan, Padraic

2014-12-01

The processes taking place during language acquisition are proposed to influence language evolution. However, evidence demonstrating the link between language learning and language evolution is, at best, indirect, constituting studies of laboratory-based artificial language learning studies or computational simulations of diachronic change. In the current study, a direct link between acquisition and evolution is established, showing that for two hundred fundamental vocabulary items, the age at which words are acquired is a predictor of the rate at which they have changed in studies of language evolution. Early-acquired words are more salient and easier to process than late-acquired words, and these early-acquired words are also more stably represented within the community's language. Analysing the properties of these early-acquired words potentially provides insight into the origins of communication, highlighting features of words that have been ultra-conserved in language. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The Influence of Language Distance and Language Status on the Acquisition of L3 Phonology

Science.gov (United States)

Llama, Raquel; Cardoso, Walcir; Collins, Laura

2010-01-01

Research in the field of third language acquisition has consistently identified two key factors which have an effect on the ways in which the two known languages may influence the acquisition of a third. These factors are language distance (typology) and language status (more specifically, second language, L2, or non-native language status). To…

Acquisition of Opposites and Cognitive Explanation

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Xudong Sun

2004-12-01

Full Text Available This paper presents an analysis of the acquisition sequence of two pairs of contrasting terms in English. The research is based on questionnaires completed by Chinese learners of English of various levels. The analysis concludes that easily-recognisable, unmarked, high-frequency terms, from which are derived concepts and terms that express an earlier stage of an action, tend to be easier to learn and enjoy a higher retention level during the first phase of acquisition while those terms which do not share these characteristics have a much lower retention level during the same stage. Given these conclusions, this study suggests that learners and teachers of a language should pay more attention to those terms which are in an unfavourable position in the vocabulary acquisition sequence of a language. (English text.

Balancing Direction and Independence in Second Language Vocabulary Learning: A Gesture Pilot Study

Science.gov (United States)

Mathison, Lake

2017-01-01

This pilot study looks at the effect of learning second language vocabulary with gesture. Specifically, this current study asks whether researcher-instructed or student-constructed gestures are more effective. Depth of processing theories (Craik and Lockhart 1972) as well as more recent educational frameworks like ICAP ("Interactive,"…

Some Implications of Research in Second Language Acquisition for Foreign Language Teaching.

Science.gov (United States)

Lombardo, Linda

On the continuum along which theories of first and second language acquisition are located, the two extremes represent the classic controversy of nature (nativist) vs. nurture (environmentalist), while those in the middle view language acquisition as a result of a more or less balanced interaction between innate capacities and linguistic…

Preschoolers' Vocabulary Acquisition in Chile: The Roles of Socioeconomic Status and Quality of Home Environment

Science.gov (United States)

Lohndorf, Regina T.; Vermeer, Harriet J.; Cárcamo, Rodrigo A.; Mesman, Judi

2018-01-01

Preschoolers' vocabulary acquisition sets the stage for later reading ability and school achievement. This study examined the role of socioeconomic status (SES) and the quality of the home environment of seventy-seven Chilean majority and Mapuche minority families from low and lower-middle-class backgrounds in explaining individual differences in…

Minimalism and Beyond: Second Language Acquisition for the Twenty-First Century.

Science.gov (United States)

Balcom, Patricia A.

2001-01-01

Provides a general overview of two books--"The Second Time Around: Minimalism and Second Language Acquisition" and "Second Language Syntax: A Generative Introduction--and shows how the respond to key issues in second language acquisition, including the process of second language acquisition, access to universal grammar, the role of…

Promoting Second Language Learners’ Vocabulary Learning Strategies: Can Autonomy and Critical Thinking Make a Contribution?

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Mania Nosratinia

2015-05-01

Full Text Available Based on the findings of previous studies which highlight the role of vocabulary knowledge in English as a Foreign Language/English as a Second Language (EFL/ESL learners’ learning process, this study investigated the relationship among EFL learners’ Critical Thinking (CT, Autonomy (AU, and choice of Vocabulary Learning Strategies (VLS. To fulfill the purpose of this study, 100 male and female undergraduate EFL learners, between the ages of 18 and 25 (Mage = 21 were randomly selected. These participants, who were receiving formal instruction by means of English as the main language along with learners’ first language, were asked to complete three questionnaires, estimating their CT, AU, and VLS. Analyzing the collected data by Pearson’s product-moment correlation coefficient revealed significant relationships between participants' AU and CT, CT and VLS, and AU and VLS. Furthermore, a linear regression through the stepwise method revealed that between CT and AU, AU is the best predictor of VLS. The findings of this provide EFL teachers, EFL learners, and syllabus designers with insights into the nature of VLS and the way it can be promoted through other internal factors.

The Effects of Visual and Textual Annotations on Spanish Listening Comprehension, Vocabulary Acquisition and Cognitive Load

Science.gov (United States)

Cottam, Michael Evan

2010-01-01

The purpose of this experimental study was to investigate the effects of textual and visual annotations on Spanish listening comprehension and vocabulary acquisition in the context of an online multimedia listening activity. 95 students who were enrolled in different sections of first year Spanish classes at a community college and a large…

Check This Word Out! Exploring the Factors That Affect Students’ Vocabulary Learning Using Smartphones via Partial Least Squares

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Mohammad Madallh Alhabahba

2014-01-01

Full Text Available A rigorous understanding of the use of Smartphones for foreign language vocabulary acquisition is crucial. Employing the technology acceptance model, this study aims to investigate students’ behavioural factors affecting Saudi students’ attitudes towards employing Smartphones for foreign vocabulary acquisition. Two hundred and seventy-three students studying in a preparatory year programme were surveyed. SmartPLS was employed to analyse the data obtained from the study’s sample. The results revealed that perceived usefulness and attitude proved to be significantly and positively related to vocabulary development. In addition, perceived usefulness and perceived ease of use proved to be significant predictors of students’ attitudes towards the use of Smartphone for vocabulary learning. However, the study showed that the relationship between perceived ease of use and vocabulary development is not significant. Thus, publishers of dictionaries may find it necessary to take into account the important role played by the design of dictionaries interfaces in facilitating the use of dictionaries in Smartphones. Furthermore, teachers and educators are encouraged to employ creative activities (e.g., word guessing games that invest students’ use of Smartphones to learn vocabularies. Using Smartphones in learning improves interaction among students and teachers. Discussion and conclusions are also provided.

The Dimensional Approach to Vocabulary Testing: What Can We ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

1999), i.e. vocabulary size, depth, and receptive-productive knowledge/skills, has influenced test design for measuring L2/FL vocabulary acquisition. This article aims to describe the major vocabulary tests along the vocabulary dimensions and ...

First language acquisition differs from second language acquisition in prelingually deaf signers: evidence from sensitivity to grammaticality judgement in British Sign Language.

Science.gov (United States)

Cormier, Kearsy; Schembri, Adam; Vinson, David; Orfanidou, Eleni

2012-07-01

Age of acquisition (AoA) effects have been used to support the notion of a critical period for first language acquisition. In this study, we examine AoA effects in deaf British Sign Language (BSL) users via a grammaticality judgment task. When English reading performance and nonverbal IQ are factored out, results show that accuracy of grammaticality judgement decreases as AoA increases, until around age 8, thus showing the unique effect of AoA on grammatical judgement in early learners. No such effects were found in those who acquired BSL after age 8. These late learners appear to have first language proficiency in English instead, which may have been used to scaffold learning of BSL as a second language later in life. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Phonology-morphology interaction: Acquisition of Danish noun plurals as a test case

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kjærbæk, Laila; Basbøll, Hans

2010-01-01

Acquisition in Normal and Hearing Impaired Populations". In E. Schmidt, U. Mikkelsen, I. Post, J. B. Simonsen & K. Fruensgaard (eds.), Brain, Hearing and Learning. 20th Danavox Symposium 2003: 165-190. Bleses, D., Vach, W., Wehberg, S., Kristensen, K. F. & Madsen, T. O. (2007). Tidlig kommunikativ udvikling...... Development Inventories: Validity and Main Developmental Trends". Journal of Child Language 35, 651-69. Bleses, D., Vach, W., Slott, M., Wehberg, S., Thomsen, P., Madsen, T. & Basbøll, H. (2008b). “Early Vocabulary Development in Danish and Other Languages: a CDI-based Comparison”. Journal of Child Language...... on the Occasion of his 60th Birthday 12 July 2003. Odense: Syddansk Universitetsforlag. Slobin, D. I. (ed.) (1985a). The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ: Lawrence Earlbaum Associates. Slobin, D. I. (ed.) (1985b). The Crosslinguistic Study of Language Acquisition. Hillsdale, NJ...

Development of Morphological Awareness and Vocabulary Knowledge in Spanish-Speaking Language Minority Learners: A Parallel Process Latent Growth Curve Model

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Kieffer, Michael J.; Lesaux, Nonie K.

2012-01-01

Despite acknowledgement of the limited English vocabularies demonstrated by many language minority (LM) learners, few studies have identified skills that relate to variation in vocabulary growth in this population. This study investigated the concurrent development of morphological awareness (i.e., students' understanding of complex words as…

Lexical and semantic representations of L2 cognate and noncognate words acquisition in children : evidence from two learning methods

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Comesaña, Montserrat; Soares, Ana Paula; Sánchez-Casas, Rosa; Lima, Cátia

2012-01-01

How bilinguals represent words in two languages and which mechanisms are responsible for second language acquisition are important questions in the bilingual and vocabulary acquisition literature. This study aims to analyze the effect of two learning methods (picture-based vs. word-based method) and two types of words (cognates and noncognates) in early stages of children’s L2 acquisition. Forty-eight native speakers of European Portuguese, all sixth graders (mean age= 10.87 years; SD= 0....

Vocabulary Acquisition and Task Effectiveness in Involvement Load Hypothesis: A case in Iran

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Hassan Soleimani

2015-09-01

Full Text Available Involvement load hypothesis as a cognitive construct states that tasks with higher involvements yield better results in vocabulary retention. This comparison group designed study examined the immediate and delayed effects of tasks with different involvements in involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001. Applying a version of Nelson Proficiency Test as a homogenizing exclusion criterion, 33 low proficiency Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to three experimental groups: blank-filling, sentence making, and reading comprehension. The results of ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests supported task-induced involvement in immediate posttest since the sentence making task (M=5.72 yielded better results in comparison with the other two blank-filling (M=5.45 and reading comprehension (M=3.18 tasks. Nevertheless, sentence making and blank-filling tasks of which the involvements were somehow similar did not yield significant superiority to each other. It is inferred that tasks with nearer involvements yield somehow similar results in vocabulary acquisition.

On Vocabulary Teaching from the Perspective of Cross-Cultural Communication

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潘航

2013-01-01

Language is the carrier of culture, and culture determines language application. Vocabulary is the essential element of a language, thus the cultivation of cross-culture communication ability should start from vocabulary.

A Shared Platform for Studying Second Language Acquisition

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MacWhinney, Brian

2017-01-01

The study of second language acquisition (SLA) can benefit from the same process of datasharing that has proven effective in areas such as first language acquisition and aphasiology. Researchers can work together to construct a shared platform that combines data from spoken and written corpora, online tutors, and Web-based experimentation. Many of…

Age of language acquisition and cortical language organization in multilingual patients undergoing awake brain mapping.

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Fernández-Coello, Alejandro; Havas, Viktória; Juncadella, Montserrat; Sierpowska, Joanna; Rodríguez-Fornells, Antoni; Gabarrós, Andreu

2017-06-01

OBJECTIVE Most knowledge regarding the anatomical organization of multilingualism is based on aphasiology and functional imaging studies. However, the results have still to be validated by the gold standard approach, namely electrical stimulation mapping (ESM) during awake neurosurgical procedures. In this ESM study the authors describe language representation in a highly specific group of 13 multilingual individuals, focusing on how age of acquisition may influence the cortical organization of language. METHODS Thirteen patients who had a high degree of proficiency in multiple languages and were harboring lesions within the dominant, left hemisphere underwent ESM while being operated on under awake conditions. Demographic and language data were recorded in relation to age of language acquisition (for native languages and early- and late-acquired languages), neuropsychological pre- and postoperative language testing, the number and location of language sites, and overlapping distribution in terms of language acquisition time. Lesion growth patterns and histopathological characteristics, location, and size were also recorded. The distribution of language sites was analyzed with respect to age of acquisition and overlap. RESULTS The functional language-related sites were distributed in the frontal (55%), temporal (29%), and parietal lobes (16%). The total number of native language sites was 47. Early-acquired languages (including native languages) were represented in 97 sites (55 overlapped) and late-acquired languages in 70 sites (45 overlapped). The overlapping distribution was 20% for early-early, 71% for early-late, and 9% for late-late. The average lesion size (maximum diameter) was 3.3 cm. There were 5 fast-growing and 7 slow-growing lesions. CONCLUSIONS Cortical language distribution in multilingual patients is not homogeneous, and it is influenced by age of acquisition. Early-acquired languages have a greater cortical representation than languages acquired

The Relationship between Phonological Memory, Receptive Vocabulary, and Fast Mapping in Young Children with Specific Language Impairment

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Gray, Shelley

2006-01-01

Purpose: This study assessed the fast mapping performance of children with specific language impairment (SLI) across the preschool to kindergarten age span in relation to their phonological memory and vocabulary development. Method: Fifty-three children diagnosed with SLI and 53 children with normal language (NL) matched for age and gender (30…

The Effectiveness of Synectics Instructional Model on Foreign Language Vocabulary Teaching

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Bahadır

2017-06-01

Full Text Available This study, which is an experimental research with pre-test and post-test control groups, aims to determine the effectiveness of the Synectics Instructional Model on foreign language vocabulary teaching. The research was conducted with two experimental and two control groups and 82 students taking part in these groups. The experimental application of the research was carried out during the fall semester of 2016-2017, with a total of 16 class hours in English reading course in English preparatory class. Research data was gathered from an English vocabulary achievement test which was designed by the researchers. In the process of analyzing the research data, dependent and independent t-tests, Cohen’s d effect size test and thematic analysis were used. The major findings reveal that Synectics based vocabulary teaching has a strong effect on the level of learning and the persistence of the learning. On the other hand, there is a considerable difference between the numbers of the words that students learn indirectly in the process in favor of the experimental group students. Finally, the analysis also reveals that the experimental and control group students have variability in terms of the thematic diversity and semantic equivalence of the words learned indirectly in the process.

The Impact of Topic Interest, L2 Proficiency, and Gender on EFL Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading

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Lee, Sunjung; Pulido, Diana

2017-01-01

This study investigated the impact of topic interest, alongside L2 proficiency and gender, on L2 vocabulary acquisition through reading. A repeated-measures design was used with 135 Korean EFL students. Control variables included topic familiarity, prior target-word knowledge, and target-word difficulty (word length, class, and concreteness).…

Morphological Awareness in Vocabulary Acquisition among Chinese-Speaking Children: Testing Partial Mediation via Lexical Inference Ability

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Zhang, Haomin

2015-01-01

The goal of this study was to investigate the effect of Chinese-specific morphological awareness on vocabulary acquisition among young Chinese-speaking students. The participants were 288 Chinese-speaking second graders from three different cities in China. Multiple regression analysis and mediation analysis were used to uncover the mediated and…

Reduce, Reuse, Recycle: An ESL Textbook/Workbook [In Four Volumes]: (1) Teaching Guide; (2) Edition A. Key Vocabulary Words Translated into 6 Languages: Hmong, Laotian, Korean, Cambodian, Vietnamese, Chinese; (3) Edition B. Key Vocabulary Words Translated into 6 Languages: Spanish, Somali, Russian, Farsi, Bosnian, Arabic; (4) Edition C. Key Vocabulary Words Translated in 6 Languages: Spanish, Russian, Bosnian, Somali, Vietnamese, Hmong.

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LaRue, Charles

Each of these three separately-published textbook/workbook editions on the topic of recycling presents key vocabulary words relating to this topic for English as a Second Language students in six languages. These books are designed to increase students' understanding of what the most typical local recycling rules are, why complying with them is…

Individual Differences in Language Acquisition and Processing.

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Kidd, Evan; Donnelly, Seamus; Christiansen, Morten H

2018-02-01

Humans differ in innumerable ways, with considerable variation observable at every level of description, from the molecular to the social. Traditionally, linguistic and psycholinguistic theory has downplayed the possibility of meaningful differences in language across individuals. However, it is becoming increasingly evident that there is significant variation among speakers at any age as well as across the lifespan. Here, we review recent research in psycholinguistics, and argue that a focus on individual differences (IDs) provides a crucial source of evidence that bears strongly upon core issues in theories of the acquisition and processing of language; specifically, the role of experience in language acquisition, processing, and attainment, and the architecture of the language system. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Sign-Supported English: is it effective at teaching vocabulary to young children with English as an Additional Language?

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Marshall, Chloë R; Hobsbaum, Angela

2015-01-01

Children who are learning English as an Additional Language (EAL) may start school with smaller vocabularies than their monolingual peers. Given the links between vocabulary and academic achievement, it is important to evaluate interventions that are designed to support vocabulary learning in this group of children. To evaluate an intervention, namely Sign-Supported English (SSE), which uses conventionalized manual gestures alongside spoken words to support the learning of English vocabulary by children with EAL. Specifically, the paper investigates whether SSE has a positive impact on Reception class children's vocabulary development over and above English-only input, as measured over a 6-month period. A total of 104 children aged 4-5 years were recruited from two neighbouring schools in a borough of Outer London. A subset of 66 had EAL. In one school, the teachers used SSE, and in the other school they did not. Pupils in each school were tested at two time points (the beginning of terms 1 and 3) using three different assessments of vocabulary. Classroom-based observations of the teachers' and pupils' manual communication were also carried out. Results of the vocabulary assessments revealed that using SSE had no effect on how well children with EAL learnt English vocabulary: EAL pupils from the SSE school did not learn more words than EAL pupils at the comparison school. SSE was used in almost half of the teachers' observations in the SSE school, while spontaneous gestures were used with similar frequency by teachers in the comparison school. There are alternative explanations for the results. The first is that the use of signs alongside spoken English does not help EAL children of this age to learn words. Alternatively, SSE does have an effect, but we were unable to detect it because (1) teachers in the comparison school used very rich natural gesture and/or (2) teachers in the SSE school did not know enough BSL and this inhibited their use of spontaneous gesture

Effects of Individualized Word Retrieval in Kindergarten Vocabulary Intervention

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Damhuis, Carmen M. P.; Segers, Eliane; Scheltinga, Femke; Verhoeven, Ludo

2016-01-01

We examined the effects of adaptive word retrieval intervention on a classroom vocabulary program on children's vocabulary acquisition in kindergarten. In the experimental condition, word retrieval was provided in a classroom vocabulary program, combining implicit and explicit vocabulary instructions. Children performed extra word retrieval…

The Impact of Gloss Types on Reading Comprehension, Vocabulary Gain and Vocabulary Retention: A Comparative Study

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Atefeh Elekaei

2015-09-01

Full Text Available The significance and impact of vocabulary learning in reading comprehension and L2 language learning are apparent to teachers, researchers and language learners. Moreover, glosses are found as one of the most effective strategies regarding vocabulary retention. Therefore, the present study attempted to investigate the effect of different types of glosses on reading comprehension, vocabulary gain and vocabulary retention. To this end, 140 Iranian EFL learners learning English were selected and were divided into four groups (footnote gloss group, interlinear gloss group, marginal gloss group, and glossary group. They were required to read a text and answer four reading comprehension questions. In addition, one immediate vocabulary post-test and one delayed vocabulary post-test were taken in order to investigate learners' vocabulary gain and vocabulary retention. In order to analyze the data, one one-way ANOVA and one MANOVA were run. The results of one-way ANOVA revealed that participants who received interlinear glosses significantly outperformed the other groups regarding comprehending the text. Moreover, the immediate vocabulary post-test was conducted immediately after reading test and the delayed post-test was administered after four weeks. The results of MANOVA indicated that the group which received interlinear glosses outperformed the other groups in both vocabulary gain and vocabulary retention. The present study has implications for teachers and learners. Teachers can find better methods to teach new reading passages as well as vocabulary items. Also, glosses help learners to have a better comprehension of difficult passages and they facilitate learning. Moreover, learners can enhance their vocabulary knowledge with the help of glosses.

Variability and Variation in Second Language Acquisition Orders: A Dynamic Reevaluation

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Lowie, Wander; Verspoor, Marjolijn

2015-01-01

The traditional morpheme order studies in second language acquisition have tried to demonstrate the existence of a fixed order of acquisition of English morphemes, regardless of the second language learner's background. Such orders have been taken as evidence of the preprogrammed nature of language acquisition. This article argues for a…

[Prosody, speech input and language acquisition].

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Jungheim, M; Miller, S; Kühn, D; Ptok, M

2014-04-01

In order to acquire language, children require speech input. The prosody of the speech input plays an important role. In most cultures adults modify their code when communicating with children. Compared to normal speech this code differs especially with regard to prosody. For this review a selective literature search in PubMed and Scopus was performed. Prosodic characteristics are a key feature of spoken language. By analysing prosodic features, children gain knowledge about underlying grammatical structures. Child-directed speech (CDS) is modified in a way that meaningful sequences are highlighted acoustically so that important information can be extracted from the continuous speech flow more easily. CDS is said to enhance the representation of linguistic signs. Taking into consideration what has previously been described in the literature regarding the perception of suprasegmentals, CDS seems to be able to support language acquisition due to the correspondence of prosodic and syntactic units. However, no findings have been reported, stating that the linguistically reduced CDS could hinder first language acquisition.

Hearing experience and receptive vocabulary development in deaf children with cochlear implants.

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Fagan, Mary K; Pisoni, David B

2010-01-01

This study investigated receptive vocabulary delay in deaf children with cochlear implants. Participants were 23 children with profound hearing loss, ages 6-14 years, who received a cochlear implant between ages 1.4 and 6 years. Duration of cochlear implant use ranged from 3.7 to 11.8 years. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test, Third Edition (PPVT-III) data were analyzed first by examining children's errors for evidence of difficulty in specific lexical content areas, and second by calculating standard scores with reference to hearing age (HA) (i.e., chronological age [CA]--age at implantation) rather than CA. Participants showed evidence of vocabulary understanding across all PPVT-III content categories with no strong evidence of disproportionate numbers of errors in any specific content area despite below-average mean standard scores. However, whereas mean standard scores were below the test mean established for hearing children when based on CA, they were within the average range for hearing children when calculated based on HA. Thus, children's vocabulary knowledge was commensurate with years of cochlear implant experience, providing support for the role of spoken language experience in vocabulary acquisition.

Effects of Explicit Vocabulary Videos Delivered through iPods on Students with Language Impairments

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Lowman, J. Joneen; Dressler, Emily V.

2016-01-01

Poor word learning is a hallmark characteristic of students with specific language impairment (SLI). Explicit vocabulary instruction has shown to positively improve word learning in this population. Mobile technology has many advantages making it conducive for addressing the word learning needs of students with SLI. The current study utilized a…

A Pilot Study Comparing Total Physical Response Storytelling[TM] with the Grammar-Translation Teaching Strategy to Determine Their Effectiveness in Vocabulary Acquisition among English as a Second Language Adult Learners

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Castro, Ruben

2010-01-01

This study evaluated the effectiveness of Total Physical Response Storytelling (TPRS[TM]) compared to the Grammar-Translation approach for acquiring and retaining new vocabulary in an English as a Second Language (ESL) class. The subjects were adult Hispanic learners with limited literacy. An experimental design approach was used to gather…

Let the music play! A short-term but no long-term detrimental effect of vocal background music with familiar language lyrics on foreign language vocabulary learning

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de Groot, A.M.B.; Smedinga, H.E.

2014-01-01

Participants learned foreign vocabulary by means of the paired-associates learning procedure in three conditions: (a) in silence, (b) with vocal music with lyrics in a familiar language playing in the background, or (c) with vocal music with lyrics in an unfamiliar language playing in the

Pragmatic Bootstrapping: A Neural Network Model of Vocabulary Acquisition

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Caza, Gregory A.; Knott, Alistair

2012-01-01

The social-pragmatic theory of language acquisition proposes that children only become efficient at learning the meanings of words once they acquire the ability to understand the intentions of other agents, in particular the intention to communicate (Akhtar & Tomasello, 2000). In this paper we present a neural network model of word learning which…

Impact of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL on EFL: A Meta-Analysis

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Imtiaz Hassan Taj

2016-04-01

Full Text Available Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL has emerged as a potential tool in the instruction of English as a foreign language (EFL. Meta-analysis of 13 studies published between year 2008 and 2015 was conducted. Four point criteria for the selection of studies for analysis is based on the year of publication, quasi-experimental design, pretest and posttest method and finally use of mobile device for intervention. Findings of the analysis suggest that MALL has fostered the EFL instruction. Overall effect size was (d = 0.8 which is considered a large effect size. Keywords: MALL, technology assisted language learning, EFL, vocabulary acquisition, vocabulary instruction, meta-analysis

Second Language Acquisition and Applied Linguistics.

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Larsen-Freeman, Diane

2000-01-01

Discusses the second language acquisition (SLA) process and the differential success of second language learners. Examines the fundamental challenges that this characterization faces, and highlights the contributions SLA is capable of in the coming decade. Offers topics for a training and development of curriculum for future applied linguists from…

TOEFL IBT vocabulary flash review

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Llc, Learning Express

2014-01-01

The Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) measures the English proficiency of people whose native language isn't English. This portable guide features 600 essential TOEFL vocabulary flashcards, bound in a convenient book format, with definitions, sample sentences, synonyms, and pronunciation. The cards include the most-tested vocabulary on the exam. The perfect companion to any TOEFL study plan, this book is pocket-sized for portability and great for study anywhere, anytime!

The Ecology of Second Language Acquisition and Socialization

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Steffensen, Sune Vork; Kramsch, Claire

2017-01-01

Various theories of second language acquisition (SLA) and socialization (SLS) have adopted ecology as a convenient metaphor to promote sociocultural (van Lier 2004) or sociocognitive (Atkinson 2011) approaches to the study of SLA, and socioethnographic approaches (Duff 2011; Duff and Talmy 2011...... such a development is to be welcomed, it also raises serious concerns about the autonomy of the language learner, the collective pressure on individuals to align with the expectations of the community, alternative theories of knowledge and of knowledge acquisition, and the socializing dominance of English around...... the world. This chapter discusses the history of the relationship between acquisition and socialization with regard to foreign/second language learning and use, and the role played by ecological theory in that relationship....

Pre-Service EFL Teachers’ Attitudes towards ‘Language Acquisition Courses’

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Nalan Kızıltan

2011-04-01

Full Text Available This study discusses the attitudes of pre-service English language teachers towards „Language Acquisition Courses‟ in English Language Teacher Education Programs. The data have been collected through a developed questionnaire of 20 questions given to 324 students in the department of Pre-service English Language Teacher Education at Ondokuz Mayıs University. SPSS has been used for the evaluation of the data. The results indicate that the pre-service teachers of English believe in the importance of language acquisition courses for their career. However, they think that they need some preliminary courses on linguistics before they take “Language Acquisition Courses”. Otherwise, since they may not have any background knowledge in linguistics, they may have some problems in the comprehension competence.

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

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Sturdy, Christopher B; Nicoladis, Elena

2017-01-01

Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner's arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC) by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children's language learning.

The Effect of Vocalic vs. Consonantal Phonetic Structure on Language Segmentability: the Case of Danish

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Trecca, Fabio; Bleses, Dorthe; Christiansen, Morten Hyllekvist

Danish-learning children are slower in the acquisition of receptive vocabulary than children in a range of other language groups. We have hypothesized that the phonetic structure of Danish, rich in vocoids and long vocalic stretches, might reduce the segmentability of the language and impede...

FACTORS INFLUENCING SECOND LANGUAGE ACQUISITION

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Siti Khasinah

2014-05-01

Full Text Available Motivation, attitude, age, intelligence, aptitude, cognitive style, and personality are considered as factors that greatly influence someone in the process of his or her second language acquisition. Experts state that those factors give a more dominant contribution in SLA to learners variedly, depend on who the learners are, their age, how they behave toward the language, their cognitive ability, and also the way they learn.

Astronomy and Geology Vocabulary, I.e. "NASA Words" in Native American Languages

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Angrum, A.; Alexander, C. J.; Martin, M.

2014-12-01

The US Rosetta Project has developed a program in Native American communities in which contemporary STEM vocabulary is taught alongside the same vocabulary in Navajo. NASA images and science are used and described in the native language, alongside both lay English, and scientific English. Additionally, science curriculum (geology/chemistry/botany/physics) elements drawn from the reservation environment, including geomorphology, geochemistry, soil physics, are included and discussed in the native language as much as possible — with their analogs in other planetary environments (such as Mars). The program began with a student defining 30 Navajo words to describe what he called 'NASA' words, such as: cell phone, astronaut, space suit, computer, and planets not visible to the naked eye. The use of NASA material and imagery have a positive impact on the accessibility of the overall STEM material but community involvement, and buy-in, is criti! cal to the success of the program. The US Rosetta Project modified its goals, and curriculum, to accommodate the programmatic desires of teachers in the district, and the capabilities of the medicine men that agreed to participate. In this presentation we will report on lessons learned, as well as metrics and successes associated with our most recent Summer Science Academy [2014].

Les effets des hyperliens visibles ou invisibles sur l'acquisition lexicale et sur la compréhension en lecture chez des apprenants intermédiaires et avancés en langue étrangère Effects of Visible and Invisible Hyperlinks on Vocabulary Acquisition and Reading Comprehension for High- and Average-Foreign Language Achievers

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Ofelia R. Nikolova

2004-12-01

to read a short passage in French (181 words for general comprehension and allowed to consult the annotated words (made visible by bold face for the visible links group as much as they needed. The students took a vocabulary pretest and an immediate and delayed (two weeks vocabulary and reading comprehension posttest. The results of the study showed that average- achievers benefited more from the visible links for vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension than high-achievers. The results are discussed in light of second language acquisition and gifted-student theories and suggestions for future research are made.

Cross-Linguistic and Cross-Cultural Effects on Verbal Working Memory and Vocabulary: Testing Language-Minority Children with an Immigrant Background

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Engel de Abreu, Pascale M. J.; Baldassi, Martine; Puglisi, Marina L.; Befi-Lopes, Debora M.

2013-01-01

Purpose: In this study, the authors explored the impact of test language and cultural status on vocabulary and working memory performance in multilingual language-minority children. Method: Twenty 7-year-old Portuguese-speaking immigrant children living in Luxembourg completed several assessments of first (L1)- and second-language (L2) vocabulary…

Strategies for teaching and learning vocabulary

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Feng Teng

2014-11-01

Full Text Available Abstract This article presents an overview of current research on second language vocabulary learning and proposes eight strategies for teaching and learning vocabulary. First, to facilitate effective vocabulary teaching, choosing high-frequency words is essential. Teachers of vocabulary also need to add explicit, intentional teaching to incidental learning. In addition, vocabulary learning strategies including morphological awareness and lexical inference provides a platform by which learners can improve both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. This article also suggests that productive vocabulary knowledge needs more attention than receptive vocabulary knowledge, and that available textbooks seldom address vocabulary sufficiently. In summary, it is very important for all learners and teachers to acknowledge that learning vocabulary is incremental in nature, and we should develop a principled, long-term program for teaching and learning vocabulary.

Exploring Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by UPM TESL Undergraduates

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Nur Hanisah Safian

2014-10-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary learning is one of the most challenging factors that learners will face during the process of second language learning. The main pursuit of the present study was to investigate the vocabulary language strategies among Malaysian ESL students majoring in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL at University Putra Malaysia.  There are five different categories of vocabulary leaning strategies determination, social, memory, cognitive and metacognitive strategies. Quantitative research design has been used in this study by providing a set of questionnaire of 58 items that was given out to 50 participants at the Faculty of Educational Studies in UPM. The findings of this research hope to help all educators to acknowledge the type of vocabulary strategies used by students in acquiring second language (L2.

Foreign Language Acquisition Of Souvenir Seller In Bawomataluo Village

OpenAIRE

Saniago Dakhi; Nur Intan Zagoto

2016-01-01

This research is addresses language functional and lexical acquisition domains of souvenir seller in Bawomataluo village, South Nias, North Sumatera. The reasons of lexical items acquired by souvenir seller is regarded as the function of language acquisition. On the contrary, form and process of lexical items acquired are totally viewed as language lexical domains. To obtain the whole accurate data of these research problems interview and observation were conducted. The research ...

Teaching vocabulary to elementary level students learning Russian as a foreign language: topic "My family and I"

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Vesnina, L. E.

2017-01-01

The article describes a lesson "My Family and I" for elementary level students learning Russian as a foreign language. This topic is the first in the academic subject Russian Vocabulary. The article sums up the experience of teaching this subject to Chinese students learning Russian at the Ural State Pedagogical University. The content and the aims of the lesson "My Family and I", as well as the subject Russian Vocabulary, are based on the communicative approach to teaching Russian as a forei...

Is CALL Obsolete? Language Acquisition and Language Learning Revisited in a Digital Age

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Jarvis, Huw; Krashen, Stephen

2014-01-01

In this article, Huw Jarvis and Stephen Krashen ask "Is CALL Obsolete?" When the term CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning) was introduced in the 1960s, the language education profession knew only about language learning, not language acquisition, and assumed the computer's primary contribution to second language acquisition…

Visual statistical learning is related to natural language ability in adults: An ERP study.

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Daltrozzo, Jerome; Emerson, Samantha N; Deocampo, Joanne; Singh, Sonia; Freggens, Marjorie; Branum-Martin, Lee; Conway, Christopher M

2017-03-01

Statistical learning (SL) is believed to enable language acquisition by allowing individuals to learn regularities within linguistic input. However, neural evidence supporting a direct relationship between SL and language ability is scarce. We investigated whether there are associations between event-related potential (ERP) correlates of SL and language abilities while controlling for the general level of selective attention. Seventeen adults completed tests of visual SL, receptive vocabulary, grammatical ability, and sentence completion. Response times and ERPs showed that SL is related to receptive vocabulary and grammatical ability. ERPs indicated that the relationship between SL and grammatical ability was independent of attention while the association between SL and receptive vocabulary depended on attention. The implications of these dissociative relationships in terms of underlying mechanisms of SL and language are discussed. These results further elucidate the cognitive nature of the links between SL mechanisms and language abilities. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

THE IMPACT OF SOCIAL MEDIA ON VOCABULARY LEARNING

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Sim Monica-Ariana

2014-12-01

Full Text Available The paper aims at investigating the impact of computer and social media in improving students’ knowledge of English language namely vocabulary acquisition (focused on Facebook with intermediate and upper intermediate first and second year ELT students in Economics at the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Oradea. Social media technologies take on many different forms including magazines, Internet forums, weblogs, social blogs, wikis, social networks, podcasts, pictures, videos etc. Technologies cover blogging, picture-sharing, wall-posting, music-sharing just to name a few. Nowadays Facebook technology seems to play an important part for the social life of so many becoming more and more popular as a main means of communication, that it could also meet an educational need. Thus it could play a distinguished role in foreign language learning and teaching. Several studies investigate using different technologies in learning and teaching, in particular, foreign language learning. Still, rare studies were interested precisely in the role of Facebook in learning foreign languages. In this study was intended to assess the role and effectiveness of Facebook use in vocabulary learning. Particularly, the research attempts to answer the question: Can social media affect students’ development and progress in the foreign language?’ In order to discover the answer to this question of the study, a project based on Facebook for the experimental group was conceived. It was assumed that significant differences were to be found between the groups using social media for learning purposes and those who did not in developing vocabulary knowledge. The study was conducted with a number of 127 students of the Faculty of Economic Sciences, University of Oradea, 1st and 2nd year students following the specializations: International Business, Management, Marketing, Finances studying in the academic year 2013-2014. The development in each group was measured

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

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Sturdy, Christopher B.; Nicoladis, Elena

2017-01-01

Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner’s arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC) by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children’s language learning. PMID:29163295

How Much of Language Acquisition Does Operant Conditioning Explain?

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Christopher B. Sturdy

2017-10-01

Full Text Available Since the 1950s, when Chomsky argued that Skinner’s arguments could not explain syntactic acquisition, psychologists have generally avoided explicitly invoking operant or instrumental conditioning as a learning mechanism for language among human children. In this article, we argue that this is a mistake. We focus on research that has been done on language learning in human infants and toddlers in order to illustrate our points. Researchers have ended up inventing learning mechanisms that, in actual practice, not only resemble but also in fact are examples of operant conditioning (OC by any other name they select. We argue that language acquisition researchers should proceed by first ruling out OC before invoking alternative learning mechanisms. While it is possible that OC cannot explain all of the language acquisition, simple learning mechanisms that work across species may have some explanatory power in children’s language learning.

Case report: acquisition of three spoken languages by a child with a cochlear implant.

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Francis, Alexander L; Ho, Diana Wai Lam

2003-03-01

There have been only two reports of multilingual cochlear implant users to date, and both of these were postlingually deafened adults. Here we report the case of a 6-year-old early-deafened child who is acquiring Cantonese, English and Mandarin in Hong Kong. He and two age-matched peers with similar educational backgrounds were tested using common, standardized tests of vocabulary and expressive and receptive language skills (Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (Revised) and Reynell Developmental Language Scales version II). Results show that this child is acquiring Cantonese, English and Mandarin to a degree comparable to two classmates with normal hearing and similar educational and social backgrounds.

Exploring Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by UPM TESL Undergraduates

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Safian, Nur Hanisah; Malakar, Sharmila; Kalajahi, Seyed Ali Rezvani

2014-01-01

Vocabulary learning is one of the most challenging factors that learners will face during the process of second language learning. The main pursuit of the present study was to investigate the vocabulary language strategies among Malaysian ESL students majoring in Teaching English as a Second Language (TESL) at University Putra Malaysia. There are…

Linguistic Diversity in First Language Acquisition Research: Moving beyond the Challenges

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Kelly, Barbara F.; Forshaw, William; Nordlinger, Rachel; Wigglesworth, Gillian

2015-01-01

The field of first language acquisition (FLA) needs to take into account data from the broadest typological array of languages and language-learning environments if it is to identify potential universals in child language development, and how these interact with socio-cultural mechanisms of acquisition. Yet undertaking FLA research in remote…

Assess the Critical Period Hypothesis in Second Language Acquisition

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Du, Lihong

2010-01-01

The Critical Period Hypothesis aims to investigate the reason for significant difference between first language acquisition and second language acquisition. Over the past few decades, researchers carried out a series of studies to test the validity of the hypothesis. Although there were certain limitations in these studies, most of their results…

Using E-Books to Acquire Foundational Academic Vocabulary

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Love, Matthew L.; Spies, Tracy G.; Morgan, Joseph J.

2017-01-01

Secondary students identified as English language learners or with learning disabilities present diverse vocabulary and academic challenges related to their exceptional language needs. Limited academic vocabulary may hinder students in accessing academic content and serve as a barrier to achievement. The literature has documented the use of…

Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by Medical Students: Croatian Perspective

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Jasmina Rogulj

2018-02-01

Full Text Available In order to be able to fully develop their academic and professional competencies, medical doctors (MDs need to be highly proficient in English, which, among other things, implies the acquisition of vocabulary as an essential part of language knowledge. The current study aims at exploring vocabulary learning strategies (VLS employed by freshman and sophomore medical students at the University of Split School of Medicine, Croatia. In particular, it focuses on (a most and least frequently used VLS; (b relationship between VLS subscales and different types of vocabulary knowledge; (c differences in the mean strategy use between male and female students, and among low-, middle- and high-scoring students. The instruments used in the research were adapted version of the VLS Questionnaire (Pavičić Takač, 2008, p.152 and a vocabulary test designed by the author. The results indicate that medical students use a core inventory of VLS, whereby showing preference for the category of self-initiated vocabulary learning (SI-IVL strategies and some individual formal vocabulary learning (FVL and spontaneous vocabulary learning (SVL strategies. Although students were not in favour of FVL at the level of the category as a whole, the results showed that the more frequently they employed FVL strategies, the better they scored on vocabulary tasks measuring controlled-productive type of vocabulary knowledge. Correlations revealed that female students used SI-IVL and FVL strategies significantly more often than their male counterparts. Results also suggest that there are no statistically significant differences in the mean VLS use among low-, middle- and high-scoring students. In conclusion, the results of this study provide a preliminary insight into the VLS used by medical students and their effect on students' vocabulary learning outcomes as well as into differences by gender and vocabulary proficiency. Since findings have proved rather inconclusive, these

The acquisition of English as a second language in Rwanda ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

The acquisition of English as a second language in Rwanda: Challenges and ... E Sibomana ... Building on the factors which are believed to affect second language (L2) acquisition and learning, this article explores constraints, challenges, ...

Effects of classwide peer tutoring on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of science vocabulary words for seventh grade students with learning disabilities and/or low achievement

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Nobel, Michele Mcmahon

2005-07-01

This study investigated the effects of classwide peer tutoring (CWPT) on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of science vocabulary words and definitions. Participants were 14 seventh grade students at-risk for failure in a general education science course; 3 students had learning disabilities and 2 had a communication disorder. CWPT was conducted daily for 20 minutes during the last period of the school day. Procedures for CWPT were consistent with the Ohio State University CWPT model. Students were engaged in dyadic, reciprocal tutoring. Tutors presented word cards to tutees to identify the word and definition. Tutors praised correct responses and used a correction procedure for incorrect responses. After practicing their vocabulary words, students completed a daily testing procedure and recorded and plotted data. Many of the study's findings are consistent with previous studies using CWPT to teach word identification. Results of this study indicate a functional relationship between CWPT and acquisition of science vocabulary. All students were able to acquire words and definitions. Results for maintenance and generalization varied. When acquisition criterion was changed, maintenance and generalization scores increased for some students, while other students remained consistently high. All students reported that they enjoyed CWPT, and all but student stated it helped them learn science vocabulary.

Transfer and access to universal grammar in adult second language acquisition

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Sauter, Kim

2002-01-01

Summary This dissertation focuses on the roles of first language transfer and Universal Grammar in adult second (or foreign) language acquisition. It contributes to the ongoing debate whether second language acquisition is constrained by Universal Grammar. According to generative linguists,

Revisiting First Language Acquisition through Empirical and Rational Perspectives

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Tahriri, Abdorreza

2012-01-01

Acquisition in general and first language acquisition in particular is a very complex and a multifaceted phenomenon. The way that children acquire a language in a very limited period is astonishing. Various approaches have been proposed so far to account for this extraordinary phenomenon. These approaches are indeed based on various philosophical…

Relationship between the linguistic environments and early bilingual language development of hearing children in deaf-parented families.

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Kanto, Laura; Huttunen, Kerttu; Laakso, Marja-Leena

2013-04-01

We explored variation in the linguistic environments of hearing children of Deaf parents and how it was associated with their early bilingual language development. For that purpose we followed up the children's productive vocabulary (measured with the MCDI; MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory) and syntactic complexity (measured with the MLU10; mean length of the 10 longest utterances the child produced during videorecorded play sessions) in both Finnish Sign Language and spoken Finnish between the ages of 12 and 30 months. Additionally, we developed new methodology for describing the linguistic environments of the children (N = 10). Large variation was uncovered in both the amount and type of language input and language acquisition among the children. Language exposure and increases in productive vocabulary and syntactic complexity were interconnected. Language acquisition was found to be more dependent on the amount of exposure in sign language than in spoken language. This was judged to be related to the status of sign language as a minority language. The results are discussed in terms of parents' language choices, family dynamics in Deaf-parented families and optimal conditions for bilingual development.

“The Distribution of the Lexical Component in ELT Coursebooks and its Suitability for Vocabulary Acquisition from a Cognitive Perspective. A Case Study

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Raquel Criado

2009-12-01

Full Text Available The psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic perspective of language acquisition requires some essential conditions in vocabulary acquisition: a repetitive practice, which allows for data to reach long-term memory, and thus become proceduralised and automatised; b how relevant the lexical items are regarding the communicative needs of the learners insofar as communicative relevance is linked to frequency in general linguistic usage; c the potential in vocabulary acquisition, which will necessarily relate to the amount of new lexical items introduced in each one of the units in textbook; d the way words are taught, i.e. whether aimed at explicit or incidental learning. In order to analyse and evaluate these issues, we will study the lexical items presented in a specific textbook from the point of view of frequency, distribution along the manual, opportunities for rehearsal and repetition (which will depend on frequency, and the nature of the activities centred on vocabulary. The results of this case study will allow us to check whether or not they may stand a comparison against the findings of psycholinguistic and neurolinguistic research on vocabulary acquisition.

Desde la perspectiva de la psicolingüística y de la neurolingüística, deben darse algunas condiciones para la adquisición léxica: a práctica repetitiva, que facilita el paso de los datos a la memoria de larga duración, con la consiguiente procedimentalización y automatización; b el grado de relevancia respecto a las necesidades comunicativas de los hablantes, teniendo en cuenta que la relevancia comunicativa se correlaciona a su vez con la frecuencia de las palabras en el uso general de la lengua; c el potencial de adquisición léxica, que se relacionará necesariamente con el número de palabras introducidas en cada unidad de los libros de texto; d la manera como se enseñan las palabras, ya sea explícita o incidentalmente. Para analizar y valorar estos temas, se estudiar

Textual and Pictorial Glosses: Effectiveness on Incidental Vocabulary Growth When Reading in a Foreign Language.

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Kost, Claudia R.; Foss, Pamelo; Lenzini, John J.

1999-01-01

Investigates the effects of pictorial and textual glosses and a combination thereof on incidental vocabulary growth of foreign language learners. Subjects from second-semester German classes read a narrative text passage under one of three marginal gloss conditions: textual gloss (English translation); pictorial gloss; and text and pictures in the…

Memory strategies and ESL vocabulary acquisition

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Carisma Dreyer

2013-02-01

Full Text Available This article compares the effectiveness of three learning strategies (memory strategies for ESL vocabulary acquisition. Four intact ESL classes were divided into one control group and three treatment groups (keyword, semantic, and keyword-semantic. These Afrikaans-speaking standard 6 pupils then received 4 days of instruction. Both multiplechoice and cued-recall instruments were used to measure effects both 1 day and 9 days after instruction. The results indicated that for both the multiple-choice and cued-recall tests the combined keyword-semantic strategy differed statistically Significantly as well as practically significantly from the keyword method. The results, therefore, suggest that the combined keyword-semantic strategy increased retention above the other strategies. Hierdie artikel vergelyk die effektiwiteit van drie taalleerstrategiee (geheue strategiee vir die aanleer van woordeskat met mekaar. Vier intak Engels tweedetaal klasse is verdeel in een kontrole groep en drie eksperimentele groepe (sleutelwoord, semantiese en 'n kombinasie van die sleutelwoord-semantiese strategiee. 'n Groep Afrikaanssprekende standerd ses leerlinge het vir 'n tydperk van vier dae onderrig in elk van bogenoemde strategiee ontvang. Multikeuse en "cued-recall" instrumente is gebruik om die effek van onderrig beide een dag en nege dae na eksperimentering te bepaal. Die resultate het aangetoon dat die gekombineerde sleutelwoord-semantiese strategie statisties betekenisvol sowel as prakties betekenisvol van die sleutelwoord strategie en die kontrole groep verskil het. Dit wil dus voorkom asof die gekombineerde sleutelwoord-semantiese strategie die mees belowende strategie is ten opsigte van die retensie van woordeskat.

The Contribution of Vocabulary Knowledge and Spelling to the Reading Comprehension of Adolescents Who Are and Are Not English Language Learners.

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Reed, Deborah K; Petscher, Yaacov; Foorman, Barbara R

2016-04-01

This study examined the contributions of vocabulary and spelling to the reading comprehension of students in grades 6-10 who were and were not classified as English language learners. Results indicate that vocabulary accounted for greater between-grade differences and unique variance (Δ R 2 = .11 to .31) in comprehension as compared to spelling (Δ R 2 = .01 to .09). However, the contribution of spelling to comprehension was higher in the upper grade levels included in this cross-sectional analysis and functioned as a mediator of the impact of vocabulary knowledge at all levels. The direct effect of vocabulary was strong but lower in magnitude at each successive grade level from .58 in grade 6 to .41 in grade 10 while the indirect effect through spelling increased in magnitude at each successive grade level from .09 in grade 6 to .16 in grade 10. There were no significant differences between the language groups in the magnitude of the indirect impact, suggesting both groups of students relied more on both sources of lexical information in higher grades as compared to students in lower grades.

Review Article: Second Language Acquisition of Bantu Languages--A (Mostly) Untapped Research Opportunity

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Spinner, Patti

2011-01-01

This review article presents a summary of research on the second language acquisition of Bantu languages, including Swahili, Zulu, Xhosa and Lingala. Although second language (L2) research on these languages is currently very limited, work in morphosyntax and phonology suggests promising directions for future study, particularly on noun class,…

"Language Learning" Roundtable: Memory and Second Language Acquisition 2012, Hong Kong

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Wen, Zhisheng; McNeill, Arthur; Mota, Mailce Borges

2014-01-01

Organized under the auspices of the "Language Learning" Roundtable Conference Grant (2012), this seminar aimed to provide an interactive forum for a group of second language acquisition (SLA) researchers with particular interests in cognitive linguistics and psycholinguistics to discuss key theoretical and methodological issues in the…

A brief discussion on the biological factors in the acquisition of language

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Ronivaldo Braz da Silva

2007-11-01

Full Text Available The understanding of how language is acquired and the role the brain plays in the language acquisition process are crucial because the development of language is one of the most important factcrs in human development. The analysis of language development is intrinsically connected with one's awareness of how human beings or human brains perceive, learn, control, and coordinate elaborate behaviour. The study of language development, therefore, involves research on motor, perceptual, and cognitive development. This paper reviews the three major theories of language acquisition, namely, behaviouristic, psycholinguistic, and interactionistic and examines the biological component of language acquisition and the brain's role in the language development process.

Variability and Variation in Second Language Acquisition Orders : A Dynamic Reevaluation

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Lowie, Wander; Verspoor, Marjolijn

2015-01-01

The traditional morpheme order studies in second language acquisition have tried to demonstrate the existence of a fixed order of acquisition of English morphemes, regardless of the second language learner's background. Such orders have been taken as evidence of the preprogrammed nature of language

Foreign Language Acquisition Of Souvenir Seller In Bawomataluo Village

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Saniago Dakhi

2016-04-01

Full Text Available This research is addresses language functional and lexical acquisition domains of souvenir seller in Bawomataluo village, South Nias, North Sumatera. The reasons of lexical items acquired by souvenir seller is regarded as the function of language acquisition. On the contrary, form and process of lexical items acquired are totally viewed as language lexical domains. To obtain the whole accurate data of these research problems interview and observation were conducted. The research finding indicates four specified language lexical acquisition reasons: internal motivation, external motivation, access to native speaker and experience. In addition, eight English part of speech are acquired.It is discovered that lexical items acquired are dominated by noun. Verb and adjective posites at the next level of the amount of lexicals acquired. Adverb, conjunction, pronoun are less acquired. Interjection is more easily acquired by souvenir sellers. The processes involved to acquire the lexical consist of social, memory, compensation, and affective process. Finally, the research finding is thoroughly expected to be language teacher’s consideration in employing material selection and determining natural, contextual and situational language teaching model. Language leaners are highly advised to recall the language competence theoretically mastered in naturall setting in attempt to obtain practical competence.

A Dual Coding View of Vocabulary Learning

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Sadoski, Mark

2005-01-01

A theoretical perspective on acquiring sight vocabulary and developing meaningful vocabulary is presented. Dual Coding Theory assumes that cognition occurs in two independent but connected codes: a verbal code for language and a nonverbal code for mental imagery. The mixed research literature on using pictures in teaching sight vocabulary is…

Mobile English Vocabulary Learning Based on Concept-Mapping Strategy

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Liu, Pei-Lin

2016-01-01

Numerous researchers in education recognize that vocabulary is essential in foreign language learning. However, students often encounter vocabulary that is difficult to remember. Providing effective vocabulary learning strategies is therefore more valuable than teaching students a large amount of vocabulary. The purpose of this study was to…

The Initial Stages of First-Language Acquisition Begun in Adolescence: When Late Looks Early

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Ramirez, Naja Ferjan; Lieberman, Amy M.; Mayberry, Rachel I.

2013-01-01

Children typically acquire their native language naturally and spontaneously at a very young age. The emergence of early grammar can be predicted from children's vocabulary size and composition (Bates et al., 1994; Bates, Bretherton & Snyder, 1998; Bates & Goodman, 1997). One central question in language research is understanding what…

Multilingual Communication and Language Acquisition: New Research Directions

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Canagarajah, A. Suresh; Wurr, Adrian J.

2011-01-01

In this article, we outline the differences between a monolingual and multilingual orientation to language and language acquisition. The increasing contact between languages in the context of globalization motivates such a shift of paradigms. Multilingual communicative practices have remained vibrant in non-western communities for a long time. We…

The role of affordances in Libras acquisition as second language

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Jéssica Puhl

2016-05-01

Full Text Available Libras is a visual-spatial language used by the Brazilian deaf community. Following the principles of spatiality and vision, the user of the sign language resorts more easily to stimuli from the environment than the user of the oral language. Thus, the hypothesis of this research is that the affordances (environmental properties that enable psychologically possible actions would be a facilitator element in the process of Libras acquisition. In this paper we use the narrative and interpretive-qualitative research to discuss the role of affordances in the listener perception, interpretation and action cycle in Libras acquisition as second language. Results show that the Libras’ iconic signs can be considered important affordances in the early stages of the acquisition. It is also observed the importance of the permanence in the niche where Libras is used for the sign language development.

Vocabulary Use by Low, Moderate, and High ASL-Proficient Writers Compared to Hearing ESL and Monolingual Speakers.

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Singleton, Jenny L; Morgan, Dianne; DiGello, Elizabeth; Wiles, Jill; Rivers, Rachel

2004-01-01

The written English vocabulary of 72 deaf elementary school students of various proficiency levels in American Sign Language (ASL) was compared with the performance of 60 hearing English-as-a-second-language (ESL) speakers and 61 hearing monolingual speakers of English, all of similar age. Students were asked to retell "The Tortoise and the Hare" story (previously viewed on video) in a writing activity. Writing samples were later scored for total number of words, use of words known to be highly frequent in children's writing, redundancy in writing, and use of English function words. All deaf writers showed significantly lower use of function words as compared to their hearing peers. Low-ASL-proficient students demonstrated a highly formulaic writing style, drawing mostly on high-frequency words and repetitive use of a limited range of function words. The moderate- and high-ASL-proficient deaf students' writing was not formulaic and incorporated novel, low-frequency vocabulary to communicate their thoughts. The moderate- and high-ASL students' performance revealed a departure from findings one might expect based on previous studies with deaf writers and their vocabulary use. The writing of the deaf writers also differed from the writing of hearing ESL speakers. Implications for deaf education and literacy instruction are discussed, with special attention to the fact that ASL-proficient, deaf second-language learners of English may be approaching English vocabulary acquisition in ways that are different from hearing ESL learners.

The Effectiveness of Using Contextual Clues, Dictionary Strategy and Computer Assisted Language Learning (Call In Learning Vocabulary

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Zuraina Ali

2013-07-01

Full Text Available This study investigates the effectiveness of three vocabulary learning methods that are Contextual Clues, Dictionary Strategy, and Computer Assisted Language Learning (CALL in learning vocabulary among ESL learners. First, it aims at finding which of the vocabulary learning methods namely Dictionary Strategy, Contextual Clues, and CALL that may result in the highest number of words learnt in the immediate and delayed recall tests. Second, it compares the results of the Pre-test and the Delayed Recall Post-test to determine the differences of learning vocabulary using the methods. A quasi-experiment that tested the effectiveness of learning vocabulary using Dictionary Strategy, Contextual clues, and CALL involved 123 first year university students. Qualitative procedures included the collection of data from interviews which were conducted to triangulate the data obtain from the quantitative inquiries. Findings from the study using ANOVA revealed that there were significant differences when students were exposed to Dictionary Strategy, Contextual Clues and CALL in the immediate recall tests but not in the Delayed Recall Post-test. Also, there were significant differences when t test was used to compare the scores between the Pre-test and the Delayed Recall Post-test in using the three methods of vocabulary learning. Although many researchers have advocated the relative effectiveness of Dictionary Strategy, Contextual Clues, and CALL in learning vocabulary, the study however, is still paramount since there is no study has ever empirically investigated the relative efficacy of these three methods in a single study.

Vocabulary knowledge predicts lexical processing: Evidence from a group of participants with diverse educational backgrounds

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Mainz, N.; Shao, Z.; Brysbaert, M.; Meyer, A.S.

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is central to a speaker's command of their language. In previous research, greater vocabulary knowledge has been associated with advantages in language processing. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual differences in vocabulary and language processing

The Impact of Vocabulary Knowledge Level on EFL Reading Comprehension

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Shima Kameli

2013-01-01

Full Text Available The present study examined the impact of vocabulary knowledge level on reading comprehension performance among EFL language learners. The ultimate intention was to determine the association between levels of vocabulary knowledge and to clarify the relationship among vocabulary knowledge on reading comprehension performance of EFL Iranian students on subtest of VLT and IELTS. Quantitative data were collected from 220 EFL Iranian adult students at the beginning of second semester of 2011 in private English language institute (BAHAR, Shiraz, Iran. The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT and Reading Comprehension Test (IELTS were performed in one session as research instruments. The findings indicated that there were positive relationships among different levels of vocabulary test and also test scores on vocabulary size/breadth of vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension.

Crossword Puzzles as a Learning Tool for Vocabulary Development

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Orawiwatnakul, Wiwat

2013-01-01

Introduction: Since vocabulary is a key basis on which reading achievement depends, various vocabulary acquisition techniques have become pivotal. Among the many teaching approaches, traditional or otherwise, the use of crossword puzzles seems to offer potential and a solution for the problem of learning vocabulary. Method: This study was…

Why and How EFL Students Learn Vocabulary in Parliamentary Debate Class

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Eunice M. Aclan

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary, the backbone of any language including English, is foundational for listening, speaking, reading and writing. These four macro-skills are necessary not only in gaining knowledge as English is the language to access major information sources particularly the World Wide Web but also in the demanding globalized workplace. Vocabulary is seen to be learned better when it is contextualized thus language teachers should design communicative activities such as debate. However, debate, being more known as a competitive rather than a classroom activity worldwide, has not been explored yet for its potential to develop vocabulary among EFL/ESL students although it has been identified for its power in developing communication skills in general as well as critical thinking and other soft skills. Thus, this qualitative study was conducted to explore why and how EFL students learn vocabulary in classroom debate. The data were gathered through end-of-course evaluation and focus group interview with seven participants from the Middle East, African and ASEAN countries. The findings show that students learned vocabulary due to debate’s interactive nature requiring contextualized and meaningful language use from preparation to actual debate. EFL students described how they learned vocabulary through debate which has implications for SLA and language teaching.   Keywords: Noticing hypothesis, Comprehensible input, Incomprehensible input, Vocabulary building strategies

Verbal short-term memory and vocabulary learning in polyglots.

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Papagno, C; Vallar, G

1995-02-01

Polyglot and non-polyglot Italian subjects were given tests assessing verbal (phonological) and visuo-spatial short-term and long-term memory, general intelligence, and vocabulary knowledge in their native language. Polyglots had a superior level of performance in verbal short-term memory tasks (auditory digit span and nonword repetition) and in a paired-associate learning test, which assessed the subjects' ability to acquire new (Russian) words. By contrast, the two groups had comparable performance levels in tasks assessing general intelligence, visuo-spatial short-term memory and learning, and paired-associate learning of Italian words. These findings, which are in line with neuropsychological and developmental evidence, as well as with data from normal subjects, suggest a close relationship between the capacity of phonological memory and the acquisition of foreign languages.

First and second language acquisition: Towards a reconcillation

OpenAIRE

Nau Nicole

2015-01-01

For the past two decades, research on first language acquisition on the one side, and on second language acquisition and learning on the other have largely developed separately, probably as a reaction to the failure of earlier attempts to use the same methods or simply transfer insights gained in one of the fields to the other. T his article argues that a reconciliation may be fruitful, provided that different aspects which have often got blurred in the discussion are considered separately. T...

Balance Toward Language Mastery

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Virginia R. Heslinga

2017-01-01

Full Text Available Problems in attaining language mastery with students from diverse language backgrounds and levels of ability confront educators around the world. Experiments, research, and experience see positive effects of adding sign language in communication methods to pre-school and K-12 education. Augmentative, alternative, interactive, accommodating, and enriching strategies using sign language aid learners in balancing the skills needed to mastery of one language or multiple languages. Theories of learning that embrace play, drama, motion, repetition, socializing, and self-efficacy connect to the options for using sign language with learners in inclusive and mainstream classes. The methodical use of sign language by this researcher-educator over two and a half decades showed signing does build thinking skills, add enjoyment, stimulate communication, expand comprehension, increase vocabulary acquisition, encourage collaboration, and helps build appreciation for cultural diversity.

Early child L2 acquisition: Age or input effects? Neither, or both?

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Unsworth, Sharon

2016-05-01

This paper explores whether there is evidence for age and/or input effects in child L2 acquisition across three different linguistic domains, namely morphosyntax, vocabulary, and syntax-semantics. More specifically, it compares data from English-speaking children whose age of onset to L2 Dutch was between one and three years with data from children whose age of onset was between four and seven years in their acquisition of verb morphology, verb placement, vocabulary, and direct object scrambling. The main findings were that there were no significant differences between the two groups in any of these areas and, with the exception of scrambling, current amount of exposure was the only factor significantly related to children's scores. The paper discusses the theoretical significance of these findings with respect to the role of input in the language acquisition process and the claim that there is a critical period ending within (early) childhood.

English-French bilingual children’s phonological awareness and vocabulary skills

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PiYu Chiang

2007-12-01

Full Text Available Abstract This study examined the relationship between English-speaking children’s vocabulary skills in English and in French and their phonological awareness skills in both languages. Forty-four kindergarten-aged children attending French immersion programs were administered a receptive vocabulary test, an expressive vocabulary test and a phonological awareness test in English and French. Results showed that French phonological awareness was largely explained by English phonological awareness, consistent with previous findings that phonological awareness skills transfer across languages. However, there was a small unique contribution from French expressive vocabulary size to French phonological awareness. The importance of vocabulary skills to the development of phonological awareness is discussed.

Toward More Substantial Theories of Language Acquisition

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Jenson, Cinnamon Ann

2015-01-01

Cognitive linguists argue that certain sets of knowledge of language are innate. However, critics have argued that the theoretical concept of "innateness" should be eliminated since it is ambiguous and insubstantial. In response, I aim to strengthen theories of language acquisition and identify ways to make them more substantial. I…

Incidental Foreign-Language Acquisition by Children Watching Subtitled Television Programs

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Ina, Lekkai

2014-01-01

Series of international studies have shown that subtitled television programs provide a rich context for foreign language acquisition. This study investigated whether incidental language acquisition occurs from watching a television program with/without subtitles. Children in the experimental conditions watch: (a) a 15 minute snapshot of a well…

Polish Vocabulary Development in 2-Year-Olds: Comparisons with English Using the Language Development Survey

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Rescorla, Leslie; Constants, Holly; Bialecka-Pikul, Marta; Stepien-Nycz, Malgorzata; Ochal, Anna

2017-01-01

Purpose: The objective of this study was to compare vocabulary size and composition in 2-year-olds learning Polish or English as measured by the Language Development Survey (LDS; Rescorla, 1989). Method: Participants were 199 Polish toddlers (M = 24.14 months, SD = 0.35) and 422 U.S. toddlers (M = 24.69 months, SD = 0.78). Results: Test-retest…

The Robbers and the Others – A Serious Game Using Natural Language Processing

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Toma, Irina; Brighiu, Stefan Mihai; Dascalu, Mihai; Trausan-Matu, Stefan

2018-01-01

Learning a new language includes multiple aspects, from vocabulary acquisition to exercising words in sentences, and developing discourse building capabilities. In most learning scenarios, students learn individually and interact only during classes; therefore, it is difficult to enhance their

The Importance of SES, Home and School Language and Literacy Practices, and Oral Vocabulary in Bilingual Children's English Reading Development

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Howard, Elizabeth R.; Páez, Mariela M.; August, Diane L.; Barr, Christopher D.; Kenyon, Dorry; Malabonga, Valerie

2014-01-01

This study explores the role that socioeconomic status (SES), home and school language and literacy practices, and oral vocabulary play in the development of English reading skills in Latino English language learners (ELLs) and how these factors contribute differentially to English reading outcomes for children of different ages and in different…

English Language Learners' Nonword Repetition Performance: The Influence of Age, L2 Vocabulary Size, Length of L2 Exposure, and L1 Phonology.

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Duncan, Tamara Sorenson; Paradis, Johanne

2016-02-01

This study examined individual differences in English language learners' (ELLs) nonword repetition (NWR) accuracy, focusing on the effects of age, English vocabulary size, length of exposure to English, and first-language (L1) phonology. Participants were 75 typically developing ELLs (mean age 5;8 [years;months]) whose exposure to English began on average at age 4;4. Children spoke either a Chinese language or South Asian language as an L1 and were given English standardized tests for NWR and receptive vocabulary. Although the majority of ELLs scored within or above the monolingual normal range (71%), 29% scored below. Mixed logistic regression modeling revealed that a larger English vocabulary, longer English exposure, South Asian L1, and older age all had significant and positive effects on ELLs' NWR accuracy. Error analyses revealed the following L1 effect: onset consonants were produced more accurately than codas overall, but this effect was stronger for the Chinese group whose L1s have a more limited coda inventory compared with English. ELLs' NWR performance is influenced by a number of factors. Consideration of these factors is important in deciding whether monolingual norm referencing is appropriate for ELL children.

Authentic Language Input Through Audiovisual Technology and Second Language Acquisition

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Taher Bahrani

2014-09-01

Full Text Available Second language acquisition cannot take place without having exposure to language input. With regard to this, the present research aimed at providing empirical evidence about the low and the upper-intermediate language learners’ preferred type of audiovisual programs and language proficiency development outside the classroom. To this end, 60 language learners (30 low level and 30 upper-intermediate level were asked to have exposure to their preferred types of audiovisual program(s outside the classroom and keep a diary of the amount and the type of exposure. The obtained data indicated that the low-level participants preferred cartoons and the upper-intermediate participants preferred news more. To find out which language proficiency level could improve its language proficiency significantly, a post-test was administered. The results indicated that only the upper-intermediate language learners gained significant improvement. Based on the findings, the quality of the language input should be given priority over the amount of exposure.

The relationship between phonological short-term memory, receptive vocabulary, and fast mapping in children with specific language impairment.

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Jackson, Emily; Leitao, Suze; Claessen, Mary

2016-01-01

Children with specific language impairment (SLI) often experience word-learning difficulties, which are suggested to originate in the early stage of word learning: fast mapping. Some previous research indicates significantly poorer fast mapping capabilities in children with SLI compared with typically developing (TD) counterparts, with a range of methodological factors impacting on the consistency of this finding. Research has explored key issues that might underlie fast mapping difficulties in children with SLI, with strong theoretical support but little empirical evidence for the role of phonological short-term memory (STM). Additionally, further research is required to explore the influence of receptive vocabulary on fast mapping capabilities. Understanding the factors associated with fast mapping difficulties that are experienced by children with SLI may lead to greater theoretically driven word-learning intervention. To investigate whether children with SLI demonstrate significant difficulties with fast mapping, and to explore the related factors. It was hypothesized that children with SLI would score significantly lower on a fast mapping production task compared with TD children, and that phonological STM and receptive vocabulary would significantly predict fast mapping production scores in both groups of children. Twenty-three children with SLI (mean = 64.39 months, SD = 4.10 months) and 26 TD children (mean = 65.92 months, SD = 2.98) were recruited from specialist language and mainstream schools. All participants took part in a unique, interactive fast-mapping task whereby nine novel objects with non-word labels were presented and production accuracy was assessed. A non-word repetition test and the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition (PPVT-IV) were also administered as measures of phonological STM capacity and receptive vocabulary, respectively. Results of the fast-mapping task indicated that children with SLI had significantly poorer fast

An ERP study on initial second language vocabulary learning.

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Yum, Yen Na; Midgley, Katherine J; Holcomb, Phillip J; Grainger, Jonathan

2014-04-01

This study examined the very initial phases of orthographic and semantic acquisition in monolingual native English speakers learning Chinese words under controlled laboratory conditions. Participants engaged in 10 sessions of vocabulary learning, four of which were used to obtain ERPs. Performance in behavioral tests improved over sessions, and these data were used to define fast and slow learners. Most important is that ERPs in the two groups of learners revealed qualitatively distinct learning patterns. Only fast learners showed a left-lateralized increase in N170 amplitude with training. Furthermore, only fast learners showed an increased N400 amplitude with training, with a distinct anterior distribution. Slow learners, on the other hand, showed a posterior positive effect, with increasingly positive-going waveforms in occipital sites as training progressed. Possible mechanisms underlying these qualitative differences are discussed. Copyright © 2014 Society for Psychophysiological Research.

Processability in Scandinavian second language acquisition

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Glahn, Esther; Håkansson, Gisela; Hammerberg, Björn

2001-01-01

. The three languages mentioned are very closely related and have the same adjective morphology and subordinate clause syntax. We can, therefore, treat them as one language for the purposes of this study. Three analyses have been carried out: The first follows Pienemann's theory and is concerned only...... with syntactic levels; the second is a semantic analysis of the acquisition of number versus that of gender; the third analysis studies the various kinds of mismatches between the inflection of the noun, the controller, and the adjective. The results are the following: The first test supports PT as it has been...... described by Pienemann. The second analysis shows that there is an acquisitional hierarchy such that number is acquired before gender (in adjectives), and the mismatch analysis raises questions about the fundamental assumptions of the theory....

Contextual Clues Vocabulary Strategies Choice among Business Management Students

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Ahmad, Siti Nurshafezan; Muhammad, Ahmad Mazli; Kasim, Aini Mohd

2018-01-01

New trends in vocabulary learning focus on strategic vocabulary learning to create more active and independent language learners. Utilising suitable contextual clues strategies is seen as vital in enabling and equipping language learners with the skill to guess word meaning accurately, moving away from dependency on a dictionary to improve their…

Generative Research on Second Language Acquisition.

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Eubank, Lynn

1995-01-01

Reviews recent trends in generative research on second language acquisition, focusing on the role of universal grammar, parameter resetting, and anaphoric binding. An annotated bibliography discusses five important works in the field. (61 references) (MDM)

Self-awareness moderates the relation between maternal mental state language about desires and children's mental state vocabulary.

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Taumoepeau, Mele; Ruffman, Ted

2016-04-01

In this intervention study, we tested the differential effect of talking about children's desires versus talking about others' thoughts and knowledge on children's acquisition of mental state vocabulary for children who did and did not have mirror self-recognition. In a sample of 96 mother-toddler dyads, each mother was randomly assigned a specially constructed, interactive lift-the-flap book to read to her child three times a week for 4 weeks. In the child desire condition the story elicited comments regarding the child's desires, and in the cognitive condition the story elicited the mother's comments about her own thoughts and knowledge while reading the story. Children's mirror self-recognition and mental state vocabulary were assessed at pre- and post-test. Children in the condition that focused on the child's desires showed a significantly greater increase in their mental state vocabulary; however, this effect was moderated by their levels of self-awareness, with children benefitting more from the intervention if they also showed self-recognition at pre-test. We argue that the combination of specific types of maternal talk and children's prior insights facilitates gains in children's mental state vocabulary. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Infants' Background Television Exposure during Play: Negative Relations to the Quantity and Quality of Mothers' Speech and Infants' Vocabulary Acquisition

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Masur, Elise Frank; Flynn, Valerie; Olson, Janet

2016-01-01

Research on immediate effects of background television during mother-infant toy play shows that an operating television in the room disrupts maternal communicative behaviors crucial for infants' vocabulary acquisition. This study is the first to examine associations between frequent background TV/video exposure during mother-infant toy play at…

Serbian language acquisition in communist Romania

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Sorescu-Marinković Annemarie

2010-01-01

Full Text Available The paper analyzes a unique linguistic phenomenon characterizing Romania’s western border areas for almost a decade, in the 1980s: the acquisition of the Serbian language by Romanians in Timişoara under the communist regime, primarily through exposure to Yugoslav television programmes. It gives a necessarily sketchy overview of private life under communism, notably the situation in the Banat province, whose privileged position as a result of being closest to the West both geographically and culturally was reflected in the acceptance of pluralism and a critical attitude towards authoritarianism. Taking into account the literature on foreign language acquisition through exposure to television programmes, the study is based on a research involving Romanian natives of Timişoara who, although lacking any formal instruction in Serbian, intensively and regularly watched Yugoslav television programmes in the period in question, and on evaluating their competence and proficiency in Serbian, through language tests, narrative interviews in Romanian and free conversations in Serbian. The conclusion is that most respondents, despite the varying degree of proficiency in Serbian depending on their active use of the language before and after 1989, showed a strong pragmatic competence, which appears to contradict the author’s initial hypothesis.

Neurolinguistics Aspects of Second Language Acquisition

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Laleh Fakhraee Faruji

2011-12-01

Full Text Available   Fundamental breakthroughs in the neurosciences, combined with technical innovations for measuring brain activity, are shedding new light on the neural basis of second language (L2
processing, and on its relationship to native language processing (L1 (Perani & Abutalebi, 2005.  Over the past two decades, a large body of neuroimaging studies has been devoted to the study of the neural organization of language (De´monet, Thierry, & Cardebat, 2005; Indefrey & Levelt, 2004; Price, 2000 as cited in Abutalebi, 2008. The value that functional neuroimaging adds to language research is to improve the perspective on the distributed anatomy of language. Thus, it can be used with considerable precision to identify the neural networks underlying the different domains of language processing. In this paper some main issues related to neurolinguistics and second language acquisition with a focus on bilingualism will be discussed.

Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Lexical Processing: Evidence from a Group of Participants with Diverse Educational Backgrounds

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Nina Mainz

2017-07-01

Full Text Available Vocabulary knowledge is central to a speaker's command of their language. In previous research, greater vocabulary knowledge has been associated with advantages in language processing. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual differences in vocabulary and language processing performance more closely by (i using a battery of vocabulary tests instead of just one test, and (ii testing not only university students (Experiment 1 but young adults from a broader range of educational backgrounds (Experiment 2. Five vocabulary tests were developed, including multiple-choice and open antonym and synonym tests and a definition test, and administered together with two established measures of vocabulary. Language processing performance was measured using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, vocabulary and word frequency were found to predict word recognition speed while we did not observe an interaction between the effects. In Experiment 2, word recognition performance was predicted by word frequency and the interaction between word frequency and vocabulary, with high-vocabulary individuals showing smaller frequency effects. While overall the individual vocabulary tests were correlated and showed similar relationships with language processing as compared to a composite measure of all tests, they appeared to share less variance in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. Implications of our findings concerning the assessment of vocabulary size in individual differences studies and the investigation of individuals from more varied backgrounds are discussed.

Vocabulary Knowledge Predicts Lexical Processing: Evidence from a Group of Participants with Diverse Educational Backgrounds

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Mainz, Nina; Shao, Zeshu; Brysbaert, Marc; Meyer, Antje S.

2017-01-01

Vocabulary knowledge is central to a speaker's command of their language. In previous research, greater vocabulary knowledge has been associated with advantages in language processing. In this study, we examined the relationship between individual differences in vocabulary and language processing performance more closely by (i) using a battery of vocabulary tests instead of just one test, and (ii) testing not only university students (Experiment 1) but young adults from a broader range of educational backgrounds (Experiment 2). Five vocabulary tests were developed, including multiple-choice and open antonym and synonym tests and a definition test, and administered together with two established measures of vocabulary. Language processing performance was measured using a lexical decision task. In Experiment 1, vocabulary and word frequency were found to predict word recognition speed while we did not observe an interaction between the effects. In Experiment 2, word recognition performance was predicted by word frequency and the interaction between word frequency and vocabulary, with high-vocabulary individuals showing smaller frequency effects. While overall the individual vocabulary tests were correlated and showed similar relationships with language processing as compared to a composite measure of all tests, they appeared to share less variance in Experiment 2 than in Experiment 1. Implications of our findings concerning the assessment of vocabulary size in individual differences studies and the investigation of individuals from more varied backgrounds are discussed. PMID:28751871

Self-Organizing Map Models of Language Acquisition

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Ping eLi

2013-11-01

Full Text Available Connectionist models have had a profound impact on theories of language. While most early models were inspired by the classic PDP architecture, recent models of language have explored various other types of models, including self-organizing models for language acquisition. In this paper we aim at providing a review of the latter type of models, and highlight a number of simulation experiments that we have conducted based on these models. We show that self-organizing connectionist models can provide significant insights into long-standing debates in both monolingual and bilingual language development.

75 FR 60261 - Federal Acquisition Regulation; Award-Fee Language Revision

Science.gov (United States)

2010-09-29

...-AL42 Federal Acquisition Regulation; Award-Fee Language Revision AGENCIES: Department of Defense (DoD...: Final rule. SUMMARY: The Civilian Agency Acquisition Council and the Defense Acquisition Regulations Council (Councils) have adopted as final, with changes, the interim rule amending the Federal Acquisition...

Home and Community Language Proficiency in Spanish-English Early Bilingual University Students.

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Schmidtke, Jens

2017-10-17

This study assessed home and community language proficiency in Spanish-English bilingual university students to investigate whether the vocabulary gap reported in studies of bilingual children persists into adulthood. Sixty-five early bilinguals (mean age = 21 years) were assessed in English and Spanish vocabulary and verbal reasoning ability using subtests of the Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey-Revised (Schrank & Woodcock, 2009). Their English scores were compared to 74 monolinguals matched in age and level of education. Participants also completed a background questionnaire. Bilinguals scored below the monolingual control group on both subtests, and the difference was larger for vocabulary compared to verbal reasoning. However, bilinguals were close to the population mean for verbal reasoning. Spanish scores were on average lower than English scores, but participants differed widely in their degree of balance. Participants with an earlier age of acquisition of English and more current exposure to English tended to be more dominant in English. Vocabulary tests in the home or community language may underestimate bilingual university students' true verbal ability and should be interpreted with caution in high-stakes situations. Verbal reasoning ability may be more indicative of a bilingual's verbal ability.

A Correlational Study: Personality Types and Foreign Language Acquisition in Undergraduate Students

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Capellan, Frank

2017-01-01

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between personality types and second language acquisition. The study addressed a problem that is inadequately investigated in foreign language acquisition research; specifically, personality traits as predictors of language learning in college students studying Spanish as a foreign…

Structural brain changes linked to delayed first language acquisition in congenitally deaf individuals.

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Pénicaud, Sidonie; Klein, Denise; Zatorre, Robert J; Chen, Jen-Kai; Witcher, Pamela; Hyde, Krista; Mayberry, Rachel I

2013-02-01

Early language experience is essential for the development of a high level of linguistic proficiency in adulthood and in a recent functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging (fMRI) experiment, we showed that a delayed acquisition of a first language results in changes in the functional organization of the adult brain (Mayberry et al., 2011). The present study extends the question to explore if delayed acquisition of a first language also modulates the structural development of the brain. To this end, we carried out anatomical MRI in the same group of congenitally deaf individuals who varied in the age of acquisition of a first language, American Sign Language -ASL (Mayberry et al., 2011) and used a neuroanatomical technique, Voxel-Based Morphometry (VBM), to explore changes in gray and white matter concentrations across the brain related to the age of first language acquisition. The results show that delayed acquisition of a first language is associated with changes in tissue concentration in the occipital cortex close to the area that has been found to show functional recruitment during language processing in these deaf individuals with a late age of acquisition. These findings suggest that a lack of early language experience affects not only the functional but also the anatomical organization of the brain. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Frames of reference in spatial language acquisition.

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Shusterman, Anna; Li, Peggy

2016-08-01

Languages differ in how they encode spatial frames of reference. It is unknown how children acquire the particular frame-of-reference terms in their language (e.g., left/right, north/south). The present paper uses a word-learning paradigm to investigate 4-year-old English-speaking children's acquisition of such terms. In Part I, with five experiments, we contrasted children's acquisition of novel word pairs meaning left-right and north-south to examine their initial hypotheses and the relative ease of learning the meanings of these terms. Children interpreted ambiguous spatial terms as having environment-based meanings akin to north and south, and they readily learned and generalized north-south meanings. These studies provide the first direct evidence that children invoke geocentric representations in spatial language acquisition. However, the studies leave unanswered how children ultimately acquire "left" and "right." In Part II, with three more experiments, we investigated why children struggle to master body-based frame-of-reference words. Children successfully learned "left" and "right" when the novel words were systematically introduced on their own bodies and extended these words to novel (intrinsic and relative) uses; however, they had difficulty learning to talk about the left and right sides of a doll. This difficulty was paralleled in identifying the left and right sides of the doll in a non-linguistic memory task. In contrast, children had no difficulties learning to label the front and back sides of a doll. These studies begin to paint a detailed account of the acquisition of spatial terms in English, and provide insights into the origins of diverse spatial reference frames in the world's languages. Copyright © 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

MULTIMEDIA LEARNING IMPLEMENTATION AND VOCABULARY MASTERY FOR ENHANCHING STUDENTS’ JAPANESE LANGUAGE READING SKILL AT SMKN 1 PURWOKERTO

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Haryono Haryono

2015-06-01

Full Text Available The present research is the implementation of the 2013 doctoral disertation report funded by DIKTI. The research is a part of IPTEKS scheme for community devotion that have strong relation to language education technology. It concern with the use of multimedia learning and vocabulary mastery on students’ Japanese language  reading skills at SMK 1 Purwokerto. The method is implemented experimentally by giving multimedia learning treatment such as Rosetta Stone and Tell Me More Japanese. Through some presentation with the use of those multimedia learning material, the purpose of this research is to know the extent to which the level of their vocabulary mastery and to encourage students in order to have an approriate skill to read Japanese documents. With the implementation of this multimedia learning training, graduate students of SMK Negeri I Purwokerto will be increased and for the future they have a good job at Japanese companies in Indonesia

Efficacy of Using Vocabulary Flashcards in Braille

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Savaiano, Mackenzie E.; Lloyd, Blair P.; Hatton, Deborah D.

2017-01-01