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Sample records for vocabulary general vocabulary

  1. German Vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Coombs, Virginia M.

    This article discusses in general terms derivational aspects of English vocabulary. Citing examples of Anglo-Saxon origin, the author provides a glimpse into the nature of the interrelatedness of English, German, and French vocabulary. (RL)

  2. 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.  

  3. 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.

  4. 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…

  5. Using Vocabulary Notebooks for Vocabulary Acquisition and Teaching

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    Dubiner, Deborah

    2017-01-01

    Vocabulary knowledge is recognized as an essential element for second language acquisition and reading comprehension. One known way to encourage and support vocabulary development amongst second language learners is keeping a vocabulary notebook. The primary purpose of the present study was to document two aspects of student teachers' own…

  6. Using an Online Vocabulary Memorization Tool versus Traditional Vocabulary Exercises

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    Arif Bakla

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available This study was conducted to reveal what Memrise, an online vocabulary study tool, can offer to upper-intermediate EFL learners compared to traditional vocabulary exercises in L2 vocabulary learning. Two groups of upper-intermediate learners (N=80 were randomly assigned to the experimental group and the control group and were given the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale, VKS for short, as the pre-test and post-test. The participants in both groups were exposed to the target vocabulary items in the same reading text. While those in the experimental group created list of target vocabulary items collaboratively in Memrise and then studied the sets individually, the learners in the control group did traditional vocabulary exercises. The results of the post-tests indicated that there was a significant difference between the control group and the experimental group in favor of the experimental group. The researchers discuss possible pedagogical implications of this significant finding for EFL vocabulary instruction.

  7. The effect of vocabulary notebooks on vocabulary acquisition

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    Bozkurt, Neval

    2007-01-01

    Ankara : The Department of Teaching English as a Foreign Language, Bilkent University, 2007. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2007. Includes bibliographical references leaves 82-87 This study investigated the effectiveness of vocabulary notebooks on vocabulary acquisition, and the attitudes of teachers and learners towards keeping vocabulary notebooks. The study was conducted with the participation of 60 pre-intermediate level students, divided into one treatment ...

  8. Influence of Native Language Vocabulary and Topic Knowledge on Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning in Health Care Providers

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    Marcia Foresee Drumhiller

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Adults attending short, language for specific purpose courses may have expertise not utilized in general foreign language courses. The present study investigates two factors that may influence the acquisition of medical Spanish vocabulary in such persons: native English vocabulary size and topic knowledge. Forty-four health care workers attended 12 hr of medical Spanish instruction. Prior to instruction, the Nelson–Denny Vocabulary Test, a Medical Spanish vocabulary test, and an English Medical Terminology Test (an indicator of topic knowledge were administered. The Medical Spanish Vocabulary Test was readministered at posttest. Individually, both English medical terminology knowledge and English vocabulary size were significant predictors of medical Spanish vocabulary acquisition, but English medical terminology knowledge explained most of the variance in medical Spanish vocabulary acquisition. The results are discussed in terms of the impact of expert memory organization on the ability to learn new labels in a second language. A curricular shift toward content-centered vocabulary in language for specific purpose courses may be advantageous for some groups of foreign language learners.

  9. The pace of vocabulary growth helps predict later vocabulary skill

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    Rowe, Meredith L.; Raudenbush, Stephen W.; Goldin-Meadow, Susan

    2011-01-01

    Children vary widely in the rate at which they acquire words—some start slow and speed up, others start fast and continue at a steady pace. Do early developmental variations of this sort help predict vocabulary skill just prior to kindergarten entry? This longitudinal study starts by examining important predictors (SES, parent input, child gesture) of vocabulary growth between 14 and 46 months (n=62), and then uses growth estimates to predict children's vocabulary at 54 months. Velocity and acceleration in vocabulary development at 30 months predicted later vocabulary, particularly for children from low socioeconomic backgrounds. Understanding the pace of early vocabulary growth thus improves our ability to predict school readiness, and may help identify children at risk for starting behind. PMID:22235920

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

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    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…

  11. 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…

  12. 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.

  13. The Relationship between Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge

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    Zhang, Xian; Lu, Xiaofei

    2015-01-01

    This study investigated the relationship between vocabulary learning strategies and vocabulary breadth and depth knowledge. One hundred and fifty first-year university students in China took the Vocabulary Levels Test, a meaning recall task, and the Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge Test. The first two tests were used to elicit two types of vocabulary…

  14. Vocabulary Pruning for Improved Context Recognition

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Rasmus Elsborg; Sigurdsson, Sigurdur; Hansen, Lars Kai

    2004-01-01

    Language independent `bag-of-words' representations are surprisingly effective for text classification. The representation is high dimensional though, containing many non-consistent words for text categorization. These non-consistent words result in reduced generalization performance of subsequent...... of term relevancy, when pruning the vocabularies. With reduced vocabularies documents are classified using a latent semantic indexing representation and a probabilistic neural network classifier. Reducing the bag-of-words vocabularies with 90%-98%, we find consistent classification improvement using two...

  15. Vocabularies in the VO

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    Gray, A. J. G.; Gray, N.; Ounis, I.

    2009-09-01

    There are multiple vocabularies and thesauri within astronomy, of which the best known are the 1993 IAU Thesaurus and the keyword list maintained by A&A, ApJ and MNRAS. The IVOA has agreed on a standard for publishing vocabularies, based on the W3C skos standard, to allow greater automated interaction with them, in particular on the Web. This allows links with the Semantic Web and looks forward to richer applications using the technologies of that domain. Vocabulary-aware applications can benefit from improvements in both precision and recall when searching for bibliographic or science data, and lightweight intelligent filtering for services such as VOEvent streams. In this paper we present two applications, the Vocabulary Explorer and its companion the Mapping Editor, which have been developed to support the use of vocabularies in the Virtual Observatory. These combine Semantic Web and Information Retrieval technologies to illustrate the way in which formal vocabularies might be used in a practical application, provide an online service which will allow astronomers to explore and relate existing vocabularies, and provide a service which translates free text user queries into vocabulary terms.

  16. 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.

  17. Facilitating linguistically diverse parents to enhance toddler's vocabulary development

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Teepe, R.C.; Molenaar, I.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.; Oostdam, R.J.

    2017-01-01

    Aims: The aim is to investigate effects of a Dutch FLP on linguistically diverse children's vocabulary, specifically curriculumbased and general vocabulary. Moreover, we investigate additional effects including technology-enhanced activities in a FLP. Theoretical background Vocabulary knowledge in

  18. Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary Knowledge and Their Effects on L2 Vocabulary Profiles

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    Bardakçi, Mehmet

    2016-01-01

    Breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge have been studied from many different perspectives, but the related literature lacks serious studies dealing with their effects on vocabulary profiles of EFL learners. In this paper, with an aim to fill this gap, the relative effects of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge on L2 vocabulary profiles…

  19. 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.

  20. COMPUTER-ASSISTED VOCABULARY LEARNING: THE POWER OF GAMING ON STUDENTS’ ENGLISH VOCABULARY ACHIEVEMENT

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    Yune Andryani Pinem

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available The main objective of this study was to find out whether the power of gaming contributed to vocabulary learning and gave significant upgrading in students‘ vocabulary scores through its comparison to the dull and routine vocabulary learning. The subjects, two groups of Indonesian students, were tested in a pre-test before joining two different methods of vocabulary learning, and finally were tested in a post-test. Data were collected from the students‘ pre-test and post-test scores. From the comparison of these two groups‘ data, the output proved that the vocabulary class using ―Little Shop of Treasure‖ online games was better in boosting students‘ scores.

  1. Impact of Training Deep Vocabulary Learning Strategies on Vocabulary Retention of Iranian EFL Learners

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    Seyed Javad Es-hagi Sardroud

    2013-05-01

    Full Text Available Considering the overall tendency of foreign language learners to use mechanical strategies of rote rehearsal in vocabulary learning and their resistance towards use of 'deep' vocabulary learning strategies, namely contextual guessing, Keyword Method, metacognitive strategy, and semantic mapping, this study intended (a to explore what impact the instruction of these deep strategies, on vocabulary retention of 32 post-intermediate adult EFL Iranian learners, (b to determine how the variable of gender influences the vocabulary retention of students after receiving training in these strategies. To this end, on the basis of a strategy-based model of instruction–CALLA (Chamot & O'Malley, 1994, the experimental group received training in using 'deep' vocabulary learning strategies while the control group received only the common method of vocabulary teaching. After the treatment, following factorial design, the performance of the participants in the teacher-made vocabulary test as posttest was analyzed statistically.  The results indicated higher vocabulary retention for the experimental group, and it was revealed that female students were more receptive to strategy training. This study provides evidence for confirmation of 'depth of processing' hypothesis and the emerging theory about the impact of gender on effective strategy teaching and use, and it recommends incorporation of teaching these 'deep' strategies of vocabulary learning into EFL classrooms.

  2. Vocabulary Control for Information Retrieval.

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    Lancaster, F. W.

    This book deals with properties of vocabularies for indexing and searching document collections; the construction, organization, display, and maintenance of these vocabularies; and the vocabulary as a factor affecting the performance of retrieval systems. Most of the text is concerned with vocabularies for post-coordinate retrieval systems, with…

  3. 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.

  4. Comparative Difficulties with Non-Scientific General Vocabulary and Scientific/Medical Terminology in English as a Second Language (ESL) Medical Students.

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    Heming, Thomas A; Nandagopal, Shobha

    2012-11-01

    Medical education requires student comprehension of both technical (scientific/medical) and non-technical (general) vocabulary. Our experience with "English as a second language" (ESL) Arab students suggested they often have problems comprehending scientific statements because of weaknesses in their understanding of non-scientific vocabulary. This study aimed to determine whether ESL students have difficulties with general vocabulary that could hinder their understanding of scientific/medical texts. A survey containing English text was given to ESL students in the premedical years of an English-medium medical school in an Arabic country. The survey consisted of sample questions from the Medical College Admission Test (USA). Students were instructed to identify all unknown words in the text. ESL students commenced premedical studies with substantial deficiencies in English vocabulary. Students from English-medium secondary schools had a selective deficiency in scientific/medical terminology which disappeared with time. Students from Arabic-medium secondary schools had equal difficulty with general and scientific/medical vocabulary. Deficiencies in both areas diminished with time but remained even after three years of English-medium higher education. Typically, when teaching technical subjects to ESL students, attention is focused on subject-unique vocabulary and associated modifiers. This study highlights that ESL students also face difficulties with the general vocabulary used to construct statements employing technical words. Such students would benefit from increases in general vocabulary knowledge.

  5. Controlled Vocabulary Service Application for Environmental Data Store

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    Ji, P.; Piasecki, M.; Lovell, R.

    2013-12-01

    In this paper we present a controlled vocabulary service application for Environmental Data Store (EDS). The purpose for such application is to help researchers and investigators to archive, manage, share, search, and retrieve data efficiently in EDS. The Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is used in the application for the representation of the controlled vocabularies coming from EDS. The controlled vocabularies of EDS are created by collecting, comparing, choosing and merging controlled vocabularies, taxonomies and ontologies widely used and recognized in geoscience/environmental informatics community, such as Environment ontology (EnvO), Semantic Web for Earth and Environmental Terminology (SWEET) ontology, CUAHSI Hydrologic Ontology and ODM Controlled Vocabulary, National Environmental Methods Index (NEMI), National Water Information System (NWIS) codes, EPSG Geodetic Parameter Data Set, WQX domain value etc. TemaTres, an open-source, web -based thesaurus management package is employed and extended to create and manage controlled vocabularies of EDS in the application. TemaTresView and VisualVocabulary that work well with TemaTres, are also integrated in the application to provide tree view and graphical view of the structure of vocabularies. The Open Source Edition of Virtuoso Universal Server is set up to provide a Web interface to make SPARQL queries against controlled vocabularies hosted on the Environmental Data Store. The replicas of some of the key vocabularies commonly used in the community, are also maintained as part of the application, such as General Multilingual Environmental Thesaurus (GEMET), NetCDF Climate and Forecast (CF) Standard Names, etc.. The application has now been deployed as an elementary and experimental prototype that provides management, search and download controlled vocabularies of EDS under SKOS framework.

  6. Food and Feed Commodity Vocabulary

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    Food and Feed Vocabulary was developed to consolidate all the major OPP Commodity Vocabularies into one standardized vocabulary. The EPA-preferred term is the only term that can be used in setting tolerances.

  7. Linking open vocabularies

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    Greifender, Elke; Seadle, Michael

    2013-01-01

    Linked Data (LD), Linked Open Data (LOD) and generating a web of data, present the new knowledge sharing frontier. In a philosophical context, LD is an evolving environment that reflects humankinds' desire to understand the world by drawing on the latest technologies and capabilities of the time. LD, while seemingly a new phenomenon did not emerge overnight; rather it represents the natural progression by which knowledge structures are developed, used, and shared. Linked Open Vocabularies is a significant trajectory of LD. Linked Open Vocabularies targets vocabularies that have traditionally b

  8. 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…

  9. Components for Maintaining and Publishing Earth Science Vocabularies

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    Cox, S. J. D.; Yu, J.

    2014-12-01

    Shared vocabularies are an important aid to geoscience data interoperability. Many organizations maintain useful vocabularies, with Geologic Surveys having a particularly long history of vocabulary and lexicon development. However, the mode of publication is heterogeneous, ranging from PDFs and HTML web pages, spreadsheets and CSV, through various user-interfaces and APIs. Update and maintenance ranges from tightly-governed and externally opaque, through various community processes, all the way to crowd-sourcing ('folksonomies'). A general expectation, however, is for greater harmonization and vocabulary re-use. In order to be successful this requires (a) standardized content formalization and APIs (b) transparent content maintenance and versioning. We have been trialling a combination of software dealing with registration, search and linking. SKOS is designed for formalizing multi-lingual, hierarchical vocabularies, and has been widely adopted in earth and environmental sciences. SKOS is an RDF vocabulary, for which SPARQL is the standard low-level API. However, for interoperability between SKOS vocabulary sources, a SKOS-based API (i.e. based on the SKOS predicates prefLabel, broader, narrower, etc) is required. We have developed SISSvoc for this purpose, and used it to deploy a number of vocabularies on behalf of the IUGS, ICS, NERC, OGC, the Australian Government, and CSIRO projects. SISSvoc Search provides simple search UI on top of one or more SISSvoc sources. Content maintenance is composed of many elements, including content-formalization, definition-update, and mappings to related vocabularies. Typically there is a degree of expert judgement required. In order to provide confidence in users, two requirements are paramount: (i) once published, a URI that denotes a vocabulary item must remain dereferenceable; (ii) the history and status of the content denoted by a URI must be available. These requirements match the standard 'registration' paradigm which is

  10. 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…

  11. Vocabulary test format and differential relations to age.

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    Bowles, Ryan P; Salthouse, Timothy A

    2008-06-01

    Although vocabulary tests are generally considered interchangeable, regardless of format, different tests can have different relations to age and to other cognitive abilities. In this study, 4 vocabulary test formats were examined: multiple-choice synonyms, multiple-choice antonyms, produce the definition, and picture identification. Results indicated that, although they form a single coherent vocabulary knowledge factor, the formats have different relations to age. In earlier adulthood, picture identification had the strongest growth, and produce the definition had the weakest. In later adulthood, picture identification had the strongest decline, and multiple-choice synonyms had the least. The formats differed in their relation to other cognitive variables, including reasoning, spatial visualization, memory, and speed. After accounting for the differential relations to other cognitive variables, differences in relation to age were eliminated with the exception of differences for the picture identification test. No theory of the aging of vocabulary knowledge fully explains these findings. These results suggest that using a single indicator of vocabulary may yield incomplete and somewhat misleading results about the aging of vocabulary knowledge.

  12. Computer Multimedia Assisted English Vocabulary Teaching Courseware

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    Nan Yue

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available English vocabulary is often regarded as the most boring link in English learning. However, English vocabulary is the basis of all aspects of English learning. Therefore, enriching the process of English vocabulary learning and stimulating the interest of English vocabulary learning are the keys to the reform of English vocabulary teaching. The computer multimedia is developing and popularizing rapidly with the rapid development of informationization and networking, which plays its role in more and more fields. The application of multimedia technology in the field of teaching is no longer strange. This paper mainly studied the design of computer multimedia assisted English vocabulary teaching courseware. First of all, this paper gave an overview of computer multimedia technology from the aspects of concept, characteristics, development and application situation, which cited and analyzed the cognitive learning theory and memory law. Under the guidance of scientific laws and in combination with the requirement analysis and pattern construction of English vocabulary teaching, this paper realized the module design, style design and database design of English vocabulary courseware. Finally, the content of English vocabulary teaching courseware was demonstrated, and its application effect was verified through the combination of subjective evaluation and objective evaluation. This article has an important guiding significance for stimulating students’ interest in English vocabulary learning and enhancing the quality of vocabulary teaching.

  13. Profiling vocabulary acquisition in Irish.

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    O'Toole, Ciara; Fletcher, Paul

    2012-01-01

    Investigations into early vocabulary development, including the timing of the acquisition of nouns, verbs and closed-class words, have produced conflicting results, both within and across languages. Studying vocabulary development in Irish can contribute to this area, as it has potentially informative features such as a VSO word order, and semantically rich prepositions. This study used a parent report adapted for Irish, to measure vocabulary development longitudinally for children aged between 1,04 and 3,04. The findings indicated that the children learned closed-class words at relatively smaller vocabulary sizes compared to children acquiring other languages, and had a strong preference for nouns.

  14. Second Language Vocabulary Growth at Advanced Level

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    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…

  15. 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...

  16. 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.

  17. Assessing roles of vocabulary knowledge predominating in contextual clues

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    Patcharawadee Promduang

    2016-07-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and the use of contextual clues and whether EFL learners who are well-equipped with reading skills are able to comprehend the text despite a low level of vocabulary knowledge. Therefore, the study focused on which vocabulary dimensions help students guess unfamiliar words. The study was carried out at Hatyai University in Thailand. The population of this study consisted of 34 undergraduates who were studying International Business English and had taken a course in reading techniques. The present study was conducted to conceptually validate the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge to improve skills by contextual clue. Vocabulary Depth was specially employed to evaluate two dimensions namely Paradigmatic and Syntagmatic. The Schmitt and Clapham Vocabulary Level Test was used to test vocabulary breadth, while the vocabulary depth was implemented by Read’s Vocabulary Depth Test. Reading parts of the TOEFL were adopted for contextual clue items. There were two statistical analysis tools also implemented in this study: paired-sample t-test and bivariate correlation. First, in an attempt to find which vocabulary dimension predominates in guessing word meaning from the text, a paired-sample t-test was utilized to compare the difference of two vocabulary dimensions in reading part: vocabulary depth and contextual clues, and vocabulary breadth and contextual clues. Second, a bivariate correlation was used to find the degree of relationship between vocabulary knowledge and contextual clues. The consequences of this study identified empirical results that 1 there was a positive relationship between contextual clues and vocabulary depth, the reverse is true in vocabulary breadth. Moreover, vocabulary depth is more significantly crucial than breadth to enhance student’s ability to guess words’ meaning from the context.

  18. Swimming in New Vocabulary

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    Donohue, Kerri; Buck, Gayle

    2017-01-01

    This article describes an informal program in one school where grade K-1 students learn a variety of new science vocabulary words relating to animal characteristics. The students are introduced to a new group of animals and their characteristics through storytelling, games, discussion, and crafts (see Table 1, p. 34). The new vocabulary words are…

  19. 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.

  20. Teaching Vocabulary to Preschool Children with Hearing Loss

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lund, Emily; Douglas, W. Michael

    2016-01-01

    Despite poor vocabulary outcomes for children with hearing loss, few studies have evaluated the effectiveness of specific vocabulary teaching methods on vocabulary learning for this group. The authors compared three vocabulary instruction conditions with preschool children with hearing loss: (a) explicit, direct instruction; (b) follow-in…

  1. INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING THROUGH READING

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Holly Warzecha, M.A. TESOL

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of the following paper is to take a closer look at the benefits of incidental learning through reading, with a specific focus on vocabulary acquisition. The teaching of vocabulary has traditionally been an explicit process where the target vocabulary is taken out of context and taught separately. However, this kind of explicit teaching and learning may only take into account a form-meaning connection. Therefore, this paper explores research on incidental learning and specifically looks at what it takes to acquire new vocabulary incidentally through reading while considering the coverage rates of texts, how many words must be known already from the text, how many repetitions it takes to learn a word, types of texts that promote learning, and the effects of pairing students‘ reading with learner tasks. After reviewing many studies, it can be concluded that more reading is better. More specifically, extensive reading of chosen novels at an appropriate level and interest to the students showed important gains in vocabulary. In addition, readings that were supplemented with additional activities that focused on both form and meaning showed an even higher increase in word retention.

  2. Early vocabulary development in children with bilateral cochlear implants.

    Science.gov (United States)

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

    2018-01-01

    Children with unilateral cochlear implants (CIs) may have delayed vocabulary development for an extended period after implantation. Bilateral cochlear implantation is reported to be associated with improved sound localization and enhanced speech perception in noise. This study proposed that bilateral implantation might also promote early vocabulary development. Knowledge regarding vocabulary growth and composition in children with bilateral CIs and factors associated with it may lead to improvements in the content of early speech and language intervention and family counselling. To analyse the growth of early vocabulary and its composition during the first year after CI activation and to investigate factors associated with vocabulary growth. The participants were 20 children with bilateral CIs (12 boys; eight girls; mean age at CI activation = 12.9 months). Vocabulary size was assessed with the Finnish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventories (CDI) Infant Form and compared with normative data. Vocabulary composition was analysed in relation to vocabulary size. Growth curve modelling was implemented using a linear mixed model to analyse the effects of the following variables on early vocabulary growth: time, gender, maternal education, residual hearing with hearing aids, age at first hearing aid fitting and age at CI activation. Despite clear vocabulary growth over time, children with bilateral CIs lagged behind their age norms in receptive vocabulary during the first 12 months after CI activation. In expressive vocabulary, 35% of the children were able to catch up with their age norms, but 55% of the children lagged behind them. In receptive and expressive vocabularies of 1-20 words, analysis of different semantic categories indicated that social terms constituted the highest proportion. Nouns constituted the highest proportion in vocabularies of 101-400 words. The proportion of verbs remained below 20% and the proportion of function words and

  3. Relationship between Vocabulary Size and Reading Comprehension Levels of Malaysian Tertiary Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Angelina Wan Lin Tan

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available This study investigated the relationship between vocabulary size and reading comprehension performance among students in a tertiary institution in a Malaysian context and examined the vocabulary size required for students to achieve reading comprehension at various levels of proficiency. The research questions that guided this study were: 1 What is the vocabulary size of second year diploma students studying Mass Communication?; 2 What is the reading comprehension proficiency of second year diploma students studying Mass Communication?; and 3 What vocabulary size is required for different levels of reading comprehension proficiency? This study used the quantitative approach. The participants were 53 Malaysian second-year students at a private university college in Malaysia who were reading for their Diploma in Mass Communication. The instruments used were the Vocabulary Size Test and the IELTS Reading Test (Academic Module. The findings showed that the average vocabulary size of the students was just over 6000 word families and this vocabulary size was generally insufficient for adequate reading comprehension. Students needed an average vocabulary size of about 8000 word families to achieve adequate reading comprehension and about 10000 word families to achieve proficient reading comprehension. Based on the individual student’s performance, this study did not find a linear relationship between vocabulary size and reading comprehension performance, nor was there a threshold vocabulary size for adequate reading comprehension.

  4. Learners' independent records of vocabulary

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Shaw, Philip; Leeke, Philip

    1999-01-01

    Handbooks recommend a variety of quite complicated procedures for learning and remembering vocabulary, but most learners only engage in very simple procedures. The aim of this project was to establish a basis for identifying optimal vocabulary recording procedures by finding out what learners...

  5. Semantic Web-based Vocabulary Broker for Open Science

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ritschel, B.; Neher, G.; Iyemori, T.; Murayama, Y.; Kondo, Y.; Koyama, Y.; King, T. A.; Galkin, I. A.; Fung, S. F.; Wharton, S.; Cecconi, B.

    2016-12-01

    Keyword vocabularies are used to tag and to identify data of science data repositories. Such vocabularies consist of controlled terms and the appropriate concepts, such as GCMD1 keywords or the ESPAS2 keyword ontology. The Semantic Web-based mash-up of domain-specific, cross- or even trans-domain vocabularies provides unique capabilities in the network of appropriate data resources. Based on a collaboration between GFZ3, the FHP4, the WDC for Geomagnetism5 and the NICT6 we developed the concept of a vocabulary broker for inter- and trans-disciplinary data detection and integration. Our prototype of the Semantic Web-based vocabulary broker uses OSF7 for the mash-up of geo and space research vocabularies, such as GCMD keywords, ESPAS keyword ontology and SPASE8 keyword vocabulary. The vocabulary broker starts the search with "free" keywords or terms of a specific vocabulary scheme. The vocabulary broker almost automatically connects the different science data repositories which are tagged by terms of the aforementioned vocabularies. Therefore the mash-up of the SKOS9 based vocabularies with appropriate metadata from different domains can be realized by addressing LOD10 resources or virtual SPARQL11 endpoints which maps relational structures into the RDF format12. In order to demonstrate such a mash-up approach in real life, we installed and use a D2RQ13 server for the integration of IUGONET14 data which are managed by a relational database. The OSF based vocabulary broker and the D2RQ platform are installed at virtual LINUX machines at the Kyoto University. The vocabulary broker meets the standard of a main component of the WDS15 knowledge network. The Web address of the vocabulary broker is http://wdcosf.kugi.kyoto-u.ac.jp 1 Global Change Master Directory2 Near earth space data infrastructure for e-science3 German Research Centre for Geosciences4 University of Applied Sciences Potsdam5 World Data Center for Geomagnetism Kyoto6 National Institute of Information and

  6. Early Vocabulary in Relation to Gender, Bilingualism, Type, and Duration of Childcare.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stolarova, M; Brielmann, A A; Wolf, C; Rinker, T; Burke, T; Baayen, H

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates the predictive value of child-related and environmental characteristics for early lexical development. The German productive vocabulary of 51 2-year-olds (27 girls), assessed via parental report, was analyzed taking children's gender, the type of early care they experienced, and their mono- versus bilingual language composition into consideration. The children were from an educationally homogeneous group of families and state-regulated daycare facilities with high structural quality. All investigated subgroups exhibited German vocabulary size within the expected normative range. Gender differences in vocabulary composition, but not in size, were observed. There were no general differences in vocabulary size or composition between the 2 care groups. An interaction between the predictors gender and care arrangement showed that girls without regular daycare experience before the age of 2 years had a somewhat larger vocabulary than all other investigated subgroups of children. The vocabulary size of the 2-year-old children in daycare correlated positively with the duration of their daycare experience prior to testing. The small subgroup of bilingual children investigated exhibited slightly lower but still normative German expressive vocabulary size and a different vocabulary composition compared to the monolingual children. This study expands current knowledge about relevant predictors of early vocabulary. It shows that in the absence of educational disadvantages the duration of early daycare experience of high structural quality is positively associated with vocabulary size but also points to the fact that environmental characteristics, such as type of care, might affect boys' and girls' early vocabulary in different ways.

  7. DSpace and customized controlled vocabularies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skourlas, C.; Tsolakidis, A.; Kakoulidis, P.; Giannakopoulos, G.

    2015-02-01

    The open source platform of DSpace could be defined as a repository application used to provide access to digital resources. DSpace is installed and used by more than 1000 organizations worldwide. A predefined taxonomy of keyword, called the Controlled Vocabulary, can be used for describing and accessing the information items stored in the repository. In this paper, we describe how the users can create, and customize their own vocabularies. Various heterogeneous items, such as research papers, videos, articles and educational material of the repository, can be indexed in order to provide advanced search functionality using new controlled vocabularies.

  8. 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 ...

  9. A Dual Coding View of Vocabulary Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  10. The Effect of Vocabulary Self-Selection Strategy and Input Enhancement Strategy on the Vocabulary Knowledge of Iranian EFL Learners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Masoudi, Golfam

    2017-01-01

    The present study was designed to investigate empirically the effect of Vocabulary Self-Selection strategy and Input Enhancement strategy on the vocabulary knowledge of Iranian EFL Learners. After taking a diagnostic pretest, both experimental groups enrolled in two classes. Learners who practiced Vocabulary Self-Selection were allowed to…

  11. Water Quality Vocabulary Development and Deployment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Simons, B. A.; Yu, J.; Cox, S. J.

    2013-12-01

    Semantic descriptions of observed properties and associated units of measure are fundamental to understanding of environmental observations, including groundwater, surface water and marine water quality. Semantic descriptions can be captured in machine-readable ontologies and vocabularies, thus providing support for the annotation of observation values from the disparate data sources with appropriate and accurate metadata, which is critical for achieving semantic interoperability. However, current stand-alone water quality vocabularies provide limited support for cross-system comparisons or data fusion. To enhance semantic interoperability, the alignment of water-quality properties with definitions of chemical entities and units of measure in existing widely-used vocabularies is required. Modern ontologies and vocabularies are expressed, organized and deployed using Semantic Web technologies. We developed an ontology for observed properties (i.e. a model for expressing appropriate controlled vocabularies) which extends the NASA/TopQuadrant QUDT ontology for Unit and QuantityKind with two additional classes and two properties (see accompanying paper by Cox, Simons and Yu). We use our ontology to populate the Water Quality vocabulary with a set of individuals of each of the four key classes (and their subclasses), and add appropriate relationships between these individuals. This ontology is aligned with other relevant stand-alone Water Quality vocabularies and domain ontologies. Developing the Water Quality vocabulary involved two main steps. First, the Water Quality vocabulary was populated with individuals of the ObservedProperty class, which was determined from a census of existing datasets and services. Each ObservedProperty individual relates to other individuals of Unit and QuantityKind (taken from QUDT where possible), and to IdentifiedObject individuals. As a large fraction of observed water quality data are classified by the chemical substance involved, the

  12. Social validation of vocabulary selection: ensuring stakeholder relevance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bornman, Juan; Bryen, Diane Nelson

    2013-06-01

    The vocabulary needs of individuals who are unable to spell their messages continue to be of concern in the field of augmentative and alternative communication (AAC). Social validation of vocabulary selection has been suggested as one way to improve the effectiveness and relevance of service delivery in AAC. Despite increased emphasis on stakeholder accountability, social validation is not frequently used in AAC research. This paper describes an investigation of the social validity of a vocabulary set identified in earlier research. A previous study used stakeholder focus groups to identify vocabulary that could be used by South African adults who use AAC to disclose their experiences as victims of crime or abuse. Another study used this vocabulary to create communication boards for use by adults with complex communication needs. In this current project, 12 South African adults with complex communication needs who use AAC systems used a 5-point Likert scale to score the importance of each of the previously identified 57 vocabulary items. This two-step process of first using stakeholder focus groups to identify vocabulary, and then having literate persons who use AAC provide information on social validity of the vocabulary on behalf of their peers who are illiterate, appears to hold promise as a culturally relevant vocabulary selection approach for sensitive topics such as crime and abuse.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  14. Effects of Individualized Word Retrieval in Kindergarten Vocabulary Intervention

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  15. First-year university students’ receptive and productive use of academic vocabulary

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Déogratias Nizonkiza

    2016-05-01

    Full Text Available The present study explores academic vocabulary knowledge, operationalised through the Academic Word List, among first-year higher education students. Both receptive and productive knowledge and the proportion between the two are examined. Results show that while receptive knowledge is readily acquired by first-year students, productive knowledge lags behind and remains problematic. This entails that receptive knowledge is much larger than productive knowledge, which confirms earlier indications that receptive vocabulary knowledge is larger than productive knowledge for both academic vocabulary (Zhou 2010 and general vocabulary (cf. Laufer 1998, Webb 2008, among others. Furthermore, results reveal that the ratio between receptive and productive knowledge is slightly above 50%, which lends empirical support to previous findings that the ratio between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge can be anywhere between 50% and 80% (Milton 2009. This finding is extended here to academic vocabulary; complementing Zhou’s (2010 study that investigated the relationship between the two aspects of vocabulary knowledge without examining the ratio between them. On the basis of these results, approaches that could potentially contribute to fostering productive knowledge growth are discussed. Avenues worth exploring to gain further insight into the relationship between receptive and productive knowledge are also suggested.

  16. 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…

  17. Mobile English Vocabulary Learning Based on Concept-Mapping Strategy

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  18. Effects of multimedia vocabulary instruction on adolescents with learning disabilities.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kennedy, Michael J; Deshler, Donald D; Lloyd, John Wills

    2015-01-01

    The purpose of this experimental study is to investigate the effects of using content acquisition podcasts (CAPs), an example of instructional technology, to provide vocabulary instruction to adolescents with and without learning disabilities (LD). A total of 279 urban high school students, including 30 with LD in an area related to reading, were randomly assigned to one of four experimental conditions with instruction occurring at individual computer terminals over a 3-week period. Each of the four conditions contained different configurations of multimedia-based instruction and evidence-based vocabulary instruction. Dependent measures of vocabulary knowledge indicated that students with LD who received vocabulary instruction using CAPs through an explicit instructional methodology and the keyword mnemonic strategy significantly outperformed other students with LD who were taught using the same content, but with multimedia instruction that did not adhere to a specific theoretical design framework. Results for general education students mirrored those for students with LD. Students also completed a satisfaction measure following instruction with multimedia and expressed overall agreement that CAPs are useful for learning vocabulary terms. © Hammill Institute on Disabilities 2013.

  19. Learning vocabulary through a serious game in Primary Education

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Heitink, Maaike Christine; Fisser, Petra; Voogt, Joke; McBride, Ron; Searson, Michael

    2013-01-01

    This study explored the effect of a serious game on the vocabulary of students in primary education. 206 students and 10 teachers used the game during vocabulary lessons in three conditions: (a)online game and vocabulary instruction, (b)online game only, and (c)paper game and vocabulary instruction.

  20. Recommendations for Recognizing Video Events by Concept Vocabularies

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Habibian, A.; Snoek, C.G.M.

    2014-01-01

    Representing videos using vocabularies composed of concept detectors appears promising for generic event recognition. While many have recently shown the benefits of concept vocabularies for recognition, studying the characteristics of a universal concept vocabulary suited for representing events is

  1. Improving Elementary School Students’ English Vocabulary Through Local Cultural Content Materials

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Frans Manurung

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Elementary students of a certain public school in Indonesia had difficulties in learning English. One of the crucial problems was learning English vocabulary. In an attempt to help the students learn and improve English vocabulary, the researchers decided to use CAR to teach English vocabulary with local cultural content materials. The aim of this study was to investigate how the teaching of English vocabulary with local cultural content materials contributed to the improvement of the students’ English vocabulary mastery. The topics covered in the materials were selected based on schemata theory. Vocabulary learning process was done through several activities provided in the materials: classroom and outside vocabulary learning. The results showed that the teaching of local cultural content materials have contributed to the improvement of the Elementary students’ vocabulary mastery. The schematic knowledge found in the familiar topics has aroused the students’ interest and motivation in learning English vocabulary. Students who were more familiar with the topics could respond to the vocabulary learning better than those who were not familiar with. The vocabulary mastery was more successful only if the students participated in both classroom and outside vocabulary learning process. Keywords: Vocabulary Mastery, Vocabulary Improvement, Local Cultural Content Materials, Vocabulary Learning, Schemata

  2. A Research on Vocabulary Teaching Strategies and Students’ Mastery

    OpenAIRE

    Tian Yuan; Liu Bingbing

    2013-01-01

    By means of questionnaire and quantitative research, this article aims at investigating the effects on students’ mastery of vocabulary by studying teachers’ adoption of seven kinds of common vocabulary teaching strategies and the usage of analyzing strategies in intensive English in order to improve vocabulary teaching strategies and to help enlarge students’ vocabulary.

  3. Motivating Students to Learn Biology Vocabulary with Wikipedia

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Boriana Marintcheva

    2012-02-01

    Full Text Available Timely learning of specialized science vocabulary is critical for building a solid knowledge base in any scientific discipline. To motivate students to dedicate time and effort mastering biology vocabulary, I have designed a vocabulary exercise utilizing the popular web encyclopedia Wikipedia. The exercise creates an opportunity for students to connect the challenge of vocabulary learning to a prior positive experience of self-guided learning using a content source they are familiar and comfortable with.

  4. Why and How EFL Students Learn Vocabulary in Parliamentary Debate Class

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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

  5. Ontology Based Vocabulary Matching for Oceanographic Instruments

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Yu; Shepherd, Adam; Chandler, Cyndy; Arko, Robert; Leadbetter, Adam

    2014-05-01

    Data integration act as the preliminary entry point as we enter the era of big data in many scientific domains. However the reusefulness of various dataset has met the hurdle due to different initial of interests of different parties, therefore different vocabularies in describing similar or semantically related concepts. In this scenario it is vital to devise an automatic or semi-supervised algorithm to facilitate the convergence of different vocabularies. The Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP) seeks to increase data sharing across scientific domains and international boundaries by providing a forum to harmonize diverse regional data systems. ODIP participants from the US include the Rolling Deck to Repository (R2R) program, whose mission is to capture, catalog, and describe the underway/environmental sensor data from US oceanographic research vessels and submit the data to public long-term archives. In an attempt to harmonize these regional data systems, especially vocabularies, R2R recognizes the value of the SeaDataNet vocabularies served by the NERC Vocabulary Server (NVS) hosted at the British Oceanographic Data Centre as a trusted, authoritative source for describing many oceanographic research concepts such as instrumentation. In this work, we make use of the semantic relations in the vocabularies served by NVS to build a Bayesian network and take advantage of the idea of entropy in evaluating the correlation between different concepts and keywords. The performance of the model is evaluated against matching instruments from R2R against the SeaDataNet instrument vocabularies based on calculated confidence scores in the instrument pairings. These pairings with their scores can then be analyzed for assertion growing the interoperability of the R2R vocabulary through its links to the SeaDataNet entities.

  6. Online Independent Vocabulary Learning Experience of Hong Kong University Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Eunice Tang

    2016-03-01

    Full Text Available In response to the limited vocabulary size of its undergraduates, an independent vocabulary learning platform, VLearn was designed and launched in a university in Hong Kong. As an elearning environment that supports self-directed vocabulary learning of Chinese learners, the primary aim of VLearn is to equip users with appropriate knowledge and skills for vocabulary expansion. This paper introduces the contents of VLearn, and the theoretical underpinnings of its design. It also reports on the vocabulary learning experience of its users during an eight week evaluation study. Suggestions are made on how independent vocabulary building at higher education, as well as comprehensive vocabulary instruction at early years could be supported by means of technology.

  7. Tagging vs. Controlled Vocabulary

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Bogers, Toine; Petras, Vivien

    2015-01-01

    The popularity of social tagging has sparked a great deal of debate on whether tags could replace or improve upon professional metadata as descriptors of books and other information objects. In this paper we present a large-scale empirical comparison of the contributions of individual information...... that tags and controlled vocabulary terms do not actually outperform each other consistently, but seem to provide complementary contributions: some information needs are best addressed using controlled vocabulary terms whereas other are best addressed using tags....

  8. Vocabulary Growth in College-Level Students’ Narrative Writing

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hicham ZYAD

    2017-09-01

    Full Text Available The nature and size of vocabulary significantly determine quality in a given piece of writing. It therefore follows that an extensive vocabulary repertoire is a key factor to success in academic life. Most certainly, this explains the vast amount of scholarly attention that has been invested in this line of research. In this regard, a wide array of studies have provided evidence suggesting that human assessors of writing quality are substantially influenced by the range and sophistication of the vocabulary used by L2 learners. The studies that offered such evidence used different measurement tools to evaluate the nature and/or size of L2 learners’ vocabulary. However, very few studies have attempted to chart vocabulary knowledge across different college-level proficiency levels in narrative writing productions in the Moroccan context. To contribute to this debate, the present study aims to investigate university L2 learners’ vocabulary knowledge across three proficiency levels from two post-secondary institutions. More specifically, this cross-sectional study operationalized vocabulary knowledge in terms of diversity and sophistication in order to chart growth in the lexical repertoire of 90 participants. Data analysis showed that the participants displayed different levels of vocabulary knowledge. In terms of lexical diversity, second-year students’ vocabulary was as diverse as third-year students but it was not as sophisticated. Nonetheless, sophistication did not differentiate first- and second-year students but it did differentiate between second- and third-year students. Additionally, diversity and sophistication were both good markers of difference between first- and second-year students. The implications of the findings will be discussed.

  9. The relationship between Iranian EFL learners’ self-regulatory vocabulary strategy use and their vocabulary size

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Seyed Mohammad Reza Amirian

    2015-07-01

    Full Text Available Self-regulation is referred to as learners’ self-generated ideas and actions which are systematically directed towards achieving educational goals and require learners’ active participation in the learning process (Zimmerman & Bandura, 1994. The present study investigated the relationship between Iranian EFL students’ self-regulation capacity for vocabulary learning and their vocabulary size. For this purpose, the researchers made use of two main instruments: the self-regulation capacity in vocabulary learning scale developed by Tseng et al. (2006 consisting of five subscales of commitment, metacognitive, emotion, satiation and environment control, and a bilingual vocabulary size test developed and validated by Karami (2012. The results of the data analysis revealed no significant relationship between the two variables measured by these instruments. However, the results of the multiple regressions indicated that the metacognitive control compared to the other subscales made a better contribution to the prediction of learners’ vocabulary size. In addition, based on the analysis of variance (ANOVA, which examined and compared the self-regulatory strategy use of learners in different experience groups, the first year students had a higher mean score in their self-regulation capacity, which can possibly be attributed to the strategies they have learnt in their Study Skills courses. Finally, it was suggested that teachers must try to develop self-regulatory power in the learners because their creative effort and informed decisions in trying to improve their own learning are highly important.

  10. Vocabulary test Strategies used by the Students to answer Vocabulary Test the Reading Comprehension of TOEFL

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Suyatman Suyatman

    2017-10-01

    Full Text Available Test of English as a foreign Language or TOEFL is a standardized test of English for non-native speaker. It consists of three parts or three sections of tests. In Reading Comprehension test, it consists of vocabulary test. To get better result of score, it needs strategies. The purposes of this study are to know the strategies used by the students to answer the vocabulary test on reading section of TOEFL, to know the most strategy used by the students, to know the least strategy used by the students and to know the distribution of strategies used by the students to answer the Vocabulary test of Reading Comprehension of the TOEFL. The researcher used descriptive qualitative research. The subject was twelve students. The instrument was questionnaire that consisted of thirty questions. Data analyzes technique was by using mean score. The result of the research showed that; (1 students used all strategies to answer the vocabulary test of reading comprehension of TOEFL. (2 the most strategies used by the students was ‘Looking for contextual clues to the meaning of unknown words.(3 the least strategy used by the students to answer vocabulary test was ‘Developing a new vocabulary study system, and (4 the distribution of the strategy number 1 was 3.88,strategy number 2 was 3.61, number 3 was 2.94, number four was 2.91, strategy number 5 was3.88, strategy number six was 3.47, strategy number seven was 3.69, strategy number eight was 3.02, strategy number nine was 3.00 and the last strategy was 3.13.

  11. Facilitating vocabulary acquisition of young English language learners.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lugo-Neris, Mirza J; Jackson, Carla Wood; Goldstein, Howard

    2010-07-01

    This study examined whether English-only vocabulary instruction or English vocabulary instruction enhanced with Spanish bridging produced greater word learning in young Spanish-speaking children learning English during a storybook reading intervention while considering individual language characteristics. Twenty-two Spanish-speaking children learning English (ages 4-6) who participated in a summer education program for migrant families were randomly assigned to receive 2 weeks of each instruction: (a) word expansions in English or (b) English readings with word expansions in Spanish. Researcher-created measures of target vocabulary were administered, as were English and Spanish standardized measures of language proficiency and vocabulary. Results revealed significant improvement in naming, receptive knowledge, and expressive definitions for those children who received Spanish bridging. Spanish expansions produced the greatest gains in the children's use of expressive definitions. Initial language proficiency in both languages was found to affect participants' gains from intervention, as those with limited skills in both languages showed significantly less vocabulary growth than those with strong skills in Spanish. Additional benefits to using Spanish expansions in vocabulary instruction were observed. Future research should explore additional ways of enhancing the vocabulary growth of children with limited skills in both languages in order to support and strengthen the child's first language and promote second language acquisition.

  12. BUILDING VOCABULARY USING POP SONGS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    author Rahmatika Kayyis

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available The objective of the study is to find out whether there is a significant difference between the vocabulary mastery of first semester students taughtusing English pop songs and that taught without using English pop songs as a medium. This study involved 64 students of first semesterof STKIP Muhammadiyah Pringsewu Lampung in the academic year of 2012/2013 as the objects of the study. The result of the study shows there is a significant difference in the student’s vocabulary mastery between the experimental group who are taughtusing English pop songs and that taught without using English pop songs as a medium.The mean of post test score of the experimental group is 16.93 while the mean score of the control group is 14.54. The result of t-test shows that t-observed value which is higher than the t-value of the table (2.572>1.99, with a probability value of 0.008 which is lower than the significance level (0.008 < 0.05. In conclusion, the use of English pop songscould improve the students’ vocabulary mastery.Keywords: Vocabulary, English Pop Songs

  13. Vocabulary Constraint on Texts

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    C. Sutarsyah

    2008-01-01

    Full Text Available This case study was carried out in the English Education Department of State University of Malang. The aim of the study was to identify and describe the vocabulary in the reading text and to seek if the text is useful for reading skill development. A descriptive qualitative design was applied to obtain the data. For this purpose, some available computer programs were used to find the description of vocabulary in the texts. It was found that the 20 texts containing 7,945 words are dominated by low frequency words which account for 16.97% of the words in the texts. The high frequency words occurring in the texts were dominated by function words. In the case of word levels, it was found that the texts have very limited number of words from GSL (General Service List of English Words (West, 1953. The proportion of the first 1,000 words of GSL only accounts for 44.6%. The data also show that the texts contain too large proportion of words which are not in the three levels (the first 2,000 and UWL. These words account for 26.44% of the running words in the texts.  It is believed that the constraints are due to the selection of the texts which are made of a series of short-unrelated texts. This kind of text is subject to the accumulation of low frequency words especially those of content words and limited of words from GSL. It could also defeat the development of students' reading skills and vocabulary enrichment.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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;…

  15. Storytelling: Enhancing Vocabularies For Cerebral Palsy Students

    OpenAIRE

    Aprilina, Raita Gina

    2015-01-01

    This paper reported on a study concerned with teaching vocabulary using storytelling technique in one of SLBs in Bandung. This study aimed to find out the cerebral palsy students' ability in English vocabulary before and after the treatment, and to find out whether storytelling significantly improved English vocabulary of students with cerebral palsy. This study used an experimental method with single subject research with A-B-A design which involved two participants. This study revealed that...

  16. 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.

  17. Learning vocabulary through a serious game in Primary Education

    OpenAIRE

    Heitink, Maaike Christine; Fisser, Petra; Voogt, Joke; McBride, Ron; Searson, Michael

    2013-01-01

    This study explored the effect of a serious game on the vocabulary of students in primary education. 206 students and 10 teachers used the game during vocabulary lessons in three conditions: (a)online game and vocabulary instruction, (b)online game only, and (c)paper game and vocabulary instruction. Both immediate learning and retention effects were examined. Additionally a student questionnaire and teacher interview regarding their experiences has been employed. Results show a significant le...

  18. Using Song to Improve Students’ Vocabulary Mastery

    OpenAIRE

    Muflihah, Tatik

    2017-01-01

    Vocabulary mastery is one of the requirements for students to be able to communicate both in spoken and written. There are many ways to improve students’ vocabulary mastery used by the language teacher. This paper aims to examine the use of English song to motivate students in learning English. In addition, this concerns on the use of English song to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. The respondents were fifteen elementary students of community groups of orphans An-nur Surabaya. The data ...

  19. Predicting Contextual Informativeness for Vocabulary Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kapelner, Adam; Soterwood, Jeanine; Nessaiver, Shalev; Adlof, Suzanne

    2018-01-01

    Vocabulary knowledge is essential to educational progress. High quality vocabulary instruction requires supportive contextual examples to teach word meaning and proper usage. Identifying such contexts by hand for a large number of words can be difficult. In this work, we take a statistical learning approach to engineer a system that predicts…

  20. 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

  1. The Impact of Teacher Study Groups in Vocabulary on Teaching Practice, Teacher Knowledge, and Student Vocabulary Knowledge: A Large-Scale Replication Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jayanthi, Madhavi; Dimino, Joseph; Gersten, Russell; Taylor, Mary Jo; Haymond, Kelly; Smolkowski, Keith; Newman-Gonchar, Rebecca

    2018-01-01

    The purpose of this replication study was to examine the impact of the Teacher Study Group (TSG) professional development in vocabulary on first-grade teachers' knowledge of vocabulary instruction and observed teaching practice, and on students' vocabulary knowledge. Sixty-two schools from 16 districts in four states were randomly assigned to…

  2. Intentional Vocabulary Learning Using Digital Flashcards

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hung, Hsiu-Ting

    2015-01-01

    As an attempt to follow through on the claims made by proponents of intentional vocabulary learning, the present study set out to examine whether and how digital flashcards can be incorporated into a university course to promote the vocabulary learning of English language learners. The overall research findings underscore the value of learning…

  3. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vance, H. Robert; Stone, J. E.

    1990-01-01

    The Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised assesses standard American English receptive vocabulary in individuals, both handicapped and nonhandicapped, ages 2 to 40. This paper describes the test's administration, summation of data, standardization, reliability, and validity. (JDD)

  4. 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

    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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  6. 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!

  7. Incidental Vocabulary Learning in Second Language Acquisition: A Literature Review

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Falcon Dario Restrepo Ramos

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available 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 and tasks that promote the incidental learning of vocabulary. The findings show that L2 learners develop much of their vocabulary by incidental means through exposure to words in informative contexts. Moreover, this exposure is promoted by reading, and enhanced through multimodal glosses. Further research may focus on listening for higher lexical retention rates, the circumstances that allow incidental learning of multi-word phrases and collocations, and the use of technology-based methods for incidental vocabulary acquisition.

  8. Implicit and Explicit Cognitive Processes in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ender, Andrea

    2016-01-01

    Studies on vocabulary acquisition in second language learning have revealed that a large amount of vocabulary is learned without an overt intention, in other words, incidentally. This article investigates the relevance of different lexical processing strategies for vocabulary acquisition when reading a text for comprehension among 24 advanced…

  9. Crossword Puzzles as a Learning Tool for Vocabulary Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  10. 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

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  12. Creating Content Acquisition Podcasts (CAPs) for Vocabulary: The Intersection of Content, Pedagogy, and Technology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Weiss, Margaret P.; Evmenova, Anya S.; Kennedy, Michael J.; Duke, Jodi M.

    2016-01-01

    Mastering content vocabulary is critical to the success of students with high-incidence disabilities in the general education curriculum. General education classrooms often do not offer the opportunities necessary for these students to master important vocabulary. Teachers often look to technology to help. Several studies have indicated that…

  13. KEEFEKTIFAN METODE SCHOOLYARD INQUIRY TERHADAP PENINGKATAN PEMAHAMAN SCIENCE VOCABULARY

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    S.D. Pamelasari

    2014-10-01

    Full Text Available Tantangan yang harus dihadapi dalam mengajar Bahasa Inggris di pada mahasiswa selain jurusan Bahasa Inggris adalah tingkat pemahaman kosakata yang rendah. Hal tersebut berpengaruh pada pemahaman materi mereka, berdasarkan permasalahan tersebut metode schoolyard inquiry digagas untuk membantu meningkatkan pemahaman mereka dalam memahami science vocabulary sebagai metode alternative untuk membantu mereka belajar. Schoolyard inquiry adalah metode belajar kosakata secara mandiri di luar kelas. Hasil analisis menunjukkan bahwa pemahaman science vocabulary mahasiswa Pendidikan IPA FMIPA Unnes mengingkat secara signifikan dan mencapai tingkat tinggi pada level pemahamannya. Melalui metode ini mahasiswa juga dapat mengintegrasikan pembelajaran Bahasa Inggris dengan metode saintifik. Mahasiswa juga memberikan respon positif terhadap metode schoolyard inquiry  ini. The challenge that should be faced of teaching English for non English department students is the low level of students’ vocabulary mastery. It affects their comprehension of material, therefore to help students to master the science vocabulary schoolyard inquiry method was proposed to be used as alternative method to improve students’ vocabulary mastery. Schoolyard inquiry is a method of independent learning that is conducted outside the class. The result showed that the students’ science vocabulary mastery improved significantly most of students reached high level of science vocabulary mastery. Through Schoolyard Inquiry method Students were be able to learn English by applying the scientific skill. The students also gave positive responses of learning vocabulary by using alternatif method of schoolyard inquiry.

  14. The Use of Hypermedia in Implicit Vocabulary Learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  15. Exploring vocabulary language in action

    CERN Document Server

    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...

  16. LEARNING VOCABULARY THROUGH COLOURFUL PUZZLE GAME

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    Risca Dwiaryanti

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available Vocabulary plays an important role because it links to the four skills of listening, speaking, reading, and writing. Those aspects should be integrated in teaching and learning process of English. However, the students must be able to know the meaning of each word or vocabulary of English in order to master the four skills. It is as a mean to create a sentence in daily communication to show someone’s feeling, opinion, idea, desire, etc. So that, both speakers understand what the other speaker mean. However, English as a second language in Indonesia seems very hard for the students to master vocabulary of English. It makes them not easy to be understood directly and speak fluently. The students, sometimes, get difficulties in understanding, memorizing the meaning of the vocabulary, and getting confused in using the new words. There must be an effective strategy to attract students’ interest, break the boredom, and make the class more lively. Based on the writer experience, Colourful Puzzle Game is able to make the students learn vocabulary quickly. It needs teacher’s creativity to create the materials of this game based on the class condition. The teacher just need a game board made from colourful papers, write any command and prohibition words on it. A dice is a tool to decide where the player should stop based on the number. Some pins as counter as sign of each player.

  17. Examining continuity of early expressive vocabulary development: the generation R study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Henrichs, Jens; Rescorla, Leslie; Schenk, Jacqueline J; Schmidt, Henk G; Jaddoe, Vincent W V; Hofman, Albert; Raat, Hein; Verhulst, Frank C; Tiemeier, Henning

    2011-06-01

    The authors investigated continuity and discontinuity of vocabulary skills in a population-based cohort in the Netherlands. Mothers of 3,759 children completed the Dutch version of the MacArthur Short Form Vocabulary Checklist (Zink & Lejaegere, 2003) at 18 months and a Dutch translation of the Language Development Survey (Rescorla, 1989) at 30 months. At both ages, expressive vocabulary delay was defined as vocabulary scores vocabulary development at both ages, 6.2% were "late bloomers," 6.0% had late onset expressive vocabulary delay, and 2.6% had persistent expressive vocabulary delay. Word production and comprehension at 18 months explained 11.5% of the variance in 30-month vocabulary scores, with low birth weight, child age, gender and ethnicity, maternal age and education, and parenting stress explaining an additional 6.2%. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify biological, demographic, and psychological factors associated with each of the vocabulary delay outcome groups relative to the typically developing group. Although multiple perinatal, demographic, and maternal psychosocial factors significantly predicted vocabulary skills at 30 months, positive predictive value and sensitivity were low. Future studies should address to what extent additional factors, such as brain maturation and genetic influences, can improve the prediction and understanding of continuity and discontinuity of language delay.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  19. Academic vocabulary in learner writing from extraction to analysis

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    Paquot, Magali

    2010-01-01

    Academic vocabulary is in fashion, as witnessed by the increasing number of books published on the topic. In the first part of this book, Magali Paquot scrutinizes the concept of academic vocabulary and proposes a corpus-driven procedure based on the criteria of keyness, range and evenness of distribution to select academic words that could be part of a common-core academic vocabulary syllabus. In the second part, the author offers a thorough analysis of academic vocabulary in the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE) and describes the factors that account for learners difficulties in

  20. Core vocabulary of young children with Down syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Deckers, Stijn R J M; Van Zaalen, Yvonne; Van Balkom, Hans; Verhoeven, Ludo

    2017-06-01

    The aim of this study was to develop a core vocabulary list for young children with intellectual disabilities between 2 and 7 years of age because data from this population are lacking in core vocabulary literature. Children with Down syndrome are considered one of the most valid reference groups for researching developmental patterns in children with intellectual disabilities; therefore, spontaneous language samples of 30 Dutch children with Down syndrome were collected during three different activities with multiple communication partners (free play with parents, lunch- or snack-time at home or at school, and speech therapy sessions). Of these children, 19 used multimodal communication, primarily manual signs and speech. Functional word use in both modalities was transcribed. The 50 most frequently used core words accounted for 67.2% of total word use; 16 words comprised core vocabulary, based on commonality. These data are consistent with similar studies related to the core vocabularies of preschoolers and toddlers with typical development, although the number of nouns present on the core vocabulary list was higher for the children in the present study. This finding can be explained by manual sign use of the children with Down syndrome and is reflective of their expressive vocabulary ages.

  1. 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...

  2. Human simulations of vocabulary learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  4. 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.

  5. PROMOTING INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING THROUGH VERBAL DRAMATIZATION OF WORDS

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Looi-Chin Ch’ng

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Despite the fact that explicit teaching of vocabulary is often practised in English as a Second Language (ESL classrooms, it has been proven to be rather ineffective, largely because words are not taught in context. This has prompted the increasing use of incidental vocabulary learning approach, which emphasises on repeated readings as a source for vocabulary learning. By adopting this approach, this study aims to investigate students’ ability in learning vocabulary incidentally via verbal dramatization of written texts. In this case, readers’ theatre (RT is used as a way to allow learners to engage in active reading so as to promote vocabulary learning. A total of 160 diploma students participated in this case study and they were divided equally into two groups, namely classroom reading (CR and RT groups. A proficiency test was first conducted to determine their vocabulary levels. Based on the test results, a story was selected as the reading material in the two groups. The CR group read the story through a normal reading lesson in class while the RT group was required to verbally dramatize the text through readers’ theatre activity. Then, a post-test based on vocabulary levels was carried out and the results were compared. The findings revealed that incidental learning was more apparent in the RT group and their ability to learn words from the higher levels was noticeable through higher accuracy scores. Although not conclusive, this study has demonstrated the potential of using readers’ theatre as a form of incidental vocabulary learning activity in ESL settings.

  6. 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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  8. Vocabulary Breadth and Field Dependence/Independence Cognitive Styles

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  10. Vocabulary Intervention for Adolescents with Language Disorder: A Systematic Review

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  11. Sustainability of Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary after Implicit versus Explicit Instruction in Kindergarten

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Damhuis, C.M.P.; Segers, P.C.J.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

    2014-01-01

    We investigated the sustained effects of explicit versus implicit instruction on the breadth and depth of children's vocabularies, while taking their general vocabulary and verbal short-term memory into account. Two experimental groups with 12 and 15 kindergarten children respectively learned two

  12. Hypermedia and Vocabulary Acquisition for Second Language

    Science.gov (United States)

    Meli, Rocio

    2009-01-01

    The purpose of this study was to examine the impact of multimedia as a delivery tool for enhancing vocabulary in second-language classrooms. The mixed method design focused on specific techniques to help students acquire Spanish vocabulary and communication skills. The theoretical framework for this study consisted of second language theories…

  13. Efficacy of Using Vocabulary Flashcards in Braille

    Science.gov (United States)

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

    2017-01-01

    This article reports on a study that examined whether vocabulary flashcards facilitate spelling acquisition. The study was designed to evaluate whether students who are blind can learn to spell words accurately and incidentally when academic vocabulary instruction is used. Auditory information was provided prior to the introduction of a flashcard,…

  14. Vocabulary and Health Care Information Technology: State of the Art.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cimino, James J.

    1995-01-01

    Reviews the controlled medical vocabularies available today and some of the reasons why they have failed to meet the needs of application developers. Topics include standard vocabularies, including International Classification of Diseases and Medical Subject Headings; uses of vocabularies in medical computing; current research; and remaining…

  15. New concepts for building vocabulary for cell image ontologies

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Plant Anne L

    2011-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Background There are significant challenges associated with the building of ontologies for cell biology experiments including the large numbers of terms and their synonyms. These challenges make it difficult to simultaneously query data from multiple experiments or ontologies. If vocabulary terms were consistently used and reused across and within ontologies, queries would be possible through shared terms. One approach to achieving this is to strictly control the terms used in ontologies in the form of a pre-defined schema, but this approach limits the individual researcher's ability to create new terms when needed to describe new experiments. Results Here, we propose the use of a limited number of highly reusable common root terms, and rules for an experimentalist to locally expand terms by adding more specific terms under more general root terms to form specific new vocabulary hierarchies that can be used to build ontologies. We illustrate the application of the method to build vocabularies and a prototype database for cell images that uses a visual data-tree of terms to facilitate sophisticated queries based on a experimental parameters. We demonstrate how the terminology might be extended by adding new vocabulary terms into the hierarchy of terms in an evolving process. In this approach, image data and metadata are handled separately, so we also describe a robust file-naming scheme to unambiguously identify image and other files associated with each metadata value. The prototype database http://sbd.nist.gov/ consists of more than 2000 images of cells and benchmark materials, and 163 metadata terms that describe experimental details, including many details about cell culture and handling. Image files of interest can be retrieved, and their data can be compared, by choosing one or more relevant metadata values as search terms. Metadata values for any dataset can be compared with corresponding values of another dataset through logical

  16. New concepts for building vocabulary for cell image ontologies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Plant, Anne L; Elliott, John T; Bhat, Talapady N

    2011-12-21

    There are significant challenges associated with the building of ontologies for cell biology experiments including the large numbers of terms and their synonyms. These challenges make it difficult to simultaneously query data from multiple experiments or ontologies. If vocabulary terms were consistently used and reused across and within ontologies, queries would be possible through shared terms. One approach to achieving this is to strictly control the terms used in ontologies in the form of a pre-defined schema, but this approach limits the individual researcher's ability to create new terms when needed to describe new experiments. Here, we propose the use of a limited number of highly reusable common root terms, and rules for an experimentalist to locally expand terms by adding more specific terms under more general root terms to form specific new vocabulary hierarchies that can be used to build ontologies. We illustrate the application of the method to build vocabularies and a prototype database for cell images that uses a visual data-tree of terms to facilitate sophisticated queries based on a experimental parameters. We demonstrate how the terminology might be extended by adding new vocabulary terms into the hierarchy of terms in an evolving process. In this approach, image data and metadata are handled separately, so we also describe a robust file-naming scheme to unambiguously identify image and other files associated with each metadata value. The prototype database http://sbd.nist.gov/ consists of more than 2000 images of cells and benchmark materials, and 163 metadata terms that describe experimental details, including many details about cell culture and handling. Image files of interest can be retrieved, and their data can be compared, by choosing one or more relevant metadata values as search terms. Metadata values for any dataset can be compared with corresponding values of another dataset through logical operations. Organizing metadata for cell imaging

  17. Tuning in to Vocabulary Frequency in Coursebooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    O'Loughlin, Richard

    2012-01-01

    For second language learners vocabulary growth is of major importance, and for many learners commercially published coursebooks will be the source of this vocabulary learning. In this preliminary study, input from three levels of the coursebook series "New English File" (Oxenden and Latham-Koenig, 2006; Oxenden, Latham-Koenig, and Seligson, 2004,…

  18. Lexical characteristics of expressive vocabulary in toddlers with autism spectrum disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kover, Sara T; Ellis Weismer, Susan

    2014-08-01

    Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young children with ASD, applying the extended statistical learning theory of vocabulary delay in late talkers (Stokes, Kern, & Dos Santos, 2012) to toddlers with ASD. Parents reported the words produced by toddlers with ASD (n = 57; age 21-37 months) or toddlers without ASD (n = 41; age 22-26 months) on the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories. The average phonological neighborhood density, word frequency, and word length of each toddler's lexicon were calculated. These lexical characteristics served as predictors of vocabulary size. Findings differed for toddlers with and without ASD and according to subsamples. Word length was the most consistent predictor of vocabulary size for toddlers with ASD. Distinct relationships between lexical characteristics and vocabulary size were observed for toddlers with and without ASD. Experimental studies on distributional cues to vocabulary acquisition are needed to inform what is known about mechanisms of learning in neurodevelopmental disorders.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  20. Coherent image layout using an adaptive visual vocabulary

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dillard, Scott E.; Henry, Michael J.; Bohn, Shawn; Gosink, Luke J.

    2013-03-01

    When querying a huge image database containing millions of images, the result of the query may still contain many thousands of images that need to be presented to the user. We consider the problem of arranging such a large set of images into a visually coherent layout, one that places similar images next to each other. Image similarity is determined using a bag-of-features model, and the layout is constructed from a hierarchical clustering of the image set by mapping an in-order traversal of the hierarchy tree into a space-filling curve. This layout method provides strong locality guarantees so we are able to quantitatively evaluate performance using standard image retrieval benchmarks. Performance of the bag-of-features method is best when the vocabulary is learned on the image set being clustered. Because learning a large, discriminative vocabulary is a computationally demanding task, we present a novel method for efficiently adapting a generic visual vocabulary to a particular dataset. We evaluate our clustering and vocabulary adaptation methods on a variety of image datasets and show that adapting a generic vocabulary to a particular set of images improves performance on both hierarchical clustering and image retrieval tasks.

  1. The Effects of Vocabulary Knowledge and Dictionary Use on EFL Reading Performance

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shen, Zhifa

    2013-01-01

    The present study mainly investigated the effects of vocabulary knowledge and dictionary use on EFL reading performance. The results show that scores on vocabulary size, specific vocabulary knowledge, and reading comprehension are highly and positively correlated. Scores on specific vocabulary knowledge are more closely correlated with reading…

  2. Applying Integrated Computer Assisted Media (ICAM in Teaching Vocabulary

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Opick Dwi Indah

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available The objective of this research was to find out whether the use of integrated computer assisted media (ICAM is effective to improve the vocabulary achievement of the second semester students of Cokroaminoto Palopo University. The population of this research was the second semester students of English department of Cokroaminoto Palopo University in academic year 2013/2014. The samples of this research were 60 students and they were placed into two groups: experimental and control group where each group consisted of 30 students. This research used cluster random sampling technique. The research data was collected by applying vocabulary test and it was analyzed by using descriptive and inferential statistics. The result of this research was integrated computer assisted media (ICAM can improve vocabulary achievement of the students of English department of Cokroaminoto Palopo University. It can be concluded that the use of ICAM in the teaching vocabulary is effective to be implemented in improving the students’ vocabulary achievement.

  3. Teaching Vocabulary through Games--A Sanguine Step

    Science.gov (United States)

    Anil, Beena

    2011-01-01

    Vocabulary is predominant in improving one's communicative skill. Language is more powerful when it is being used perfectly. Teachers should consider the background of learners and aid them to learn and develop their vocabulary in many interesting ways especially through games. This paper deals with a productive and a logical study, done on a set…

  4. Vocabulary Growth of the Advanced EFL Learner

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ozturk, Meral

    2015-01-01

    This article reports the results of two studies on the vocabulary growth of advanced learners of English as a foreign language in an English-medium degree programme. Growth in learners' written receptive and productive vocabularies was investigated in one cross-sectional and one longitudinal study over three years. The effect of word frequency on…

  5. A System for English Vocabulary Acquisition Based on Code-Switching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mazur, Michal; Karolczak, Krzysztof; Rzepka, Rafal; Araki, Kenji

    2016-01-01

    Vocabulary plays an important part in second language learning and there are many existing techniques to facilitate word acquisition. One of these methods is code-switching, or mixing the vocabulary of two languages in one sentence. In this paper the authors propose an experimental system for computer-assisted English vocabulary learning in…

  6. Use of standard vocabulary services in validation of water resources data

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yu, Jonathan; Cox, Simon; Ratcliffe, David

    2010-05-01

    must be commensurate with the observed property type Validation of data submitted in WDTF uses a two-pass approach. First, syntax and structural validation is performed by standard XML Schema validation tools. Second, validation of contextual constraints and code list checking is performed using a hybrid method combining context-sensitive rule-based validation (allowing the rules to be expressed within a given context) and semantic vocabulary services. Schematron allows rules to incorporate assertions of XPath expressions to access and constrain element content, therefore enabling contextual constraints. Schematron is also used to perform element cardinality checking. The vocabularies or code lists are formalized in SKOS (Simple Knowledge Organization System), an RDF-based language. SKOS provides mechanisms to define concepts, associate them with (multi-lingual) labels or terms, and record thesaurus-like relationships between them. The vocabularies are managed in a RDF database or semantic triple store. Querying is implemented as a semantic vocabulary service, with an http-based API that allows queries to be issued from rules written in Schematron. WDTF has required development and deployment of some ontologies whose scope is much more general than this application, in particular covering 'observed properties' and 'units of measure', which also have to be related to each other and consistent with the dimensional analysis. Separation of the two validation passes reflects the separate governance and stability of the structural and content rules, and allows an organisation's business rules to be moved out of the XML schema definition and the XML schema to be reused by other businesses with their own specific rules. With the general approach proven, harmonization opportunities with more generic services are being explored, such as the GEMET API for SKOS, developed by the European Environment Agency. Acknowledgements: The authors would like to thank the AUSCOPE team for

  7. Application-Based Crossword Puzzles: Players’ Perception and Vocabulary Retention

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    Dzulfikri Dzulfikri

    2016-09-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates the perceptions of students towards Application-Based Crossword Puzzles and how playing this game can affect the development of vocabulary amongst students. Drawing on Vygostky’s Socio-Cultural Theory which states that the human mind is mediated by cultural artifacts, the nature of this game poses challenges and builds curiosity, allowing players to pay more attention to the words to fill in the boxes which subsequently enhances their retention of vocabulary. This game has very good potential to build positive perceptions and to develop cognition in the linguistic domain of players, i.e. the amount of their vocabulary. In this study, the researcher conducted interviews with eligible or selected student players to find out their perceptions toward this game and administered a vocabulary test to find out how this game had added to the retention in memory of new words acquired by the players from the game. The study findings showed that the participants perceive this game positively and it affects the players’ vocabulary retention positively as indicated by their test results. It is recommended that English teachers consider using Application-Based Crossword Puzzles to help students build their vocabularies especially as part of extracurricular activities.

  8. The Vocabulary Scores of Company Presidents. Technical Report 1984-1.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Richard M.; Supanich, Gary P.

    In June 1983, 456 presidents from among 5,000 of the largest companies in the United States took a vocabulary test designed by the Johnson O'Connor Research Foundation, with the purpose of reexaming the contention that a large and exact vocabulary is an attribute characterizing executives. This Executive Vocabulary Test consisted of 50…

  9. Multicomponent view of vocabulary acquisition: An investigation with primary grade children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Young-Suk Grace

    2017-10-01

    The role of working memory in vocabulary acquisition has been well established in the literature. In this study, we proposed and empirically tested the multicomponent view of vocabulary acquisition, which states that multiple language and cognitive skills are involved to facilitate phonological and semantic representations needed for vocabulary acquisition. Working memory and attention were hypothesized to be directly and indirectly related to vocabulary, whereas inference and morphosyntactic knowledge were hypothesized to be directly related to vocabulary (measured by the Picture Vocabulary Test of the Woodcock-Johnson III battery). Results from 262 kindergartners using path analysis revealed that all the multiple cognitive and language skills were directly related to vocabulary after controlling for age, gender, racial/ethnic backgrounds, socioeconomic status (as measured by free or reduced-price lunch eligibility), and each other. Furthermore, working memory and attention also made indirect contributions via inference and morphosyntactic knowledge. Total effects (beta weights), accounting for direct and indirect effects, were .33 for working memory, .23 for attention, .18 for inference, and .18 for morphosyntactic knowledge. These results indicate that although working memory is important, contributions of other language and cognitive skills should be considered in vocabulary acquisition. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Enriching Students’ Vocabulary Mastery Using Graphic Organizers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Syaifudin Latif Darmawan

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available This action research is carried out to (1 identify whether graphic organizers enrich student’s vocabulary mastery; and (2 to describe the classroom situation when graphic organizers are employed in instructional process of vocabulary. The research is conducted in two cycles from March to May 2016/2017 in the eight years of SMP Muhammadiyah Sekampung, East lampung. The procedure of the research consists of identifying the problem, planning the action, implementing the action, observing the action, and reflecting the result of the research. Qualitative data are collected through interview, observation, questionnaire, and research diary. Quantitative data are collected through test. To analyze qualitative data, the researcher used constant comparative method. It consists of four steps: (1 comparing incidents applicable to each category; (2 Integrating categories and their properties; (3 delimiting the theory; (4 Writing the theory. Meanwhile, to analyze quantitative data, the researcher employed descriptive statistic.    The result of the research shows that using graphic organizers can enrich students’ vocabulary mastery and classroom situation. The improvement on students’ vocabulary included; a the students are able to speak English; b the students are able to understand the meaning of the text as they have a lot of vocabularies. The improvement of the classroom situation; (a students come on time in the class (b students are more motivated to join the class (c Students pay more attention in the instructional process (d students’ participation in responding the questions are high.

  11. Improving Elementary School Students’ English Vocabulary Through Local Cultural Content Materials

    OpenAIRE

    Frans Manurung; Ignatius Harjanto

    2015-01-01

    Abstract Elementary students of a certain public school in Indonesia had difficulties in learning English. One of the crucial problems was learning English vocabulary. In an attempt to help the students learn and improve English vocabulary, the researchers decided to use CAR to teach English vocabulary with local cultural content materials. The aim of this study was to investigate how the teaching of English vocabulary with local cultural content materials contributed to the improvement ...

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  13. A study of students' beliefs about vocabulary knowledge and acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  14. VOCABULARY PROBLEMS OF THE LIGHTLY MENTALLY RETARDED SCHOOL AGED CHILDREN

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vesna KOSTIC

    2000-06-01

    Full Text Available The main research objectives are the problems in the vocabulary of school aged, lightly mentally retarded children. Results of the research indicate which are the most important factors that have impact of the vocabulary and language competence of these persons. The research variables are: sex, IQ, chronological age and school age. Comics-like stories were used as an examination instrument in this research. Their interpretation is helpful in determining the vocabulary level of every single examine. At the end of the research some suggestions are presented, whose goal is to enrich children's vocabulary.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  17. Sustainability of Breadth and Depth of Vocabulary after Implicit versus Explicit Instruction in Kindergarten

    Science.gov (United States)

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

    2014-01-01

    We investigated the sustained effects of explicit versus implicit instruction on the breadth and depth of children's vocabularies, while taking their general vocabulary and verbal short-term memory into account. Two experimental groups with 12 and 15 kindergarten children respectively learned two sets of 17 words counterbalanced to be taught first…

  18. Semantic representation of CDC-PHIN vocabulary using Simple Knowledge Organization System.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zhu, Min; Mirhaji, Parsa

    2008-11-06

    PHIN Vocabulary Access and Distribution System (VADS) promotes the use of standards based vocabulary within CDC information systems. However, the current PHIN vocabulary representation hinders its wide adoption. Simple Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) is a W3C draft specification to support the formal representation of Knowledge Organization Systems (KOS) within the framework of the Semantic Web. We present a method of adopting SKOS to represent PHIN vocabulary in order to enable automated information sharing and integration.

  19. Effects of a Picture Racetrack Game on the Expressive Vocabulary of Deaf Preschoolers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davenport, Carrie A; Alber-Morgan, Sheila R; Clancy, Shannon M; Kranak, Michael P

    2017-07-01

    This study examined the effects of a picture racetrack game on the acquisition, maintenance, and generalization of picture labeling for 2 preschool students who are deaf. The game consisted of placing photographs representing individualized target vocabulary around a racetrack board and prompting the participant to sign each photo. A multiple baseline design across picture sets demonstrated that playing the picture racetrack game was functionally related to acquisition of vocabulary to 100% mastery on at least 3 consecutive sessions for each participant. Additionally, both participants maintained most of the vocabulary they acquired for at least 4 weeks after intervention, and they generalized picture labeling to a different presentation mode (i.e., a photo album). © The Author 2017. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  20. Consolidation of vocabulary during sleep: The rich get richer?

    Science.gov (United States)

    James, Emma; Gaskell, M Gareth; Weighall, Anna; Henderson, Lisa

    2017-06-01

    Sleep plays a role in strengthening new words and integrating them with existing vocabulary knowledge, consistent with neural models of learning in which sleep supports hippocampal transfer to neocortical memory. Such models are based on adult research, yet neural maturation may mean that the mechanisms supporting word learning vary across development. Here, we propose a model in which children may capitalise on larger amounts of slow-wave sleep to support a greater demand on learning and neural reorganisation, whereas adults may benefit from a richer knowledge base to support consolidation. Such an argument is reinforced by the well-reported "Matthew effect", whereby rich vocabulary knowledge is associated with better acquisition of new vocabulary. We present a meta-analysis that supports this association between children's existing vocabulary knowledge and their integration of new words overnight. Whilst multiple mechanisms likely contribute to vocabulary consolidation and neural reorganisation across the lifespan, we propose that contributions of existing knowledge should be rigorously examined in developmental studies. Such research has potential to greatly enhance neural models of learning. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  1. Extracting business vocabularies from business process models: SBVR and BPMN standards-based approach

    Science.gov (United States)

    Skersys, Tomas; Butleris, Rimantas; Kapocius, Kestutis

    2013-10-01

    Approaches for the analysis and specification of business vocabularies and rules are very relevant topics in both Business Process Management and Information Systems Development disciplines. However, in common practice of Information Systems Development, the Business modeling activities still are of mostly empiric nature. In this paper, basic aspects of the approach for business vocabularies' semi-automated extraction from business process models are presented. The approach is based on novel business modeling-level OMG standards "Business Process Model and Notation" (BPMN) and "Semantics for Business Vocabularies and Business Rules" (SBVR), thus contributing to OMG's vision about Model-Driven Architecture (MDA) and to model-driven development in general.

  2. Using E-Books to Acquire Foundational Academic Vocabulary

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  3. The Key to Enhancing Students' Mathematical Vocabulary Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Riccomini, Paul J.; Sanders, Sharon; Jones, Julie

    2008-01-01

    The importance of learning mathematical vocabulary is vital for the development of proficiency in mathematics. In an effort to improve students' mathematical performance, educators must use research-validated instructional methods to teach important mathematical vocabulary. Mnemonic instruction is a set of evidenced-based strategies used to…

  4. Proactive and reactive effects of vigorous exercise on learning and vocabulary comprehension.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Salis, Andrea S

    2013-06-01

    College students (N = 90) were randomly assigned to participate in vigorous, moderate or no physical exercise and vocabulary recall and comprehension learning activities under varying conditions to assess whether or not increased intensities of exercise, performed either before a vocabulary recall and comprehension learning activity (i.e., proactive effect) or after a vocabulary recall and comprehension learning activity (i.e., reactive effect), would improve vocabulary recall and comprehension. The results demonstrated that performing exercise at a vigorous intensity before or after rehearsing for a vocabulary comprehension test improved test results.

  5. Engaging in vocabulary learning in science: the promise of multimodal instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Townsend, Dianna; Brock, Cynthia; Morrison, Jennifer D.

    2018-02-01

    To a science 'outsider', science language often appears unnecessarily technical and dense. However, scientific language is typically used with the goal of being concise and precise, which allows those who regularly participate in scientific discourse communities to learn from each other and build upon existing scientific knowledge. One essential component of science language is the academic vocabulary that characterises it. This mixed-methods study investigates middle school students' (N = 59) growth in academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher's instructional practices that supported academic language development. Students made significant gains in their production of general academic words, t(57) = 2.32, p = .024 and of discipline-specific science words, t(57) = 3.01, p = .004 in science writing. Results from the qualitative strand of this inquiry contextualised the students' learning of academic vocabulary as it relates to their teacher's instructional practices and intentions as well as the students' perceptions of their learning environment. These qualitative findings reveal that both the students and their teacher articulated that the teacher's intentional use of resources supported students' academic vocabulary growth. Implications for research and instruction with science language are shared.

  6. Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition as Student Performance Determinant in Undergraduate Research Modules

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  7. 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.

  8. Core vocabulary of young children with Down syndrome

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Deckers, S.R.J.M.; Zaalen, Y. van; Balkom, L.J.M. van; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this study was to develop a core vocabulary list for young children with intellectual disabilities between 2 and 7 years of age because data from this population are lacking in core vocabulary literature. Children with Down syndrome are considered one of the most valid reference groups

  9. Measuring Teachers' Knowledge of Vocabulary Development and Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duguay, Annie; Kenyon, Dorry; Haynes, Erin; August, Diane; Yanosky, Tiffany

    2016-01-01

    This article describes the development of an instrument to measure teachers' knowledge of vocabulary development and instruction, the Teacher Knowledge of Vocabulary Survey (TKVS). This type of knowledge has become increasingly important as all classroom teachers are expected to help students meet language and literacy standards that include…

  10. The Changing Role of Sound-Symbolism for Small Versus Large Vocabularies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brand, James; Monaghan, Padraic; Walker, Peter

    2017-12-12

    Natural language contains many examples of sound-symbolism, where the form of the word carries information about its meaning. Such systematicity is more prevalent in the words children acquire first, but arbitrariness dominates during later vocabulary development. Furthermore, systematicity appears to promote learning category distinctions, which may become more important as the vocabulary grows. In this study, we tested the relative costs and benefits of sound-symbolism for word learning as vocabulary size varies. Participants learned form-meaning mappings for words which were either congruent or incongruent with regard to sound-symbolic relations. For the smaller vocabulary, sound-symbolism facilitated learning individual words, whereas for larger vocabularies sound-symbolism supported learning category distinctions. The changing properties of form-meaning mappings according to vocabulary size may reflect the different ways in which language is learned at different stages of development. Copyright © 2017 The Authors. Cognitive Science published by Wiley Periodicals, Inc. on behalf of Cognitive Science Society.

  11. Exploring Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by UPM TESL Undergraduates

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  12. Tell Me What You Hear: Vocabulary Acquisition and Application in the General Music Middle School Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Walby, Nathan

    2011-01-01

    Teaching musical vocabulary in a middle school general music class can often be challenging to the performance-based teacher. This article provides several teaching strategies for approaching words from both a theoretical and a practical standpoint. Based on a dialectical "this-with-that" approach by Estelle Jorgensen, this article argues that…

  13. A Review of Effect of Different Tasks on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    Liu, Chen L.

    2015-01-01

    Studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition in second language learning have got more and more attention both at home and abroad. By first introducing the definition and theoretical foundations of incidental vocabulary acquisition, this paper reviews empirical studies of effect of different tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition and points…

  14. Lexical Characteristics of Expressive Vocabulary in Toddlers with Autism Spectrum Disorder

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kover, Sara T.; Weismer, Susan Ellis

    2014-01-01

    Purpose: Vocabulary is a domain of particular challenge for many children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). Recent research has drawn attention to ways in which lexical characteristics relate to vocabulary acquisition. The current study tested the hypothesis that lexical characteristics account for variability in vocabulary size of young…

  15. Shyness and Chinese and English Vocabulary Skills in Hong Kong Kindergartners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tong, Xiuli; Ting, Ka-Tsun; McBride-Chang, Catherine

    2011-01-01

    Research Findings: This study examined relations between parent-rated shyness and children's vocabulary skills in 54 Hong Kong Chinese kindergartners who learned English as a foreign language at school. Receptive vocabulary and expressive vocabulary were assessed both in Chinese and in English. Parent-rated shyness was uniquely associated with…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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).

  18. Vocabulary by Gamification

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kingsley, Tara L.; Grabner-Hagen, Melissa M.

    2018-01-01

    Gamification uses game elements such as quests, challenges, levels, and rewards to motivate and engage students in the classroom. Given the engagement that students feel during gameplay, it is sensible to include elements of game design to motivate students and create a space for comprehensive vocabulary instruction. Designing a gamified…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  20. Vocabulary Acquisition through Direct and Indirect Learning Strategies

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  1. Japanese Vocabulary Acquisition by Learners in Three Contexts

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  2. The Effect of Vocabulary on Introductory Microbiology Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Richter, Emily

    2011-01-01

    This study examines the effect of the translation of traditional scientific vocabulary into plain English, a process referred to as Anglicization, on student learning in the context of introductory microbiology instruction. Data from Anglicized and Classical-vocabulary lab sections were collected. Data included exam scores as well as pre and…

  3. Teaching Academic Vocabulary to Adolescents with Learning Disabilities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Beach, Kristen D.; Sanchez, Victoria; Flynn, Lindsay J.; O'Connor, Rollanda E.

    2015-01-01

    This article describes the efforts of a U.S. History teacher to directly teach word meanings using the "robust vocabulary instruction" (RVI) approach, because research supports this method as a way to improve vocabulary knowledge for a range of students, including adolescents reading below grade level (i.e., struggling readers) and…

  4. Narrow Viewing: The Vocabulary in Related Television Programs

    Science.gov (United States)

    Rodgers, Michael P. H.; Webb, Stuart

    2011-01-01

    In this study, the scripts of 288 television episodes were analyzed to determine the extent to which vocabulary reoccurs in related and unrelated television programs, and the potential for incidental vocabulary learning through watching one season (approximately 24 episodes) of television programs. The scripts consisted of 1,330,268 running words…

  5. Vocabulary and syntactic knowledge factors in 5th grade students’ reading comprehension

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kouider Mokhtari

    2013-03-01

    Full Text Available In this study, we examined 5th grade students’ levels of vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness relative to their reading comprehension performance. The aim was to explore the contributions of vocabulary and syntactic awareness as potential sources of reading comprehension difficulty for these readers. Overall, we found that both vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness contributed in significant yet unique ways to students’ reading comprehension performance. Students who showed weaknesses in vocabulary and syntax also performed poorly on measures of reading comprehension. Additionally, we found that syntactic awareness explained a small amount of additional variance in reading comprehension beyond what was explained by vocabulary. The implications of these findings are discussed in light of research and practice addressing the relationships among syntax, vocabulary, and reading comprehension for more and less skilled readers.

  6. The Role of Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge in Advanced EFL Listening Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Atas, Ufuk

    2018-01-01

    This paper presents an empirical study that investigates the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening comprehension with 33 advanced Turkish learners of English as a foreign language. The Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, Schmitt & Clapham, 2001) is used to measure the vocabulary knowledge of the participants and a standardized listening test…

  7. Investigating Arabic Academic Vocabulary Knowledge Among Middle School Pupils: Receptive Versus Productive Knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Makhoul, Baha

    2017-08-01

    The current study attempted to investigate the development of Arabic academic vocabulary knowledge among middle-school Arabic native speakers, taking into account the socioeconomic status of the Arab population in Israel. For this purpose, Arabic academic word list was developed, mapping the required academic words that are needed for adequate coping with informational texts as appearing in the different content areas text-books. Six-hundred Arabic speaking middle school pupils from the different areas in Israel, representing the different Arab subgroups: general Arab community, Druze and Bedouins, have participated in the current study. Two academic vocabulary tests, including receptive and productive academic vocabulary evaluation tests, were administrated to the students across the different age groups (7th, 8th and 9th). The results pointed to no significant difference between 7th and 9th grade in academic vocabulary knowledge. In contrast, significant difference was encountered between the different Arab sub-groups where the lowest scores were noted among the Bedouin sub-group, characterized by the lowest SES. When comparing receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge between 7th and 9th grade, the results pointed to improvement in receptive academic knowledge towards the end of middle school but not on the productive knowledge level. In addition, within participants' comparison indicated a gap between the pupils' receptive and productive vocabulary. The results are discussed in relation to the existing scientific literature and to its implication of both research and practice in the domain of Arabic literacy development.

  8. The Impact of Choice on EFL Students' Motivation and Engagement with L2 Vocabulary Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Han-Chung; Huang, Hung-Tzu; Hsu, Chun-Chieh

    2015-01-01

    The current study investigates EFL college learners' motivation and engagement during English vocabulary learning tasks. By adopting self-determination theory (SDT; Deci & Ryan, 1985, 2000), the study looked into the impact of autonomy on college students' task motivation and engagement with vocabulary learning tasks and their general English…

  9. Improving Vocabulary Skills through Assistive Technology: Rick's Story

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  10. Teaching vocabulary using collocations versus using definitions in EFL classes

    OpenAIRE

    Altınok, Şerife İper

    2000-01-01

    Ankara : Institute of Economics and Social Sciences of Bilkent Univ., 2000. Thesis (Master's) -- Bilkent University, 2000. Includes bibliographical references leaves 40-43 Teaching words in collocations is a comparatively new technique and it is accepted as an effective one in vocabulary teaching. The purpose of this study was to find out whether teaching vocabulary would result in better learning and remembering vocabulary items. This study investigated the differences betw...

  11. 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.

    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

  12. 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.

  13. Studies on English Vocabulary Learning Strategies of Three-year Business English Majors

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    Liu Fang-rong

    2008-01-01

    Vocabulary learning strategies have been studied by a lot of scholars and teachers to a different extent on language learner of different levels. Little research has been done on three-year .Business English majors. This study is intended to examine the vocabulary learning strategies applied by those students to their vocabulary learning during the course of English learning. This study is carried out in the form of doing a questionnaire among 117 three-year Business English majors. The collected data is analyzed in the computer by using the SPSS software. The result is that most of the students give up the concept and strategy of repetition and accept the concept of context and practicing. In addition, most of the students know how to make use of cognitive strategies to learn vocabulary. However, those students seldom employ metacognitive strategies and social/affective strategies to facilitate their vocabulary learning. In fight of these, some recommendations have given to those students to help them learn more vocabulary by appropriately using the vocabulary learning strategies.

  14. Vocabularies of happiness

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Roxana Bratu

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper seeks to explore through interviews the vocabularies of happiness that interviewees invoke in face-to-face interactions to account for their happiness or lack thereof and, especially, for the (unhappiness of others. In other words, how do respondents present their own or others’ happiness – be they close or distant acquaintances, or people in general, in an interview conversation? Also, what understanding of others do these accounts make visible? This work embraces a discursive psychological (DP perspective, focusing on how different versions of happiness are being put together by respondents presenting themselves as competent and credible individuals, while at the same time positioning themselves in a moral order of happiness.

  15. Video Games Promote Saudi Children's English Vocabulary Retention

    Science.gov (United States)

    AlShaiji, Ohoud Abdullatif

    2015-01-01

    The objective of this study was to investigate the impact of Video Games and their role on promoting Saudi Kids' English vocabulary retention. The study attempted to answer whether there was a statistically significant difference (a = 0.05) between the Saudi children's subjects' mean score on the English vocabulary test due to using Video Games…

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

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    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

  17. Understanding Teachers' Pedagogical Knowledge In ESL Vocabulary Teaching

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maizatulliza Muhamad

    2018-02-01

    Full Text Available In communicative language teaching classrooms, one of the main emphases is on students’ ability to use the target language for real life purposes. To achieve this goal, teachers may have to ensure that students have adequate vocabulary to express their feelings and ideas. Previous research on vocabulary teaching and learning tends to be quantitative in nature focusing on testing the effectiveness of some techniques. This research study however, is an attempt to understand teachers’ pedagogical systems that influence their practice in actual classroom interactions during vocabulary teaching and learning. In-depth interviews and classroom observations with two experienced Malaysian ESL teachers were conducted. The interviews highlighted the teachers’ beliefs as well as challenges they faced with regards to vocabulary teaching and learning. The classroom observations revealed that their practice was very much a reflection of their own beliefs, based on their own experience as students as well as teachers. The results of this study showcased the fact that teachers operate within the spectrum of their pedagogical knowledge.

  18. Learning Vocabulary through Paper and Online-Based Glossary

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ratih Novita Sari

    2017-08-01

    Full Text Available This study examined the effect of teaching glossary and personality traits on vocabulary learning. Two groups of students who had different personality (extroverted and introverted were exposed to two types of glosses: paper and online-based glossary. The two groups underwent two-month treatment. Prior to and after the treatment, each group was given pre and posttest. In calculating the data, two-way ANOVA was used. The results of the study showed that extroverted students learned vocabulary better through paper-based glossary, while introverted students learned vocabulary better through online-based. Further research needs to be conducted to determine whether age influences the use of teaching glossary or not

  19. Is Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Feasible to EFL Learning?

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  20. Early Home Language Use and Later Vocabulary Development

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  1. Techniques to improve the vocabulary of the students at the college level

    OpenAIRE

    Sripada Pushpa Nagini; Cherukuri Mani Ramana

    2016-01-01

    The paper suggests effective techniques to improve the vocabulary of the students in English as a Second Language context based on an experimental study. The study was conducted in India (South Asia), in an Engineering college for freshmen in the age group of eighteen to nineteen years. The paper makes a comparison of two vocabulary teaching strategies and the results show that explicit vocabulary teaching is more effective than implicit vocabulary teaching. The experimental group also showed...

  2. Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by EAP Learners: The Case of the Students of Social Sciences

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haghi, Eshrat Bazarmaj; Pasand, Parastou Gholami

    2013-01-01

    The significance of using language learning strategies in general and vocabulary learning strategies in particular is quite clear to both language learners and language specialists. Being familiar with and making use of a range of different vocabulary learning strategies is a great aid for EAP learners in dealing with unknown words. The present…

  3. A Vocabulary Learning Tool for L2 Undergraduates Reading Science and Technology Textbooks

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hsu, Chihcheng; Yang, Fang-Chuan Ou

    2013-05-01

    Students of English as a second language who major in science and technology use English-language textbooks to ensure that they can read English materials upon graduation. Research indicates that teachers spend little time helping these students on the linguistic complexity of such textbooks. Vocabulary, grammar, and article structure are elements of this complexity, but to many students, these elements can be akin to locked doors. This study presents MyVLS-Reader, which focuses on unlocking the first of these doors-vocabulary-while assisting in reading. With explicit vocabulary learning, students learn and memorize individual vocabulary, but the context is lost if the depth of learning discards context. In implicit vocabulary learning, students acquire vocabulary through repeated exposure to contexts, but repeated encounters with new words are required. Few e-learning systems combine both vocabulary-learning approaches. MyVLS-Reader achieves such synergy by (1) using a keyword setting to provide context-matched vocabulary explanation while reading and (2) embedding multiple learning choices, such as keyword setting, the review and memorization of explicit vocabulary, and the option to ask instructors. This study includes two rounds of evaluations: (1) an evaluation of the learning achievements of control and treatment groups and (2) a quantitative and qualitative investigation of perceptions regarding the use of MyVLS-Reader. The evaluation results indicate that the treatment group developed a better vocabulary than the control group in significantly less time. The use of MyVLS-Reader also slightly improved higher-order thinking skills. This result suggests that MyVLS-Reader can effective assist students in building their vocabulary while reading.

  4. On Vocabulary Teaching from the Perspective of Cross-Cultural Communication

    Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

    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.

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  6. Information and documentation - Thesauri and interoperability with other vocabularies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lykke, Marianne; Dalbin, Sylvie; Smedt, Johan De

    ISO 25964-2:2013 is applicable to thesauri and other types of vocabulary that are commonly used for information retrieval. It describes, compares and contrasts the elements and features of these vocabularies that are implicated when interoperability is needed. It gives recommendations for the est...

  7. 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.

  8. Vocabulary Facilitates Speech Perception in Children With Hearing Aids.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Klein, Kelsey E; Walker, Elizabeth A; Kirby, Benjamin; McCreery, Ryan W

    2017-08-16

    We examined the effects of vocabulary, lexical characteristics (age of acquisition and phonotactic probability), and auditory access (aided audibility and daily hearing aid [HA] use) on speech perception skills in children with HAs. Participants included 24 children with HAs and 25 children with normal hearing (NH), ages 5-12 years. Groups were matched on age, expressive and receptive vocabulary, articulation, and nonverbal working memory. Participants repeated monosyllabic words and nonwords in noise. Stimuli varied on age of acquisition, lexical frequency, and phonotactic probability. Performance in each condition was measured by the signal-to-noise ratio at which the child could accurately repeat 50% of the stimuli. Children from both groups with larger vocabularies showed better performance than children with smaller vocabularies on nonwords and late-acquired words but not early-acquired words. Overall, children with HAs showed poorer performance than children with NH. Auditory access was not associated with speech perception for the children with HAs. Children with HAs show deficits in sensitivity to phonological structure but appear to take advantage of vocabulary skills to support speech perception in the same way as children with NH. Further investigation is needed to understand the causes of the gap that exists between the overall speech perception abilities of children with HAs and children with NH.

  9. 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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  10. A Vocabulary Analysis of the Restaurant Menus

    OpenAIRE

    MIHUT Silvia

    2010-01-01

    The present paper explores the genre of restaurant menus by analyzing existing online lists of breakfast, lunch and dinner options. It shows that a menu is a reflection of the restaurant itself and its vocabulary, whether formal, casual or playful, matches the restaurant concept, location or theme. In addition to providing the food and drink items, menus can also be used to offer other information to the customers. The restaurant menu vocabulary describes the owner/chef's philosophy about foo...

  11. Exploring Expressive Vocabulary Variability in Two-Year-Olds: The Role of Working Memory.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F; Moran, Catherine

    2015-12-01

    This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working memory and phonological short-term memory. Strong correlations were observed between phonological short-term memory, verbal working memory, and expressive vocabulary. Speed of spoken word recognition showed a moderate significant correlation with expressive vocabulary. In a multivariate regression model for expressive vocabulary, the most powerful predictor was a measure of phonological short-term memory (accounting for 66% unique variance), followed by verbal working memory (6%), sex (2%), and age (1%). Processing speed did not add significant unique variance. These findings confirm previous research positing a strong role for phonological short-term memory in early expressive vocabulary acquisition. They also extend previous research in two ways. First, a unique association between verbal working memory and expressive vocabulary in 2-year-olds was observed. Second, processing speed was not a unique predictor of variance in expressive vocabulary when included alongside measures of working memory.

  12. 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.

  13. Linking vocabulary to imagery: Improving science knowledge through multimedia design

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adler, Tracy R.

    This qualitative study looked at the vocabulary development of four urban sixth-grade students as they used laser disk and computer technologies to view images and then connect those images to textual definitions through multimedia design. Focusing on three science content areas (the water cycle, the rock cycle, and the web of life), students worked in pairs to create their own multimedia stacks that focused on the prescribed vocabulary. Using a combination of text, images, and audio, students demonstrated their understanding of content vocabulary words and how these words are interconnects within a science topic. Further, the study examined the impact that linking images to vocabulary and textual definitions has on helping students memorize definitions of the science content words. It was found that the use of imagery had a positive affect on the students' ability to identify textual definitions and vocabulary words, though it did not have a great impact on their later recall of word/definition connections. In addition, by designing their own multimedia artifacts, students were able to connect the vocabulary and images within a specific content area and explain their function within a broader science concept. The results of this study were inconclusive as to the impact this activity had on the students' ability to transfer their knowledge to correctly answering questions similar to the ones they see on their state proficiency exam.

  14. Using Songs To Support Vocabulary Learning For Grade Four Pupils

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    Rashid Al-Azri

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available Abstract Over the recent years the teaching of foreign language vocabulary has been the subject of much discussion and arguments and a number of research and methodology books on such topic have emerged as it is the case for example with Nation 2001 and Schmitt 2000. For a long time grammar seemed to have attracted more attention but this renewed interest in vocabulary reflects the belief that it is becoming a major component in knowing a language and as some recent scholars would admit even more important than grammar already. In addition to the various strategies used to promote vocabulary learning in the classroom environment songs are widely being used nowadays as a powerful tool in teaching new vocabulary to early grades pupils. Throughout our teaching of young learners we have noticed that they are amazingly captured by songs and they always enjoy listening to them. This might be one of the main reasons why songs have now become one of the cornerstones in the demanding and challenging process of teaching children. The purpose of this research paper is to find out as to what extent and how the use of songs may support new vocabulary learning for grade four pupils in Oman and how much it actually helps these young learners in developing their vocabulary learning habits.

  15. Teaching Vocabulary in Colour.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gnoinska, Anna

    1998-01-01

    Describes one teacher's use of color to make classroom instruction more interesting. Techniques included using colored paper for handouts, conducting an experiment to see whether the use of colors could enhance students' memory power, and using colored flashcards to teach vocabulary. (Author/VWL)

  16. Expressive Vocabulary in Young Children with Down Syndrome: From Research to Treatment.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kumin, Libby; Councill, Cheryl; Goodman, Mina

    1999-01-01

    Expressive vocabulary was studied in 130 children (ages 1 to 5 years) with Down syndrome. Although there was continuous growth in expressive referential vocabulary from birth through 5 years, age 5 was found to be an important developmental marker for multiword combinations and grammatical vocabulary. (Author/CR)

  17. Reading Stories to Learn Math: Mathematics Vocabulary Instruction for Children with Early Numeracy Difficulties.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hassinger-Das, Brenna; Jordan, Nancy C; Dyson, Nancy

    2015-12-01

    The present study involved examining whether a storybook reading intervention targeting mathematics vocabulary, such as "equal," "more," and "less," and associated number concepts would increase at-risk children's vocabulary knowledge and number competencies. Children with early numeracy difficulties (N = 124) were recruited from kindergarten classes in four schools. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three groups: a storybook number competencies (SNC) intervention, a number sense intervention, or a business-as-usual control. Interventions were carried out in groups of four children over 8 weeks (24 thirty-minute sessions). Findings demonstrated that the SNC intervention group outperformed the other groups on measures of mathematics vocabulary, both in terms of words that were closely aligned to the intervention and those that were not. There was no effect of the SNC intervention, however, on general mathematics measures, suggesting a need to provide the mathematics vocabulary work along with more intensive instruction in number concepts.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  19. Developing a Specialized Vocabulary Word List in a Composition Culinary Course through Lecture Notes

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    M.Nordin N. R.

    2013-01-01

    Full Text Available Learning to write in a composition culinary course is very challenging for L2 learners. The main barrier in writing proficiency within this discipline is the lack of vocabulary, specifically the lack of exposure towards specialized vocabulary. This study aims to provide a corpus of specialized vocabulary within a food writing course. By providing students with a word list of specialized vocabulary in the course, students may benefit by familiarizing with the language discourse which will aid in better comprehension of the course, and subsequently facilitate in their writing development. A compilation of all PowerPoint slides from one writing course was assembled and analyzed using the range and frequency program to identify the specialized vocabularies in a food writing course. The corpus was categorized using a four step rating scale, which identified 113 specialized vocabularies in food writing. The learning of specialized vocabulary specialized vocabulary is an important issue at the tertiary level in Malaysia, with educators’ realization of the importance of discourse proficiency in ESP programs, thus many more research is yielded on the many new issues on the teaching and learning of specialized vocabulary particularly within the academic and professional context.

  20. Total and Conceptual Vocabulary in Spanish–English Bilinguals From 22 to 30 Months: Implications for Assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Core, Cynthia; Hoff, Erika; Rumiche, Rosario; Señor, Melissa

    2015-01-01

    Purpose Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish–English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children. Method Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to measure mean vocabulary size and growth in 47 Spanish–English bilingually developing children from 22 to 30 months of age based on results from the MacArthur–Bates Communicative Development Inventory (CDI; Fenson et al., 1993) and the Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas (Jackson-Maldonado et al., 2003). Bilingual children’s scores of total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were compared with CDI scores for a control group of 56 monolingual children. Results The total vocabulary measure resulted in mean vocabulary scores and average rate of growth similar to monolingual growth, whereas conceptual vocabulary scores were significantly smaller and grew at a slower rate than total vocabulary scores. Total vocabulary identified the same proportion of bilingual children below the 25th percentile on monolingual norms as the CDI did for monolingual children. Conclusion These results support the use of total vocabulary as a means of assessing early language development in young bilingual Spanish–English speaking children. PMID:24023382

  1. Memorization versus Semantic Mapping in L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  2. Studies and Suggestions on English Vocabulary Teaching and Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zheng, Shigao

    2012-01-01

    To improve vocabulary learning and teaching in ELT settings, two questionnaires are designed and directed to more than 100 students and teachers in one of China's key universities. The findings suggest that an enhanced awareness of cultural difference, metaphorical competence, and learners' autonomy in vocabulary acquisition will effectively…

  3. Predicting Receptive-Expressive Vocabulary Discrepancies in Preschool Children With Autism Spectrum Disorder.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McDaniel, Jena; Yoder, Paul; Woynaroski, Tiffany; Watson, Linda R

    2018-05-15

    Correlates of receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies may provide insights into why language development in children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) deviates from typical language development and ultimately improve intervention outcomes. We indexed receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancies of 65 initially preverbal children with ASD (20-48 months) to a comparison sample from the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Wordbank (Frank, Braginsky, Yurovsky, & Marchman, 2017) to quantify typicality. We then tested whether attention toward a speaker and oral motor performance predict typicality of the discrepancy 8 months later. Attention toward a speaker correlated positively with receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Imitative and nonimitative oral motor performance were not significant predictors of vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Secondary analyses indicated that midpoint receptive vocabulary size mediated the association between initial attention toward a speaker and end point receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy typicality. Findings support the hypothesis that variation in attention toward a speaker might partially explain receptive-expressive vocabulary size discrepancy magnitude in children with ASD. Results are consistent with an input-processing deficit explanation of language impairment in this clinical population. Future studies should test whether attention toward a speaker is malleable and causally related to receptive-expressive discrepancies in children with ASD.

  4. Longitudinal analysis of receptive vocabulary growth in young Spanish English-speaking children from migrant families.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jackson, Carla Wood; Schatschneider, Christopher; Leacox, Lindsey

    2014-01-01

    The authors of this study described developmental trajectories and predicted kindergarten performance of Spanish and English receptive vocabulary acquisition of young Latino/a English language learners (ELLs) from socioeconomically disadvantaged migrant families. In addition, the authors examined the extent to which gender and individual initial performance in Spanish predict receptive vocabulary performance and growth rate. The authors used hierarchical linear modeling of 64 children's receptive vocabulary performance to generate growth trajectories, predict performance at school entry, and examine potential predictors of rate of growth. The timing of testing varied across children. The ELLs (prekindergarten to 2nd grade) participated in 2-5 testing sessions, each 6-12 months apart. The ELLs' average predicted standard score on an English receptive vocabulary at kindergarten was nearly 2 SDs below the mean for monolingual peers. Significant growth in the ELLs' receptive vocabulary was observed between preschool and 2nd grade, indicating that the ELLs were slowly closing the receptive vocabulary gap, although their average score remained below the standard score mean for age-matched monolingual peers. The ELLs demonstrated a significant decrease in Spanish receptive vocabulary standard scores over time. Initial Spanish receptive vocabulary was a significant predictor of growth in English receptive vocabulary. High initial Spanish receptive vocabulary was associated with greater growth in English receptive vocabulary and decelerated growth in Spanish receptive vocabulary. Gender was not a significant predictor of growth in either English or Spanish receptive vocabulary. ELLs from low socioeconomic backgrounds may be expected to perform lower in English compared with their monolingual English peers in kindergarten. Performance in Spanish at school entry may be useful in identifying children who require more intensive instructional support for English vocabulary

  5. Impacts of Vocabulary Acquisition Techniques Instruction on Students' Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  6. Contextual Clues Vocabulary Strategies Choice among Business Management Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  7. Lexical Coverage of TED Talks: Implications for Vocabulary Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nurmukhamedov, Ulugbek

    2017-01-01

    Teachers of English are often in search of authentic audio and video materials that promote learners' listening comprehension and vocabulary development. TED Talks, a set of freely available web presentations, could be a useful resource to promote vocabulary instruction. The present replication study examines the lexical coverage of TED Talks by…

  8. Does the Freedom of Reader Choice Affect Second Language Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Reynolds, Barry Lee; Bai, Yi Ling

    2013-01-01

    In this study, the effect of freedom of reader choice on the incidental acquisition of vocabulary was investigated in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) reading classes. Despite advocating free extensive reading as a means of obtaining a native-like L2 vocabulary,existing studies investigating the incidental acquisition of vocabulary have not…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  10. AN OBSERVATION TO THE VOCABULARY OF UZBEK / ÖZBEK TÜRKÇESİ SÖZ VARLIĞINA BİR BAKIS

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    Dr. Feridun TEKİN

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available From second half of 19.th Century -to beginning of20.th Century is an important time scale that Uzbekvocabulary developed importantly. Up to this periodUzbek vocabulary has generally import words from Arabicand Persian languages. Since Kingdom of Russiaoccupied Turkestan after the second part of 19.thcentury, Russian and indirectly western words vocabulary which has carried by Russian Culture cameinto Uzbek. Also those vocabularies has carried out somemorphological and fonetical characteristics withthemselves.In this study Russian words and western orientedwords both came through with Russian language intothe vocabulary of Uzbek. This subject will be evaluatedfrom various perspectives.

  11. Spelling Ability in College Students Predicted by Decoding, Print Exposure, and Vocabulary

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ocal, Turkan; Ehri, Linnea

    2017-01-01

    This study examines students' exposure to print, vocabulary and decoding as predictors of spelling skills. Participants were 42 college students (Mean age 22.5, SD = 7.87; 31 females and 11 males). Hierarchical regression analyses showed that most of the variance in spelling was explained by vocabulary knowledge. When vocabulary was entered first…

  12. 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.

  13. Exploring Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used by UPM TESL Undergraduates

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  14. Self-reported reading as a predictor of vocabulary knowledge.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pratheeba, N; Krashen, S

    2013-10-01

    25 engineering students in India, who were highly motivated to improve their English, filled out a questionnaire about their reading habits in English and took a demanding vocabulary test based on words taken from preparation books for the Graduate Records Examination. The correlation between reading habits and vocabulary was substantial (r = .78).

  15. Service Learning: Flooding Students with Vocabulary through Read Alouds

    Science.gov (United States)

    Holmes, Kerry; Thompson, Judith

    2014-01-01

    In the spirit of the Steven Stahl 600 Book Kid Challenge, 90 preservice teachers engaged children in 36 read-aloud sessions for a vocabulary improvement service learning project. This article describes how the preservice teachers used narrative and informational books as a vehicle for rare-word vocabulary exposure for children ages 8-12.

  16. 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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  18. 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.

  19. The Relationship between Interpersonal Intelligence, Reading Activity and Vocabulary Learning among Iranian EFL Learners

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    Mustapha Hajebi

    2018-03-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this paper was to describe the relationship between Interpersonal Intelligence and the learners' vocabulary learning through teaching reading activity so as to see whether this type of intelligence contributes to better vocabulary learning and whether there is any significant relationship between the performance of participants with interpersonal intelligence and their vocabulary learning in reading activity or not. This quantitative study consisted of a vocabulary test, a reading passage, an English proficiency test and a Multiple Intelligences questionnaire followed the study. A pre- test and post -test were conducted to get the differences in the students‟ post- test vocabulary score and their pre- test vocabulary score served as their gain score in vocabulary knowledge through reading. The comparison between the students‟ scores showed that there was no significant difference in the final performance of two groups. Therefore, this study doesn‟t support the idea of relationship between interpersonal intelligence and vocabulary learning through reading, but as a positive point, the present study indicated that reading texts can greatly assist the learners in developing the level of their vocabulary knowledge. This study proved to be useful for Iranian EFL learners and also EFL teachers can adopt the technique in their classes to advance their students' language learning. A comparison of the results after the next course cycle will then allow us to assess the effects of enhancing vocabulary knowledge, which would not be possible without reading texts.

  20. 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,…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  2. Definition of Business Rules Using Business Vocabulary and Semantics

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    Roman Hypský

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the definition of business rules using business vocabulary and semantics. At the beginning business rules, business vocabulary and semantics of business rules are specified. There is also outlined the current state of research on this topic. Then the definition and formalization of business rules using semantics and business vocabulary is described. Based on these proposed procedures was created a tool that implements and simulate these processes. The main advantage of this tool is “Business Rules Layer”, which implements business rules into the system but is separated from this system. Source code of the rules and the system are not mixed together. Finally, the results are evaluated and future development is suggested.

  3. Validity of a parent vocabulary checklist for young Spanish speaking children of Mexican immigrants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Guiberson, Mark

    2008-01-01

    The primary objective of the current investigation was to examine the concurrent and predictive validity of a parent vocabulary checklist with young Spanish speaking children of Mexican immigrants. This study implemented a longitudinal approach. Nineteen families participated when children were 15-16 months of age, and then again at 30-32 months of age. The Spanish version of the MacArthur Communicative Development Inventory (Inventarios del Desarrollo de Habilidades Communicativas, INV) and spontaneous language samples collected during naturalistic play were used to examine the relationship between observed and reported vocabulary. Vocabulary reported through the INV-II and vocabulary observed at 30-32 months were significantly correlated, suggesting that the INV-II captures a valid representation of vocabulary at this age. Comparatively, vocabulary reported on the INV-I, was not correlated with observed vocabulary at 15-16 months of age or reported or observed vocabulary at 30-32 months of age. These results suggest that the INV-I, when used with 14-16-month-olds, demonstrates limited concurrent and predictive validity. Implications for the clinical use of the INV-I and INV-II are presented.

  4. Modeling the Nature of Grammar and Vocabulary Trajectories From Prekindergarten to Third Grade.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Jiang, Hui; Logan, Jessica A; Jia, Rongfang

    2018-04-17

    This study investigated the longitudinal development of 2 important contributors to reading comprehension, grammar, and vocabulary skills. The primary interest was to examine the trajectories of the 2 skill areas from preschool to 3rd grade. The study involved a longitudinal sample of 420 children from 4 sites. Language skills, including grammar and vocabulary, were assessed annually with multiple measures. Multivariate latent growth curve modeling was used to examine the developmental trajectories of grammar and vocabulary, to test the correlation between the 2 domains, and to investigate the effects of demographic predictors on language growth. Results showed that both grammar and vocabulary exhibited decelerating growth from preschool to Grade 2. In Grade 3, grammar growth further flattened, whereas vocabulary continued to grow stably. Growth of vocabulary and grammar were positively correlated. Demographic characteristics, such as child gender and family socioeconomic status, were found to predict the intercept but not the slope of the growth trajectories. Children's growth in grammar skills is differentiated in a number of important ways from their growth in vocabulary skills. Results of this study suggest the need to differentiate these dimensions of language when seeking to closely examine growth from preschool to primary grades.

  5. Event-related potentials during word mapping to object shape predict toddlers’ vocabulary size

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kristina eBorgström

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available What role does attention to different object properties play in early vocabulary development? This longitudinal study using event-related potentials in combination with behavioral measures investigated 20- and 24-month-olds’ (n = 38; n = 34; overlapping n = 24 ability to use object shape and object part information in word-object mapping. The N400 component was used to measure semantic priming by images containing shape or detail information. At 20 months, the N400 to words primed by object shape varied in topography and amplitude depending on vocabulary size, and these differences predicted productive vocabulary size at 24 months. At 24 months, when most of the children had vocabularies of several hundred words, the relation between vocabulary size and the N400 effect in a shape context was weaker. Detached object parts did not function as word primes regardless of age or vocabulary size, although the part-objects were identified behaviorally. The behavioral measure, however, also showed relatively poor recognition of the part-objects compared to the shape-objects. These three findings provide new support for the link between shape recognition and early vocabulary development.

  6. A Comparative Study of Televised and Non-televised Vocabulary ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    dell

    Vocabulary Teaching: the Case of Grade Ten in Focus. ... words were taken from Units 2 and 3 (English for Ethiopia, student text for ... On the other hand, even if it was below average, the study indicated that the ..... Table 1: How frequently the teachers use visual aids to teach vocabulary items .... This is a great disadvantage.

  7. Vocabulary Acquisition in L2: Does CALL Really Help?

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  8. Shyness, Vocabulary and Children's Reticence in Saudi Arabian Preschools

    Science.gov (United States)

    Crozier, W. Ray; Badawood, Asma

    2009-01-01

    The aims of the present study are to examine whether preschool children's scores on a standardized test of vocabulary mediate or moderate the relation between shyness and reticence and to test whether any influence of vocabulary would be found for both teacher and parent assessments of shyness. Participants were 108 children (50 males), mean age,…

  9. 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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  11. Students' Perceptions of Vocabulary Knowledge and Learning in a Middle School Science Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brown, Patrick L.; Concannon, James P.

    2016-01-01

    This study investigated eighth-grade science students' (13-14-year-olds) perceptions of their vocabulary knowledge, learning, and content achievement. Data sources included pre- and posttest of students' perceptions of vocabulary knowledge, students' perceptions of vocabulary and reading strategies surveys, and a content achievement test.…

  12. What Can Errors Tell Us about Differences between Monolingual and Bilingual Vocabulary Learning?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kaushanskaya, Margarita

    2018-01-01

    Error patterns in vocabulary learning data were used as a window into the mechanisms that underlie vocabulary learning performance in bilinguals vs. monolinguals. English--Spanish bilinguals (n = 18) and English-speaking monolinguals (n = 18) were taught novel vocabulary items in association with English translations. At testing, participants…

  13. Sibship size, sibling cognitive sensitivity, and children's receptive vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Prime, Heather; Pauker, Sharon; Plamondon, André; Perlman, Michal; Jenkins, Jennifer

    2014-02-01

    The aim of the current study was to examine the relationship between sibship size and children's vocabulary as a function of quality of sibling interactions. It was hypothesized that coming from a larger sibship (ie, 3+ children) would be related to lower receptive vocabulary in children. However, we expected this association to be moderated by the level of cognitive sensitivity shown by children's next-in-age older siblings. Data on 385 children (mean age = 3.15 years) and their next-in-age older siblings (mean age = 5.57 years) were collected and included demographic questionnaires, direct testing of children's receptive vocabulary, and videos of mother-child and sibling interactions. Sibling dyads were taped engaging in a cooperative building task and tapes were coded for the amount of cognitive sensitivity the older sibling exhibited toward the younger sibling. Hierarchical regression analyses were conducted and showed an interaction between sibship size and sibling cognitive sensitivity in the prediction of children's receptive vocabulary; children exposed to large sibships whose next-in-age older sibling exhibited higher levels of cognitive sensitivity were less likely to show low vocabulary skills when compared with those children exposed to large sibships whose siblings showed lower levels of cognitive sensitivity. Children who show sensitivity to the cognitive needs of their younger siblings provide a rich environment for language development. The negative impact of large sibships on language development is moderated by the presence of an older sibling who shows high cognitive sensitivity.

  14. BUSINESS ENGLISH WORD GAMES – A WELCOMED VOCABULARY TEACHING TECHNIQUE

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    Ioana Claudia Horea

    2015-03-01

    Full Text Available Introducing vocabulary has never been very problematic nor a doubt generating aspect in teaching a language, at least not in respect of what has to be done actually along this part of the lesson or how this stage should be approached. It cannot be said that it has ever been too much of a challenge, but rather a simple and straightforward phase in the economy of the English class. Business English vocabulary teaching methods have to make allowance for the specificity of the field, though. Thus, much consideration has to be given to the way Business English lexical units are introduced so that the technique used could produce the desired results into the students: acquisition of specific terminology, assimilation of meanings and development of skills that shall ensure accurate usage of the terms in the future. After an experimental semester, most adequate class approaches to serve the purposes abovementioned proved to be – rather non-academic, it may be argued – the word games. The current study presents the detailed steps of two distinct teaching methods used and the comparative results obtained with the two groups of students submitted to the experiment. Along the Business English courses in one semester, there were four vocabulary introduction lessons. The nonconformist technique of word games was implemented to one of the two groups of students while the other was taught the regular style. The comparative study focused on several aspects, from the observation of the class reactions and participation along the process of teaching, i.e. response to the didactic process during each class, to the checking of the effects of both types of implementation, namely assessing assimilation of the previously taught material in terms of knowledge of vocabulary and correct interpretation, by random tests and by final test results. If teaching methodologies regularly claim that the general to particular approach is the most effective, here a vice

  15. Vocabulary and working memory in children fit with hearing aids.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stiles, Derek J; McGregor, Karla K; Bentler, Ruth A

    2012-02-01

    To determine whether children with mild-to-moderately severe sensorineural hearing loss (CHL) present with disturbances in working memory and whether these disturbances relate to the size of their receptive vocabularies. Children 6 to 9 years of age participated. Aspects of working memory were tapped by articulation rate, forward and backward digit span in the auditory and visual modalities, Corsi span, parent surveys, and a sequential encoding task. Articulation rate, digit spans, and Corsi spans were also administered in low-level broadband noise. CHL and children with normal hearing (CNH) demonstrated auditory advantage in forward serial recall. CHL demonstrated slower articulation rates than CNH, but similar memory spans. CHL with poor executive function presented with poorer performance on the Corsi span task. The presence of background noise had no effect on performance in either group. CHL presented with significantly smaller receptive vocabularies than their CNH peers. Across groups, receptive vocabulary size was positively correlated with digit span in quiet, Corsi span in noise, and articulation rate. In the presence of mild-to-moderately severe hearing loss, children demonstrated resilient working memory systems. For all children, working memory and vocabulary were related; that is, children with poorer working memory had smaller vocabulary sizes.

  16. Predictors of WAIS-R vocabulary in late life: Differences by race.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Morin, Ruth T; Midlarsky, Elizabeth

    2017-11-01

    Vocabulary scores tend to be significantly related to education in heterogeneous groups of older adults, even after controlling for confounding variables. However, there may be other factors that impinge on cognitive functioning for certain demographic groups, particularly those whose educational opportunities were limited, and who may have experienced considerable stress as a result of their minority status. This study sought to explore possible predictors of vocabulary scores among African American and White older adults. In this study, samples of African American (N = 165) and White (N = 146) community-dwelling older adults reported their level of education, perceived health status, and number of stressful life events, and were administered the Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale-Revised (WAIS-R) Vocabulary subtest. Among the White participants, level of education was the only significant predictor of vocabulary score after controlling for perceived health and exposure to stress. Among African American participants, education was also a significant predictor of vocabulary score. However perceived health and number of stressful life events were also significantly predictors of vocabulary score. Findings indicate that for certain cohorts of older adults, especially those who may have experienced stressful life circumstances and health disparities as a result of racial inequality, education may not be the only variable that predicts verbal intelligence. The importance of investigating cognitive functioning within a broader sociocultural context is discussed.

  17. A New Twist on Vocabulary Instruction for Students with Learning Disabilities in Biology

    Science.gov (United States)

    Grillo, Kelly J.; Dieker, Lisa A.

    2013-01-01

    An essential element of science instruction is content literacy. In order to improve literacy specific to science, vocabulary must be addressed. As Jitendra et al. (2004) pointed out, "because learning vocabulary during independent reading is very inefficient for students with reading difficulties, vocabulary and word learning skills must be…

  18. THE IMPLEMENTATION OF THE 5E MODEL STAGES TO BUILD STUDENTS’ VOCABULARY

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    Muhammad Rochman

    2015-12-01

    Full Text Available There are stages of human to learn something. In early ages, they will learn simplest things to the complicated ones. A learning process of human is started with and introductory and it tries to connect with their prior knowledge to the new one. Children begin to curious about what they want to know and start to make some questions about what they want to know. In the process of finding the answers of their own questions, they will interact with others and try to share the knowledge in this process. The result of this study illustrates that the implementation of the 5E model in teaching vocabulary that can enhance the students’ vocabulary achievement and successfully encourages them to actively and enthusiastically take part in the teaching-learning process of vocabulary through group task. Keywords: implementation, vocabulary, vocabulary course, and 5E model

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  20. Vocabulary Mastery by Using Storytelling

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    Sektalonir Oscarini Bhakti

    2018-04-01

    Full Text Available Abstract:  This research investigated 80 students of Diploma III Architecture of Samarinda State Polytechnic to see their vocabularies mastery trough storytelling. Telling the stories is one of the best way to find out the students' English Mastery. Some obstacles are also found in learning English trough performing storytelling in the class such as the suitable material and text for the students, the lack of ability of the students and the teacher in conducting story as well as the readiness and the nervousness of the storytellers. As an English lecturer, the researcher also finds that how to improve vocabularies is one of the students' problems in learning English.  It is proved when the students are asked to tell a story in front of the class. In this research, the students needed telling stories before they had the English vocabulary test.  From the test, it could be concluded that the highest score was 92 got by one (1 student while the lowest score was 46 got by one (1 student.  Meanwhile, the average score was 78 that classified fair (B.  There were two (2 students who got below 50 that classified Fail. The results show that even the students' English mastery were satisfied but the students still need to practice how to tell the story in a good way so that they will master in all aspects. Keywords: Samarinda State Polytechnic, Students' Mastery, Storytelling

  1. Analyses of Receptive and Productive Korean EFL Vocabulary: Computer-Based Vocabulary Learning Program

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kim, Scott Sungki

    2013-01-01

    The present research study investigated the effects of 8 versions of a computer-based vocabulary learning program on receptive and productive knowledge levels of college students. The participants were 106 male and 103 female Korean EFL students from Kyungsung University and Kwandong University in Korea. Students who participated in versions of…

  2. Pre-Learning Low-Frequency Vocabulary in Second Language Television Programmes

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Stuart

    2010-01-01

    This study investigated the potential of pre-learning frequently occurring low-frequency vocabulary as a means to increase comprehension of television and incidental vocabulary learning through watching television. Eight television programmes, each representing different television genres, were analysed using the RANGE program to determine the 10…

  3. 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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  5. WORD ORIGIN HELPS EXPAND LEARNERS’ VOCABULARY A VOCABULARY TEACHING APPROACH

    OpenAIRE

    Li Jing

    2012-01-01

    Word origin (motivation) deals with the connection between name and sense, explaining how a word originated. With the knowledge of how words are originated, learners can grasp a word easier and thus expand their vocabulary more quickly. The introduction to word origin (motivation) by teachers can also help the learners gain interest in the process of learning and learn more about the cultural and historical background of the English-speaking countries. This paper tries to clarify this method ...

  6. Facilitating vocabulary learning through metacognitive strategy training and learning journals

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Carmen Luz Trujillo Becerra

    2015-10-01

    Full Text Available This paper reports on a mixed- method action research study carried out with participants from three public high schools in different regions in Colombia: Bogotá, Orito and Tocaima.  The overall aim of this study was to analyze whether training in the use of metacognitive strategies (MS through learning journals could improve the participants’ vocabulary learning. The data, collected mainly through students’ learning journals, teachers’ field notes, questionnaires and mind maps, was analyzed following the principles of grounded theory. The results suggested that the training helped participants to develop metacognitive awareness of their vocabulary learning process and their lexical competence regarding daily routines.  Participants also displayed some improvements in critical thinking and self-directed attitudes that could likewise benefit their vocabulary learning. Finally, the study proposes that training in metacognitive and vocabulary strategies should be implemented in language classrooms to promote a higher degree of student control over learning and to facilitate the transference of these strategies to other areas of knowledge.

  7. Early Vocabulary Development of Australian Indigenous Children: Identifying Strengths

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    Brad M. Farrant

    2014-01-01

    Full Text Available The current study sought to increase our understanding of the factors involved in the early vocabulary development of Australian Indigenous children. Data from the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children were available for 573 Indigenous children (291 boys who spoke English (M=37.0 months, SD=5.4 months, at wave 3. Data were also available for 86 children (51 boys who spoke an Indigenous language (M=37.1 months, SD=6.0 months, at wave 3. As hypothesised, higher levels of parent-child book reading and having more children’s books in the home were associated with better English vocabulary development. Oral storytelling in Indigenous language was a significant predictor of the size of children’s Indigenous vocabulary.

  8. Modality of Input and Vocabulary Acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  9. Enhancing students’ vocabulary knowledge using the Facebook environment

    OpenAIRE

    Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan; Tuti Zalina Mohamed Ernes Zahar

    2016-01-01

    This study investigates the effectiveness of using Facebook in enhancing vocabulary knowledge among Community College students. Thirty-three (33) Community College students are exposed to the use of Facebook as an environment of learning and enhancing their English vocabulary. They are given a pre-test and a post-test and the findings indicate that students perform significantly better in the post-test compared to the pre-test. It appears that Facebook could be considered as a supplementary l...

  10. Digital Games, Songs and Flashcards and their Effects on Vocabulary Knowledge of Iranian Preschoolers

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    Mahboubeh Taghizadeh

    2018-01-01

    Full Text Available The study aimed to investigate (a the effect of digital games, songs, and flashcards on vocabulary knowledge of Iranian EFL preschool learners and (b the young learners‟ performance on mid-course tests of vocabulary with different topics. The participants included 350 preschool female learners in Oshnaviyeh, a town in Western Azarbaijan Province and were divided into three tablet, song, and traditional groups. Pre and post-tests of vocabulary and four mid-course tests based, on the learnt vocabularies, were administered during the research. The materials also consisted of a digital game, 16 songs, a structured student book, a workbook, and 60 flashcards. The analysis of the data revealed that there was no significant difference in the vocabulary knowledge of preschool learners who learnt vocabularies via games, songs, and flashcards. The results also showed that there was a significant difference in the three groups‟ mid-course tests with different topics. The findings recommend that using different techniques in the classroom considering learners‟ interest and needs can improve vocabulary knowledge of young learners.

  11. Oral Vocabulary and Language Acquisition Strategies to Increase Literacy

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  12. Semantic Structure in Vocabulary Knowledge Interacts with Lexical and Sentence Processing in Infancy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Borovsky, Arielle; Ellis, Erica M.; Evans, Julia L.; Elman, Jeffrey L.

    2016-01-01

    Although the size of a child's vocabulary associates with language-processing skills, little is understood regarding how this relation emerges. This investigation asks whether and how the structure of vocabulary knowledge affects language processing in English-learning 24-month-old children (N = 32; 18 F, 14 M). Parental vocabulary report was used…

  13. Motivate Students to Engage in Word Study Using Vocabulary Games

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wells, Jenny C.; Narkon, Drue E.

    2011-01-01

    Vocabulary instruction across the content areas aids reading comprehension, making it time well spent in the classroom. Although students with learning disabilities (LD) need many practice opportunities to learn new words, engaging them in vocabulary instruction may prove challenging. Due to their past difficulties in acquiring reading skills,…

  14. Predicting growth in English and French vocabulary: The facilitating effects of morphological and cognate awareness.

    Science.gov (United States)

    D'Angelo, Nadia; Hipfner-Boucher, Kathleen; Chen, Xi

    2017-07-01

    The present study investigated the contribution of morphological and cognate awareness to the development of English and French vocabulary knowledge among young minority and majority language children who were enrolled in a French immersion program. Participating children (n = 75) were assessed in English and French on measures of morphological awareness, cognate awareness, and vocabulary knowledge from Grades 1 to 3. Hierarchical linear modeling was used to investigate linear trends in English and French vocabulary growth for minority and majority language children and to identify metalinguistic contributions to Grade 1 and Grade 3 English and French vocabulary performance and rate of growth. Results demonstrated a similar pattern of prediction for both groups of children. English and French morphological awareness and French-English cognate awareness significantly predicted concurrent and longitudinal vocabulary development after controlling for nonverbal reasoning, phonological awareness, and word identification. The contributions of morphological awareness to English vocabulary and cognate awareness to French vocabulary strengthened between Grades 1 and 2. These findings highlight the emerging importance of morphological and cognate awareness in children's vocabulary development and suggest that these metalinguistic factors can serve to broaden the vocabulary repertoire of children who enter school with limited language proficiency. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

  15. 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...

  16. Linking Research and Practice: Effective Strategies for Teaching Vocabulary in the ESL Classroom

    Science.gov (United States)

    Nam, Jihyun

    2010-01-01

    Vocabulary plays a pivotal role in the ESL classroom. Whereas a considerable amount of research has examined effective ESL vocabulary teaching and learning, missing are studies that provide examples of how to put various research findings into practice: that is, apply them to real texts including target vocabulary items. In order to close the gap…

  17. MULTIPLE INTELLIGENCES AS PREDICTORS OF READING COMPREHENSION AND VOCABULARY KNOWLEDGE

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    Abbas Ali Zarei

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: The present study was conducted to investigate types of Multiple Intelligences as predictors of reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. To meet this objective, a 60-item TOEFL test and a 90-item multiple intelligences questionnaire were distributed among 240 male and female Iranians studying English at Qazali and Parsian Universities in Qazvin. Data were analyzed using a multiple regression procedure. The result of the data analysis indicated that musical, interpersonal, kinesthetic, and logical intelligences were predicators of reading comprehension. Moreover, musical, verbal, visual, kinesthetic and natural intelligences made significant contributions to predicting vocabulary knowledge.   Key words: Multiple intelligences, reading comprehension, vocabulary knowledge.

  18. Implementing Controlled Composition to Improve Vocabulary Mastery of EFL Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Juriah

    2015-01-01

    The purposes of this study was to know how (1) Controlled composition teaching techniques implemented by the English teacher at SDN 027 Samarinda to improve vocabulary mastery, and (2) Controlled composition teaching techniques improves vocabulary mastery of the sixth grade students of SDN 027 Samarinda. This research used a Classroom Action…

  19. Building a Strong Vocabulary: A Twelve-Week Plan for Students.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Carl B.

    This book presents 12 strategies (focusing on one strategy a week) for students to increase vocabulary and boost communication skills, suggesting that these techniques can easily double the average person's vocabulary. After an introduction, the book presents the following 12 techniques: (1) "Expand on What You Know: Synonyms, Antonyms, and…

  20. Neural Correlates of High Performance in Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  1. Profiling Vocabulary in Psychology Journal Abstracts: A Comparison between Iranian and Anglo-American Journals

    Science.gov (United States)

    Akbarian, Is'haaq; Ghanbarzadeh, Zahra; Shahri, Mohammad Afzali

    2017-01-01

    Lexical profiling has yielded fruitful results for language description and pedagogy (Liu, 2014), and particularly highlighted the significance of academic vocabulary for EFL learners in this process. This investigation, likewise, attempts to comparatively profile the vocabulary, more particularly the academic vocabulary, in the…

  2. Online multilingual vocabulary system and its application in L2 learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Haruko Miyakoda

    2010-06-01

    Full Text Available In the field of second language teaching, vocabulary has been one of the most neglected areas in the classroom. Although language teachers/ instructors are well aware of the importance of vocabulary, there is not enough time in the classroom to actually “teach” vocabulary. Therefore, we need to find ways to promote autonomous vocabulary learning so that students can make good use of their time outside theclassrooms.In this study, we present an online vocabulary learning system that we have developed. The results obtained from our evaluation experiment indicate that our system is more effective in retaining the meaning of the words compared to the traditional learning method.As an example of applying this system to language learning, we will give a demonstration of a Japanese onomatopoeia dictionary that we are compiling. Onomatopoeia are especially troublesome for learners of the Japanese language. Although they are frequently used in both written and spoken Japanese, they are very difficult to translate to other languages. We demonstrate that by employing our system, learners are better able to understand the meaning and the context of eachlexical item.

  3. Assessment of the Vocabulary Learning and Strategies Used by Teacher Education Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Esperanza F. Carranza

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available One way to assess a person’s communicative competence is through his ability to express his thoughts and ideas in appropriate words and meaningful sentences. Vocabulary learning then is critical to learning a language – be it the first, second or even foreign. However, test results, daily communication and English proficiency exams show that students have difficulty in learning vocabulary. This descriptive-evaluative study assessed the vocabulary learning and the strategies used along context clues, word analysis and dictionary skills of the 100 randomly selected second-year education students of the Sorsogon State College. The study utilized survey-questionnaire, teacher- made test and unstructured interview in gathering data. The study revealed that most of the Bachelor of Elementary Education (BEED and Bachelor of Secondary Education (BSED students oftentimes used strategies in learning vocabulary such as reading books and other materials, looking for clues in sentences and use the dictionary to unlock the unfamiliar words. The students attained nearly competent vocabulary performance along context clues, word analysis and dictionary skills. The context clues and word analysis skills are significantly related to the use of learning strategies when tested at 0.05 level. The developed vocabulary module to enhance the skills of the students can be validated and utilized for instruction.

  4. 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...

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  6. Nouns and verbs in the vocabulary acquisition of Italian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  7. The effect of retrieval practice in primary school vocabulary learning

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Goossens, Nicole; Camp, Gino; Verkoeijen, Peter; Tabbers, Huib

    2018-01-01

    The testing effect refers to the finding that retrieval practice leads to better long-term retention than additional study of course material. In the present study, we examined whether this finding generalizes to primary school vocabulary learning. We also manipulated the word learning context.

  8. Technologies and practices for maintaining and publishing earth science vocabularies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cox, Simon; Yu, Jonathan; Williams, Megan; Giabardo, Fabrizio; Lowe, Dominic

    2015-04-01

    Shared vocabularies are a key element in geoscience data interoperability. Many organizations curate vocabularies, with most Geologic Surveys having a long history of development of lexicons and authority tables. However, their mode of publication is heterogeneous, ranging from PDFs and HTML web pages, spreadsheets and CSV, through various user-interfaces, and public and private APIs. Content maintenance ranges from tightly-governed and externally opaque, through various community processes, all the way to crowd-sourcing ('folksonomies'). Meanwhile, there is an increasing expectation of greater harmonization and vocabulary re-use, which create requirements for standardized content formalization and APIs, along with transparent content maintenance and versioning. We have been trialling a combination of processes and software dealing with vocabulary formalization, registration, search and linking. We use the Simplified Knowledge Organization System (SKOS) to provide a generic interface to content. SKOS is an RDF technology for multi-lingual, hierarchical vocabularies, oriented around 'concepts' denoted by URIs, and thus consistent with Linked Open Data. SKOS may be mixed in with classes and properties from specialized ontologies which provide a more specific interface when required. We have developed a suite of practices and techniques for conversion of content from the source technologies and styles into SKOS, largely based on spreadsheet manipulation before RDF conversion, and SPARQL afterwards. The workflow for each vocabulary must be adapted to match the specific inputs. In linked data applications, two requirements are paramount for user confidence: (i) the URI that denotes a vocabulary item is persistent, and should be dereferenceable indefinitely; (ii) the history and status of the resource denoted by a URI must be available. This is implemented by the Linked Data Registry (LDR), originally developed for the World Meteorological Organization and the UK

  9. Exposing SAMOS Data and Vocabularies within the Semantic Web

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dockery, Nkemdirim; Elya, Jocelyn; Smith, Shawn

    2014-05-01

    As part of the Ocean Data Interoperability Platform (ODIP), we at the Center for Ocean-Atmospheric Prediction Studies (COAPS) will present the development process for the exposure of quality-controlled data and core vocabularies managed by the Shipboard Automated Meteorological Oceanographic System (SAMOS) initiative using Semantic Web technologies. Participants in the SAMOS initiative collect continuous navigational (position, course, heading, speed), meteorological (winds, pressure, temperature, humidity, radiation), and near-surface oceanographic (sea temperature, salinity) parameters while at sea. One-minute interval observations are packaged and transmitted back to COAPS via daily emails, where they undergo standardized formatting and quality control. The authors will present methods used to expose these daily datasets. The Semantic Web, a vision of the World Wide Web Consortium, focuses on extending the principles of the web from connecting documents to connecting data. The creation of a web of Linked Data that can be used across different applications in a machine-readable way is the ultimate goal. The Resource Description Framework (RDF) is the standard language and format used in the Semantic Web. RDF pages may be queried using the SPARQL Protocol and RDF Query Language (SPARQL). The authors will showcase the development of RDF resources that map SAMOS vocabularies to internationally served vocabularies such as those found in the Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) Vocabulary Server. Each individual SAMOS vocabulary term (data parameter and quality control flag) will be described in an RDF resource page. These RDF resources will define each SAMOS vocabulary term and provide a link to the mapped vocabulary term (or multiple terms) served externally. Along with enhanced retrieval by parameter, time, and location, we will be able to add additional parameters with the confidence that they follow an international standard. The production of RDF

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  11. Early Vocabulary Development in Rural and Urban Mozambique

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Paul Vogt

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available This paper presents an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (short version into three languages spoken in Southern Mozambique. The tool was adapted to study vocabulary development among children of 12 to 25 months of age in two communities: a rural, monolingual Changana speaking community and an urban bilingual Ronga and Portuguese speaking community. We present a norming study carried out with the adaptation, as well as a validation study. The norming study revealed various predictors for reported expressive and receptive vocabulary size. These predictors include age, socioeconomic status, reported health problems, caregiving practices, and location. The validation of the CDI among a small sample in both communities shows positive correlations between the reported expressive vocabulary scores and children’s recorded word production. We conclude that the adapted CDI is useful for research purposes and could be used as a template for adaptations into other languages from similar cultures.

  12. Groundwork for a Better Vocabulary. Second Edition. Instructor's Edition. Townsend Press Vocabulary Series.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, R. Kent; Johnson, Beth; Mohr, Carole

    This instructor's edition of a vocabulary textbook for college students, who read at the fifth to eighth grade level, features 25 chapters and teaches 250 basic words. The first and third chapters in each unit contain word-part practices. The second and fourth chapters in each unit contain synonym-antonym practices. The book's last chapter in each…

  13. Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III: Psychometric properties and significance for application

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nataša Bucik

    2003-12-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of this article is to present the content, conceptual structure and methodological steps of the latest revision of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III, which is a highly functional and valuable vocabulary test that has been in use since 1959 in different language and cultural surroundings. On the case of the PPVT-III we are presenting the procedure of development and standardization of such vocabulary tests as well as its translation and adaptation from one language and cultural milieu to another. We also note the practical use of the PPVT-III for research purposes. In Slovenian language no vocabulary tests were developed or adapted so far; PPVT-III is presented in this context, too.

  14. EFL Vocabulary Acquisition through Word Cards: Student Perceptions and Strategies

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  15. A Novel Text Clustering Approach Using Deep-Learning Vocabulary Network

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    Junkai Yi

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Text clustering is an effective approach to collect and organize text documents into meaningful groups for mining valuable information on the Internet. However, there exist some issues to tackle such as feature extraction and data dimension reduction. To overcome these problems, we present a novel approach named deep-learning vocabulary network. The vocabulary network is constructed based on related-word set, which contains the “cooccurrence” relations of words or terms. We replace term frequency in feature vectors with the “importance” of words in terms of vocabulary network and PageRank, which can generate more precise feature vectors to represent the meaning of text clustering. Furthermore, sparse-group deep belief network is proposed to reduce the dimensionality of feature vectors, and we introduce coverage rate for similarity measure in Single-Pass clustering. To verify the effectiveness of our work, we compare the approach to the representative algorithms, and experimental results show that feature vectors in terms of deep-learning vocabulary network have better clustering performance.

  16. Total and Conceptual Vocabulary in Spanish-English Bilinguals from 22 to 30 Months: Implications for Assessment

    Science.gov (United States)

    Core, Cynthia; Hoff, Erika; Rumiche, Rosario; Senor, Melissa

    2013-01-01

    Purpose: Vocabulary assessment holds promise as a way to identify young bilingual children at risk for language delay. This study compares 2 measures of vocabulary in a group of young Spanish-English bilingual children to a single-language measure used with monolingual children. Method: Total vocabulary and conceptual vocabulary were used to…

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

    OpenAIRE

    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, mult...

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  19. Core Vocabulary: Its Morphological Content and Presence in Exemplar Texts

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hiebert, Elfrieda H.; Goodwin, Amanda P.; Cervetti, Gina N.

    2018-01-01

    This study addresses the distribution of words in texts at different points of schooling. The first aim was to identify a core vocabulary that accounts for the majority of the words in texts through the lens of morphological families. Results showed that 2,451 morphological families, averaging 4.61 members, make up the core vocabulary of school…

  20. Children's early reading vocabulary: description and word frequency lists.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stuart, Morag; Dixon, Maureen; Masterson, Jackie; Gray, Bob

    2003-12-01

    When constructing stimuli for experimental investigations of cognitive processes in early reading development, researchers have to rely on adult or American children's word frequency counts, as no such counts exist for English children. The present paper introduces a database of children's early reading vocabulary, for use by researchers and teachers. Texts from 685 books from reading schemes and story books read by 5-7 year-old children were used in the construction of the database. All words from the 685 books were typed or scanned into an Oracle database. The resulting up-to-date word frequency list of early print exposure in the UK is available in two forms from a website address given in this paper. This allows access to one list of the words ordered alphabetically and one list of the words ordered by frequency. We also briefly address some fundamental issues underlying early reading vocabulary (e.g., that it is heavily skewed towards low frequencies). Other characteristics of the vocabulary are then discussed. We hope the word frequency lists will be of use to researchers seeking to control word frequency, and to teachers interested in the vocabulary to which young children are exposed in their reading material.

  1. 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.

  2. Organizing Vocabulary (Open to Suggestion).

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dixon, Dorothy J.

    1990-01-01

    Describes a technique for vocabulary instruction in which students complete a chart by providing two synonyms, an antonym, and the pronunciation of a given word. Reports that, even though the chart is easy to complete, students using it began to think both critically and creatively. (RS)

  3. 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....

  4. Early Vocabulary, Parental Education, and the Frequency of Shared Reading as Predictors of Toddler's Vocabulary and Grammar at Age 2;7: A Slovenian Longitudinal CDI Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Marjanovic-Umek, Ljubica; Fekonja-Peklaj, Urška; Socan, Gregor

    2017-01-01

    The aim of this longitudinal study, carried out on a sample of Slovenian-speaking toddlers, was to analyze developmental changes and stability in early vocabulary development; to establish relations between toddler's vocabulary and grammar; and to analyze the effects of parental education and the frequency of shared reading on toddlers' vocabulary…

  5. The Dictionary and Vocabulary Behavior: A Single Word or a Handful?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baxter, James

    1980-01-01

    To provide a context for dictionary selection, the vocabulary behavior of students is examined. Distinguishing between written and spoken English, the relation between dictionary use, classroom vocabulary behavior, and students' success in meeting their communicative needs is discussed. The choice of a monolingual English learners' dictionary is…

  6. The Effects of Pre-Learning Vocabulary on Reading Comprehension and Writing

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Stuart A.

    2009-01-01

    This study investigates the effects of pre-learning vocabulary on reading comprehension and writing. Japanese students studying English as a foreign language (EFL) learned word pairs receptively and productively; four tests were used to measure reading comprehension, writing, and receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The findings suggest…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

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

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    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

  9. Facilitating Vocabulary Acquisition of Children With Cochlear Implants Using Electronic Storybooks.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Messier, Jane; Wood, Carla

    2015-10-01

    The present intervention study explored the word learning of 18 children with cochlear implants in response to E-book instruction. Capitalizing on the multimedia options available in electronic storybooks, the intervention incorporated videos and definitions to provide a vocabulary intervention that includes evidence-based teaching strategies. The extent of the children's word learning was assessed using three assessment tasks: receptive pointing, expressively labeling, and word defining. Children demonstrated greater immediate expressive labeling gains and definition generation gains for words taught in the treatment condition compared to those in the comparison condition. In addition, the children's performance on delayed posttest vocabulary assessments indicated better retention across the expressive vocabulary task for words taught within the treatment condition as compared to the comparison condition. Findings suggest that children with cochlear implants with functional speech perception can benefit from an oral-only multimedia-enhanced intensive vocabulary instruction. © The Author 2015. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.com.

  10. Developing a Specialized Vocabulary Word List in a Composition Culinary Course through Lecture Notes

    Science.gov (United States)

    M.Nordin, N. R.; Stapa, S. H.; Darus, S.

    2013-01-01

    Learning to write in a composition culinary course is very challenging for L2 learners. The main barrier in writing proficiency within this discipline is the lack of vocabulary, specifically the lack of exposure towards specialized vocabulary. This study aims to provide a corpus of specialized vocabulary within a food writing course. By providing…

  11. Academic Vocabulary Learning in First Through Third Grade in Low-Income Schools: Effects of Automated Supplemental Instruction.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Goldstein, Howard; Ziolkowski, Robyn A; Bojczyk, Kathryn E; Marty, Ana; Schneider, Naomi; Harpring, Jayme; Haring, Christa D

    2017-11-09

    This study investigated cumulative effects of language learning, specifically whether prior vocabulary knowledge or special education status moderated the effects of academic vocabulary instruction in high-poverty schools. Effects of a supplemental intervention targeting academic vocabulary in first through third grades were evaluated with 241 students (6-9 years old) from low-income families, 48% of whom were retained for the 3-year study duration. Students were randomly assigned to vocabulary instruction or comparison groups. Curriculum-based measures of word recognition, receptive identification, expressive labeling, and decontextualized definitions showed large effects for multiple levels of word learning. Hierarchical linear modeling revealed that students with higher initial Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Fourth Edition scores (Dunn & Dunn, 2007) demonstrated greater word learning, whereas students with special needs demonstrated less growth in vocabulary. This model of vocabulary instruction can be applied efficiently in high-poverty schools through an automated, easily implemented adjunct to reading instruction in the early grades and holds promise for reducing gaps in vocabulary development.

  12. Effect of Focused Vocabulary Instruction on 7th Graders' Reading Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Horn, Mary; Feng, Jianhua

    2012-01-01

    This study reports an investigation on the effects of directed vocabulary and whole class instruction on improving students' vocabulary acquisition and reading comprehension. Fifty-eight seventh grade students participated in the study, and a pre-test/post-test experimental design was employed. The results did not indicate any statistically…

  13. Using VocabularySpellingCity with Adult ESOL Students in Community College

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  14. Work Characteristics and Fathers' Vocabulary to Infants in African American Families

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pancsofar, Nadya; Vernon-Feagans, Lynne; Odom, Erika C.

    2013-01-01

    Fathers' vocabulary to infants has been linked in the literature to early child language development, however, little is known about the variability in fathers' language behavior. This study considered associations between fathers' work characteristics and fathers' vocabulary among a sample of employed African American fathers of 6-month-old…

  15. Technology-enhanced storytelling stimulating parent–child interaction and preschool children's vocabulary knowledge

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Teepe, R.C.; Molenaar, I.; Verhoeven, L.

    2016-01-01

    Preschool children's vocabulary mainly develops verbal through interaction. Therefore, the technology-enhanced storytelling (TES) activity Jeffy's Journey is developed to support parent–child interaction and vocabulary in preschool children. TES entails shared verbal storytelling supported by a

  16. Technology-enhanced storytelling stimulating parent-child interaction and preschool children's vocabulary knowledge

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Teepe, R.C.; Molenaar, I.; Verhoeven, L.T.W.

    2017-01-01

    Preschool children's vocabulary mainly develops verbal through interaction. Therefore, the technology-enhanced storytelling (TES) activity Jeffy's Journey is developed to support parent-child interaction and vocabulary in preschool children. TES entails shared verbal storytelling supported by a

  17. The Effect of Mnemonic Vocabulary Instruction on Reading Comprehension of Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Parima Fasih

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available The present article was an investigation of mnemonic vocabulary teaching to improve reading comprehension in the EFL classrooms. A major problem with the most of the past researches was that they paid no or little attention to the effects of using mnemonic strategies to improve reading comprehension. The purpose of this paper was to investigate how key word mnemonic vocabulary teaching can improve reading comprehension of the students. To this end, 360 third grade senior high school students from 6 senior high schools of Zanjan were selected through multistage cluster random sampling method and based on Cambridge placement test (2010, 345 students proved to be upper intermediate. A quasi-experimental design was used to determine the effects of a mnemonic vocabulary intervention on reading comprehension. In this article there were one control group (A, n=115, and two experimental groups (B, n=115; C, n=115 all of which were male and there were selected randomly by the researchers. During one month in four weeks, every week in two thirty-minute session, group B received direct vocabulary instruction and group C received key word mnemonic instruction. The quantitative component of this article was comprised of the Unit Cloze test. In order to test the effects of Mnemonic Vocabulary Teaching on reading comprehension, the covariance analysis was employed and the results demonstrated that by eliminating the covariance factor of the pre-test, mnemonic vocabulary instruction improved the reading comprehension of the students. The use of keyword mnemonics as a means to differentiate instruction is an educational implication that can assist teachers seeking better student achievement outcomes.

  18. TEACHING VOCABULARY BY USING REALIA (REAL-OBJECT MEDIA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Dodi Irawan

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available English is one of scary subject for some students of Indonesia. The students feel afraid to speak in English because of their less word of vocabulary. Realia media is the one simple interesting media that may bring motivation for the student who afraid to study English. Teacher of English can use realia media and bring it in the class to get more attention, and participation of students. In this research, the writer try to focuses on how realia media make significant difference ability of vocabulary to the students. The reserach of this study used a quasi-experimental method the population of this research was taken from the seventh grade Students of SMP Negeri 23 Palembang in the academic of year 2015/2016. Based on the research, it found that there was a significance difference using Realia media in teaching vocabulary. From the result on this research, it was found that there is a significant difference in achievement before and after the treatment in experimental group.

  19. VOCABULARY LEARNING IN AN AUTOMATED GRADED READING PROGRAM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Hsien-Chin Liou

    2007-02-01

    Full Text Available Adult L2 learners are often encouraged to acquire new words through reading in order to promote language proficiency. Yet preparing suitable reading texts is often a challenge for teachers because the chosen texts must have a high percentage of words familiar to specific groups of learners in order to allow the inference of word meanings from context. With the help of word lists research and advances in quantitative corpus analyses using word frequency computer programs, this study selected sixteen articles from the computer corpus of a local Chinese-English magazine and used them to construct an online English extensive reading program. A preliminary assessment of the reading program was conducted with 38 college students over twelve weeks based upon vocabulary gains from a pretest to a posttest. The results showed that learners improved their vocabulary scores after using the reading program. The online extensive reading syllabus demonstrated that such a design for a reading program is technically feasible and pedagogically beneficial and provides value in both vocabulary gains and learner satisfaction.

  20. Key Vocabulary Learning Strategies in ESP And EGP Course Books

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Zahra Akbari

    2015-01-01

    Full Text Available An increasing body of research evidence is showing the advantages of using certain skills and behaviours called language learning strategies in general and vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs in particular in the process of L2 acquisition. University students who require reading English texts in their fields of study have to expand their vocabulary knowledge in a much more efficient way than ordinary ESL/EFL learners.  And ELT course books are a good place to incorporate learner training in this regard. The purpose of this study is to see how vocabulary learning strategies are treated in both the book designer's claims section and the exercises of English for Specific Purposes (ESP course books for students of medicine and para-medicine on the one hand and English for General Purposes (EGP course book used commonly by these students in Isfahan University of Medical Sciences, Isfahan, Iran on the other. In other words, the specified course books were analyzed based on the insights gained from VLS research to gauge the extent to which they have incorporated VLSs and training in using them. These books were published under the supervision of the center for studying and compiling university books in humanities (SAMT. Based on the review of the relevant literature, three key strategies were identified and an analytic framework was devised. The framework was then applied to the course books. It was found that the treatments in the specified course books were deemed unlikely to improve students’ abilities with these important skills and strategies.

  1. Understanding disciplinary vocabularies using a full-text enabled domain-independent term extraction approach.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Yan, Erjia; Williams, Jake; Chen, Zheng

    2017-01-01

    Publication metadata help deliver rich analyses of scholarly communication. However, research concepts and ideas are more effectively expressed through unstructured fields such as full texts. Thus, the goals of this paper are to employ a full-text enabled method to extract terms relevant to disciplinary vocabularies, and through them, to understand the relationships between disciplines. This paper uses an efficient, domain-independent term extraction method to extract disciplinary vocabularies from a large multidisciplinary corpus of PLoS ONE publications. It finds a power-law pattern in the frequency distributions of terms present in each discipline, indicating a semantic richness potentially sufficient for further study and advanced analysis. The salient relationships amongst these vocabularies become apparent in application of a principal component analysis. For example, Mathematics and Computer and Information Sciences were found to have similar vocabulary use patterns along with Engineering and Physics; while Chemistry and the Social Sciences were found to exhibit contrasting vocabulary use patterns along with the Earth Sciences and Chemistry. These results have implications to studies of scholarly communication as scholars attempt to identify the epistemological cultures of disciplines, and as a full text-based methodology could lead to machine learning applications in the automated classification of scholarly work according to disciplinary vocabularies.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  3. Child shyness and peer likeability: The moderating role of pragmatics and vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cheung, Hoi Shan; Elliott, John M

    2017-11-01

    The association between shyness and children's likeability by peers was examined, with pragmatic difficulty and receptive and expressive vocabularies as moderators. Participants were 164 preschoolers (72 boys, 92 girls) between 52 and 79 months old in Singapore. A cross-informant methodology was used, with peers and teachers contributing to separate peer likeability ratings. The findings highlighted a conceptual distinction between peer- and teacher-rated likeability by peers. For the latter only, a 3-way interaction involving shyness, vocabulary, and pragmatic difficulty was found, indicating that for shy children with low vocabulary scores, those who experienced less pragmatic difficulty tended to be seen by teachers as more well-liked by peers than those with more pragmatic difficulty. This suggests that pragmatic skills may serve a protective function especially for shy children with poor vocabulary skills. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Child shyness is related to poorer peer acceptance and social competence Expressive vocabulary and pragmatic competence each has a buffering effect for shy children What the present study adds? Shyness is related to poorer peer likeability as assessed by teachers Shyness is unrelated to peer likeability as assessed by same- or different-sex peers Pragmatic skills buffer the effects of teacher-rated shyness only for children with poor receptive and expressive vocabularies The buffering effect of language ability is shown in a multilingual educational context. © 2017 The British Psychological Society.

  4. Vocabulary development at home: A multimedia elaborated picture supporting parent-toddler interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gremmen, M.C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R.C.

    2016-01-01

    Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance.A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent–toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support

  5. Vocabulary development at home: A multimedia elaborated picture supporting parent-toddler interaction

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Gremmen, M.C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R.C.

    2016-01-01

    Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance. A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent-toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  7. Why and How EFL Students Learn Vocabulary in Parliamentary Debate Class

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aclan, Eunice M.; Aziz, Noor Hashima Abdul

    2015-01-01

    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…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  9. The Effect of Computer Game-Based Learning on FL Vocabulary Transferability

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franciosi, Stephan J.

    2017-01-01

    In theory, computer game-based learning can support several vocabulary learning affordances that have been identified in the foreign language learning research. In the observable evidence, learning with computer games has been shown to improve performance on vocabulary recall tests. However, while simple recall can be a sign of learning,…

  10. Validity of a parent-report measure of vocabulary and grammar for Spanish-speaking toddlers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thal, D; Jackson-Maldonado, D; Acosta, D

    2000-10-01

    The validity of the Fundación MacArthur Inventario del Desarrollo de Habilidades Comunicativas: Palabras y Enunciados (IDHC:PE) was examined with twenty 20- and nineteen 28-month-old, typically developing, monolingual, Spanish-speaking children living in Mexico. One measure of vocabulary (number of words) and two measures of grammar (mean of the three longest utterances and grammatical complexity score) from the IDHC:PE were compared to behavioral measures of vocabulary (number of different words from a language sample and number of objects named in a confrontation naming task) and one behavioral measure of grammar (mean length of utterance from a language sample). Only vocabulary measures were assessed in the 20-month-olds because of floor effects on the grammar measures. Results indicated validity for assessing expressive vocabulary in 20-month-olds and expressive vocabulary and grammar in 28-month-olds.

  11. Nuclear engineering vocabulary

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Dumont, X.; Andrieux, C.

    2001-01-01

    The members of the CSTNIN - the Special Commission for Nuclear Engineering Terminology and Neology - have just produced a Nuclear Engineering Vocabulary, published by SFEN. A 120-page document which, to date, includes 400 nuclear engineering terms or expressions. For each term or expression, this Glossary gives: the primary and secondary subject field in which it is applied, a possible abbreviation, its definition, a synonym if appropriate, any relevant comments, any associated word(s), the English equivalent, its status on the date of publication of the Glossary. (author)

  12. Implementing Controlled Composition to Improve Vocabulary Mastery of EFL Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Juriah Juriah

    2015-06-01

    Full Text Available The purposes of this study was to know how (1 Controlled composition teaching techniques implemented by the English teacher at SDN 027 Samarinda to improve vocabulary mastery, and (2 Controlled composition teaching techniques improves vocabulary mastery of the sixth grade students of SDN 027 Samarinda. This research used a Classroom Action Research (CAR as the research design. The subject of the research is the sixth grade students in the 2013/2014 academic year that consists of 43 students. The instruments employed in this study were observation checklist, field note, and vocabulary test. The result of the research showed that in cycle 1 the students’ achievement did not fulfill the minimal criteria of success. However the result of the cycle 1 was better than the preliminary study. The criteria of success did not fulfill in cycle one, some enhancement of the implementation of Controlled Composition were made in cycle two in the form of: Instruct the students bring dictionary, give more examples English sentences, guide the students find the mining of words in the dictionary and write a paragraph, more motivate the students and preparing a media/ picture .Meanwhile the students ’achievement in cycle two showed that fulfilled the criteria of success. Based on the findings and discussion, the conclusions : Firstly, Controlled composition was implemented well by the teacher of SDN 027 Samarinda. Controlled composition was implemented and gave impacts in: (a increasing the students’ vocabulary mastery significantly, (b making the students able to spell the vocabularies, (c making the students understand the meaning English words, and (d making the students able to pronounce English words quite good. Secondly, Controlled composition improved the students’ vocabulary mastery; it was only 20.9% of the students who achieved the English passing grade in the preliminary study, but then 81.39% of the students achieved the English passing grade in

  13. Using Hypnosis to Enhance Learning Second Language Vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  14. Increasing the Vocabulary Acquisition Rate for Third Grade English Language Learners

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  15. Translation and Short-Term L2 Vocabulary Retention: Hindrance or Help?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hummel, Kirsten M.

    2010-01-01

    This study addresses the role that active translation may have in second language (L2) vocabulary learning. Some research suggests that translation might be an effective cognitive strategy for L2 vocabulary learning. Participants were 191 native French-speaking students enrolled in a TESL (Teaching English as a Second Language) program.The study…

  16. Delayed Early Vocabulary Development in Children at Family Risk of Dyslexia

    Science.gov (United States)

    van Viersen, Sietske; de Bree, Elise H.; Verdam, Mathilde; Krikhaar, Evelien; Maassen, Ben; van der Leij, Aryan; de Jong, Peter F.

    2017-01-01

    Purpose: This study aimed to gain more insight into the relation between vocabulary and reading acquisition by examining early growth trajectories in the vocabulary of children at family risk (FR) of dyslexia longitudinally. Method: The sample included 212 children from the Dutch Dyslexia Program with and without an FR. Parents reported on their…

  17. Developing a Vocabulary Size Test Measuring Two Aspects of Receptive Vocabulary Knowledge: Visual versus Aural

    Science.gov (United States)

    Aizawa, Kazumi; Iso, Tatsuo; Nadasdy, Paul

    2017-01-01

    Testing learners' English proficiency is central to university English classes in Japan. This study developed and implemented a set of parallel online receptive aural and visual vocabulary tests that would predict learners' English proficiency. The tests shared the same target words and choices--the main difference was the presentation of the…

  18. Vocabulary and Receptive Knowledge of English Collocations among Swedish Upper Secondary School Students

    OpenAIRE

    Bergström, Kerstin

    2008-01-01

    The aim of this study is to examine the vocabulary and receptive collocation knowledge in English among Swedish upper secondary school students. The primary material consists of two vocabulary tests, one collocation test, and a background questionnaire. The first research question concerns whether the students who receive a major part of their education in English have a higher level of vocabulary and receptive collocation knowledge in English than those who are taught primarily in Swedish. T...

  19. The effect of the integration of talking toys on preschoolers’ vocabulary learning in English

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Burcu Güngör

    2018-05-01

    Full Text Available Appropriate conditions and suitable materials can inspire young children to learn a new language effortlessly. The present study attempted to investigate the effects of English talking toys as teaching materials on vocabulary learning of very young learners (VYL based on their gender. The study was conducted at one of the public preschools in Yenimahalle/Ankara with 48 five-year old children from two classes. The first group of students was the experimental group and they were instructed using English talking toys as a teaching material. On the other hand, the other class was the control group and was instructed using flashcards. The target vocabulary for this study, which was incorporated into a Vocabulary Checklist Test, was developed after a close scrutiny of the relevant literature (i.e. vocabulary learning in young learners and examination of the theme-related curriculum employed in the chosen preschool. To assess preschoolers' learning of target words in English, a new Vocabulary Checklist Test was developed by the researcher. The results of a series of t-tests showed that the class instructed with English talking toys performed better on both receptive and expressive/productive vocabulary. The results also indicated that there was not any significant difference between males and females in terms of the effect of English talking toys on preschool children's vocabulary learning. The findings suggest that English talking toys are not only used for entertainment and recreational purposes, they can also be used as teaching material particularly when it comes to teaching basic English vocabulary. The current study contributed to areas such as early childhood education, foreign/second language learning, foreign language testing and evaluation.

  20. Nonword Repetition and Vocabulary Knowledge as Predictors of Children's Phonological and Semantic Word Learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Adlof, Suzanne M; Patten, Hannah

    2017-03-01

    This study examined the unique and shared variance that nonword repetition and vocabulary knowledge contribute to children's ability to learn new words. Multiple measures of word learning were used to assess recall and recognition of phonological and semantic information. Fifty children, with a mean age of 8 years (range 5-12 years), completed experimental assessments of word learning and norm-referenced assessments of receptive and expressive vocabulary knowledge and nonword repetition skills. Hierarchical multiple regression analyses examined the variance in word learning that was explained by vocabulary knowledge and nonword repetition after controlling for chronological age. Together with chronological age, nonword repetition and vocabulary knowledge explained up to 44% of the variance in children's word learning. Nonword repetition was the stronger predictor of phonological recall, phonological recognition, and semantic recognition, whereas vocabulary knowledge was the stronger predictor of verbal semantic recall. These findings extend the results of past studies indicating that both nonword repetition skill and existing vocabulary knowledge are important for new word learning, but the relative influence of each predictor depends on the way word learning is measured. Suggestions for further research involving typically developing children and children with language or reading impairments are discussed.

  1. Reconciliation of patient/doctor vocabulary in a structured resource.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tapi Nzali, Mike Donald; Aze, Jérôme; Bringay, Sandra; Lavergne, Christian; Mollevi, Caroline; Optiz, Thomas

    2018-01-01

    Today, social media is increasingly used by patients to openly discuss their health. Mining automatically such data is a challenging task because of the non-structured nature of the text and the use of many abbreviations and the slang terms. Our goal is to use Patient Authored Text to build a French Consumer Health Vocabulary on breast cancer field, by collecting various kinds of non-experts' expressions that are related to their diseases and then compare them to biomedical terms used by health care professionals. We combine several methods of the literature based on linguistic and statistical approaches to extract candidate terms used by non-experts and to link them to expert terms. We use messages extracted from the forum on ' cancerdusein.org ' and a vocabulary dedicated to breast cancer elaborated by the Institut National Du Cancer. We have built an efficient vocabulary composed of 192 validated relationships and formalized in Simple Knowledge Organization System ontology.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  5. Vocabulary Learning through Viewing Video: The Effect of Two Enhancement Techniques

    Science.gov (United States)

    Montero Perez, Maribel; Peters, Elke; Desmet, Piet

    2018-01-01

    While most studies on L2 vocabulary learning through input have addressed learners' vocabulary uptake from written text, this study focuses on audio-visual input. In particular, we investigate the effects of enhancing video by (1) adding different types of L2 subtitling (i.e. no captioning, full captioning, keyword captioning, and glossed keyword…

  6. Investigating an Intervention Program Linking Writing and Vocabulary Development for Homeless Children

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Richard Sinatra

    2010-03-01

    Full Text Available The presented study investigated the effects of a four-week academic and activity – enriched summer program on vocabulary development and writing achievement of homeless children residing in traditional shelter facilities. When compared to controls the experimental students did not reveal gains in vocabulary and spelling as measured by two norm referenced tests. They did however demonstrate highly significant gains in writing ability based on the New York State standards criteria, reflecting five qualities of writing. On two project-developed instruments designed to measure improvement in book vocabulary and tennis skills, they showed significant increases based on analyses of their pre- and posttest scores. The program closed achievement gaps, fulfilled standards criteria, and may be the first of its kind in the homeless literature whereby students’ writing development was compared to matched controls as vocabulary development occurred based on literary readings.

  7. Arabic Vocabulary Learning Strategies Among Non-native Speakers: A Case of IIUM

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Nik Hanan Mustapha

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available This study aims to investigate the vocabulary learning strategies used by Arabic learners of the International Islamic University Malaysia. It also compares between the Arabic and non-Arabic majoring students in the use of these strategies. The total sample of this study was 248 university students from different level of studies. They answered a ‘Vocabulary Learning Strategies Questionnaire’ by Pavicic Takac (2008 which consisted of three different components: Formal strategies, self-initiated independent strategies and incidental strategies. Results indicated that Arabic learners used a variety of vocabulary learning strategies with translation being the most widely employed. No statistically significant difference was found between the Arabic and non-Arabic majoring students. The findings provide support for helping the students to utilize their mother tongue in a fruitful way to learn new vocabularies, as well as training both groups equally on how to use these strategies efficiently.

  8. Analysis of EFL Students' Ability in Reading Vocabulary of Synonyms and Antonyms

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Vina Fathira

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available Reading is an important thing for academic level. Every student must have many vocabularies to encourage her/his reading skill. The aim of this research is to analyze the students' understanding of reading vocabularies of synonyms and antonyms in the higher education level. Synonyms and antonyms are two important things should be mastered to get better reading comprehension. The method used in this research was quantitative with survey design. The population same as the sample of this research was from fifth semester students of STIBA Persada Bunda Pekanbaru. The procedures of the research were divided into 3 parts. First, students were asked to choose the best choice in the multiple choice for synonyms and anton, number and the wrong number, and grouped the wrong number into difficulties level. Last, the researcher analyzed the students' ability in reading vocabulary of synonyms and antonyms and concluded the result of students' ability in reading vocabulary of synonyms and antonyms in elementary, intermediate, and advanced level. The result of this research showed that the students' ability in reading vocabulary of synonyms and antonyms was categorized into "excellent" level with mean score 85. From the three difficulties level of question, the findings of this research were explained every level of question. In synonyms, the mean score of students' ability were 89, 85, and 84 for elementary, intermediate, and advanced level of question. Whereas, in antonyms, the mean score of students' ability were 97, 85, and 69 for elementary, intermediate, and advanced level of question.Keywords: students' ability, reading vocabulary, synonyms and antonyms

  9. In search of the best technique for vocabulary acquisition

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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

  10. Vocabulary skills are well developed in university students with dyslexia: Evidence from multiple case studies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Cavalli, Eddy; Casalis, Séverine; El Ahmadi, Abdessadek; Zira, Mélody; Poracchia-George, Florence; Colé, Pascale

    2016-01-01

    Most studies in adults with developmental dyslexia have focused on identifying the deficits responsible for their persistent reading difficulties, but little is known on how these readers manage the intensive exposure to written language required to obtain a university degree. The main objective of this study was to identify certain skills, and specifically vocabulary skills, that French university students with dyslexia have developed and that may contribute to their literacy skills. We tested 20 university students with dyslexia and 20 normal readers (matched on chronological age, gender, nonverbal IQ, and level of education) in reading, phonological, vocabulary breadth (number of known words), and vocabulary depth (accuracy and precision) tasks. In comparing vocabulary measures, we used both Rasch model and single case study methodologies. Results on reading and phonological tasks confirmed the persistence of deficits in written word recognition and phonological skills. However, using the Rasch model we found that the two groups performed at the same level in the vocabulary breadth task, whereas dyslexics systematically outperformed their chronological age controls in the vocabulary depth task. These results are supplemented by multiple case studies. The vocabulary skills of French university students with dyslexia are well developed. Possible interpretations of these results are discussed. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

  11. The Effect of Key-Words Video Captions on Vocabulary Learning through Mobile-Assisted Language Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mahdi, Hassan Saleh

    2017-01-01

    Video captioning is a useful tool for vocabulary learning. In the literature, video captioning has been investigated by many studies, and the results indicated that video captioning is useful to foster vocabulary learning. However, most of the previous studies have investigated the effect of full captions on vocabulary learning. In addition, most…

  12. WORD ORIGIN HELPS EXPAND LEARNERS’ VOCABULARY A VOCABULARY TEACHING APPROACH

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Li Jing

    2012-12-01

    Full Text Available Word origin (motivation deals with the connection between name and sense, explaining how a word originated. With the knowledge of how words are originated, learners can grasp a word easier and thus expand their vocabulary more quickly. The introduction to word origin (motivation by teachers can also help the learners gain interest in the process of learning and learn more about the cultural and historical background of the English-speaking countries. This paper tries to clarify this method of teaching from four aspects: onomatopoeia, word formation, cultural and historical background and cognitive linguistics.

  13. Vocabulary Development at Home: A Multimedia Elaborated Picture Supporting Parent-Toddler Interaction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gremmen, M. C.; Molenaar, I.; Teepe, R. C.

    2016-01-01

    Some children enter elementary school with large vocabulary delays, which negatively influence their later school performance. A rich home language environment can support vocabulary development through frequent high-quality parent-toddler interaction. Elaborated picture home activities can support this rich home language environment. This study…

  14. Technology-Enhanced Storytelling Stimulating Parent-Child Interaction and Preschool Children's Vocabulary Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teepe, R. C.; Molenaar, I.; Verhoeven, L.

    2017-01-01

    Preschool children's vocabulary mainly develops verbal through interaction. Therefore, the technology-enhanced storytelling (TES) activity Jeffy's Journey is developed to support parent-child interaction and vocabulary in preschool children. TES entails shared verbal storytelling supported by a story structure and real-time visual, auditory and…

  15. A Mobile Game-Based English Vocabulary Practice System Based on Portfolio Analysis

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Ting-Ting; Huang, Yueh-Min

    2017-01-01

    English learning has become a vital educational strategy in many non-English-speaking countries. Vocabulary is a critical element for language learners. Therefore, developing sufficient vocabulary knowledge enables effective communication. However, learning a foreign language is difficult and stressful. In addition, memorizing English vocabulary…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  17. Using Songs to Enhance L2 Vocabulary Acquisition in Preschool Children

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  18. 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

    2018-05-01

    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.

  19. Serial-order short-term memory predicts vocabulary development: evidence from a longitudinal study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Leclercq, Anne-Lise; Majerus, Steve

    2010-03-01

    Serial-order short-term memory (STM), as opposed to item STM, has been shown to be very consistently associated with lexical learning abilities in cross-sectional study designs. This study investigated longitudinal predictions between serial-order STM and vocabulary development. Tasks maximizing the temporary retention of either serial-order or item information were administered to kindergarten children aged 4 and 5. At age 4, age 5, and from age 4 to age 5, serial-order STM capacities, but not item STM capacities, were specifically associated with vocabulary development. Moreover, the increase of serial-order STM capacity from age 4 to age 5 predicted the increase of vocabulary knowledge over the same time period. These results support a theoretical position that assumes an important role for serial-order STM capacities in vocabulary acquisition.

  20. Engineering and Humanities Students' Strategies for Vocabulary Acquisition: An Iranian Experience

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    Hassan Soodmand Afshar

    2014-05-01

    Full Text Available The present study set out to investigate the differences between EAP (English for Academic Purposes students of Humanities and Engineering in terms of vocabulary strategy choice and use. One hundred and five undergraduate Iranian students (39 students from Engineering Faculty and 66 from Humanities Faculty studying at Bu-Ali Sina University Hamedan, during the academic year of 2011–2012 participated in this study. For data collection purposes, a pilot-tested factor-analyzed five-point Likert-scale vocabulary learning strategies questionnaire (VLSQ containing 45 statements was adopted. The results of independent samples t-test indicated that, overall, the two groups were not significantly different in the choice and use of vocabulary learning strategies. However, running Chi square analyses, significant differences were found in individual strategy use in 6 out of 45 strategies. That is, while Humanities students used more superficial and straightforward strategies like repetition strategy and seeking help from others, the Engineering students preferred much deeper, thought-provoking and sophisticated strategies like using a monolingual dictionary and learning vocabulary through collocations and coordinates. Further, the most and the least frequently used vocabulary learning strategies by the two groups were specified, out of which only two strategies in each category were commonly shared by both groups. The possible reasons why the results have turned out to be so as well as the implications of the study are discussed in details in the paper.

  1. Near or far: The effect of spatial distance and vocabulary knowledge on word learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Axelsson, Emma L; Perry, Lynn K; Scott, Emilly J; Horst, Jessica S

    2016-01-01

    The current study investigated the role of spatial distance in word learning. Two-year-old children saw three novel objects named while the objects were either in close proximity to each other or spatially separated. Children were then tested on their retention for the name-object associations. Keeping the objects spatially separated from each other during naming was associated with increased retention for children with larger vocabularies. Children with a lower vocabulary size demonstrated better retention if they saw objects in close proximity to each other during naming. This demonstrates that keeping a clear view of objects during naming improves word learning for children who have already learned many words, but keeping objects within close proximal range is better for children at earlier stages of vocabulary acquisition. The effect of distance is therefore not equal across varying vocabulary sizes. The influences of visual crowding, cognitive load, and vocabulary size on word learning are discussed. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

  2. The Relationship of Vocabulary Learning Strategies and Self-Efficacy with Medical English and Terminology.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wang, Ya-Huei; Kao, Pan-Fu; Liao, Hung-Chang

    2016-02-01

    This study examined the relationship between the use of vocabulary learning strategies and self-efficacy in medical English learning, and whether after an initial six-week course to master the basics of medical terminology, those with higher use of vocabulary learning strategies and those with a higher degree of self-efficacy would have significant score improvements in the medical English proficiency. Second-year medical students (N = 115; M age = 19.6, SD = 0.5; 82 men, 33 women) participated in the study. A one-group pretest-posttest design was used. Measures included medical English tests, the English Vocabulary Learning Strategies Survey (EVLSS), and the English Learning Self-Efficacy Scale (ELSES). Results showed that there was no significant correlation between vocabulary learning strategies and English learning self-efficacy. In addition, as a whole, vocabulary learning strategies and self-efficacy significantly predicted students' score improvements in medical English proficiency. © The Author(s) 2016.

  3. Mixed-Method Research on Learning Vocabulary through Technology Reveals Vocabulary Growth in Second-Grade Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Huang, SuHua

    2015-01-01

    A mixed-method embedded research design was employed to investigate the effectiveness of the integration of technology for second-grade students' vocabulary development and learning. Two second-grade classes with a total of 40 students (21 boys and 19 girls) were randomly selected to participate in this study for the course of a semester. One…

  4. Improving Student Vocabulary Mastery Using Word Mapping Strategy

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    Satuna Indah Wardani

    2015-05-01

    Full Text Available Abstract: The purpose of this study was to find out whether the word mapping strategywas able to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery. The process of masteringis mainly affected by the worst thought of the vocational students who said that English as the most difficult subject to learn and was often tracked into boringcondition since theywere not involved in the process of learning. Thisstudy was conducted by using classroom action research in two cycles and each cycleconsisted of four meetings. The subject of the research was the third grade of Accounting Department at State Vocational School 1 Pamekasan whichconsisted of 34 students. The research was carried out for one month.Theinstruments used to obtained primary data and the secondary data were vocabulary test, the students’ observation sheets, and questionnaire of the respondent.The result of test in preliminary until the test in cycle two showed that there was the improvement of the number of students who passed the test. Hopefully, this outcome will certainly be useful for both teachers and students in which its harmony will give the progress for learning English,especially vocabulary mastery. 

  5. COMPUTING THE VOCABULARY DEMANDS OF L2 READING

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    Tom Cobb

    2007-02-01

    Full Text Available Linguistic computing can make two important contributions to second language (L2 reading instruction. One is to resolve longstanding research issues that are based on an insufficiency of data for the researcher, and the other is to resolve related pedagogical problems based on insufficiency of input for the learner. The research section of the paper addresses the question of whether reading alone can give learners enough vocabulary to read. When the computer’s ability to process large amounts of both learner and linguistic data is applied to this question, it becomes clear that, for the vast majority of L2 learners, free or wide reading alone is not a sufficient source of vocabulary knowledge for reading. But computer processing also points to solutions to this problem. Through its ability to reorganize and link documents, the networked computer can increase the supply of vocabulary input that is available to the learner. The development section of the paper elaborates a principled role for computing in L2 reading pedagogy, with examples, in two broad areas, computer-based text design and computational enrichment of undesigned texts.

  6. Improving the Student's Vocabulary Mastery by Using Constructivism Principle in the Second Year Students of Sman 1 Kauman

    OpenAIRE

    Budairi, Ahmad

    2017-01-01

    Vocabulary plays important roles in mastering English. Vocabulary refers to all words in the whole language used in a particular variety. In this case, the students have some problems. The problems about difficult in mastering vocabulary, that the students are lack of vocabularies, the students often get difficult in expressing their ideas, the students have low motivation. The students felt unsatisfactory in their results. It's caused the students are lack of practice and lack vocabulary to ...

  7. 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…

  8. Personalised Context-Aware Ubiquitous Learning System for Supporting Effective English Vocabulary Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Chih-Ming; Li, Yi-Lun

    2010-01-01

    Because learning English is extremely popular in non-native English speaking countries, developing modern assisted-learning schemes that facilitate effective English learning is a critical issue in English-language education. Vocabulary learning is vital within English learning because vocabulary comprises the basic building blocks of English…

  9. Acquisition of Expert/Non-Expert Vocabulary from Reformulations.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Antoine, Edwige; Grabar, Natalia

    2017-01-01

    Technical medical terms are complicated to be correctly understood by non-experts. Vocabulary, associating technical terms with layman expressions, can help in increasing the readability of technical texts and their understanding. The purpose of our work is to build this kind of vocabulary. We propose to exploit the notion of reformulation following two methods: extraction of abbreviations and of reformulations with specific markers. The segments associated thanks to these methods are aligned with medical terminologies. Our results allow to cover over 9,000 medical terms and show precision of extractions between 0.24 and 0.98. The results and analyzed and compared with the existing work.

  10. Reading is FUNdamental: The effect of a reading programme on vocabulary development in a high poverty township school

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    Scheepers, Ruth

    2008-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper discusses the development of the vocabulary of grade 7 learners in a reading project currently underway at a school in Atteridgeville, a township on the outskirts of Pretoria. A library has been established at the school and teachers throughout the school attend workshops designed to heighten their awareness of the value of reading and the importance of vocabulary, and to provide them with strategies to facilitate the development of reading. This paper focuses on the vocabulary development of grade 7 learners – they are in the senior phase of primary school and will soon be entering high school where they will be faced with more academic vocabulary in context-reduced textbooks. Learners’ vocabulary was tested early in the year and then again towards the end to assess whether increased access to books and reading had had an effect on vocabulary growth. Results revealed that learners at the project school showed a lack of vocabulary, even at the end of the study period, not only in terms of academic words but also high frequency words. Extensive reading alone is clearly not enough – learners need explicit vocabulary instruction: in order to read successfully at high school level, learners need a working knowledge of academic vocabulary, and this knowledge is developed by reading – but learners cannot read successfully without an adequate basic high-frequency vocabulary.

  11. 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.

  12. Recommendations for recognizing video events by concept vocabularies

    Science.gov (United States)

    2014-06-01

    represents a video in terms of low-level audiovisual features [16,38,50,35,15,19,37]. In general, these methods first extract from the video various types of...interpretable, but is also reported to outperform the state-of-the-art low-level audiovisual features in recognizing events [31,33]. Rather than training...concept detector accuracy. As a consequence, the vocabulary concepts do not necessarily have a semantic interpreta- tion needed to explain the video content

  13. THE COMPARISON OF USING SNAKE LADDERS AND SCRABBLE MEDIA TOWARDS VOCABULARY MASTERY OF STUDENTS

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    Eka Pra Setiawati

    2017-02-01

    Full Text Available Vocabulary is an essential component in learning English. It influences four English skills; they are listening, speaking, reading, and writing, for getting a good result in English. In teaching learning process, the teacher often implements the less interesting method, technique, or even media of vocabulary mastery in teaching and learning process which make the students to be bored, inactive, an uniterested in memorizing English vocabulary. Some media can be interested as the solutions in vocabulary mastery, they are Snake Ladders media and Scrabble media. The investigation was undergone by quantitative research. The researcher applied experimental research. This research underwent pre-test post-test control group design. To analyze data, t-test formula is used to measure the result of collected data. From the t-test measurement, it showed that t-test is 3.15 and t-table is 2.66. It means that t-hit > t-table. Based on the collected data, there is different result of using Snake Ladders from Scrabble media toward students’ vocabulary mastery. It was found that the students who are taught by using Snake Ladders resulted significant outcome than those are instructed by Scrabble media. It means that Snake Ladders is effective to improve the students’ vocabulary mastery.

  14. Conceptual scoring of receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in simultaneous and sequential bilingual children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gross, Megan; Buac, Milijana; Kaushanskaya, Margarita

    2014-11-01

    The authors examined the effects of conceptual scoring on the performance of simultaneous and sequential bilinguals on standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and Spanish. Participants included 40 English-speaking monolingual children, 39 simultaneous Spanish-English bilingual children, and 19 sequential bilingual children, ages 5-7. The children completed standardized receptive and expressive vocabulary measures in English and also in Spanish for those who were bilingual. After the standardized administration, bilingual children were given the opportunity to respond to missed items in their other language to obtain a conceptual score. Controlling for group differences in socioeconomic status (SES), both simultaneous and sequential bilingual children scored significantly below monolingual children on single-language measures of English receptive and expressive vocabulary. Conceptual scoring removed the significant difference between monolingual and simultaneous bilingual children in the receptive modality but not in the expressive modality; differences remained between monolingual and sequential bilingual children in both modalities. However, in both bilingual groups, conceptual scoring increased the proportion of children with vocabulary scores within the average range. Conceptual scoring does not fully ameliorate the bias inherent in single-language standardized vocabulary measures for bilingual children, but the procedures employed here may assist in ruling out vocabulary deficits, particularly in typically developing simultaneous bilingual children.

  15. The Role of E-Vocabularies in the Description and Retrieval of Digital Educational Resources

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    Ana M. Fernández-Pampillón

    2017-03-01

    Full Text Available Vocabularies are linguistic resources that make it possible to access knowledge through words. They can constitute a mechanism to identify, describe, explore, and access all the digital resources with informational content pertaining to a specific knowledge domain. In this regard, they play a key role as systems for the representation and organization of knowledge in environments in which content is created and used in a collaborative and free manner, as is the case of social wikis and blogs on the Internet or educational content in e-learning environments. In e-learning environments, electronic vocabularies (e-vocabularies constitute a mechanism for conceptual representation of digital educational resources. They enable human and software agents either to locate and interpret resource content in large digital repositories, including the web, or to use them (vocabularies as an educational resource by itself to learn a discipline terminology. This review article describes what e-vocabularies are, what they are like, how they are used, how they work, and what they contribute to the retrieval of digital educational resources. The goal is to contribute to a clearer view of the concepts which we regard as crucial to understand e-vocabularies and their use in the field of e-learning to describe and retrieve digital educational resources.

  16. The Effects of STEM PBL on Students' Mathematical and Scientific Vocabulary Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bilgin, Ali; Boedeker, Peter; Capraro, Robert M.; Capraro, Mary M.

    2015-01-01

    Vocabulary is at the surface level of language usage; thus, students need to develop mathematical and scientific vocabulary to be able to explicitly communicate their mathematical and scientific reasoning with others. The National Council of Teachers of Mathematics (NCTM) and the National Science Teachers Association (NSTA) have both created…

  17. Empirical Studies on English Vocabulary Learning Strategies in Mainland China over the Past Two Decades

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    Zhongxin Dai

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Wen and Wang (2004 reviewed the empirical studies over the past two decades (from 1984 to 2003 on learning strategies that Chinese EFL learners used. This article, following their methodological framework, reviews about 45 empirical studies on Chinese EFL learners’ English vocabulary learning strategies, conducted by Mainland Chinese scholars over the past two decades. The review shows that more than half of the Chinese scholars are interested in questionnaire investigation of EFL learners’ preferences for vocabulary learning. The reports of the questionnaire investigations indicate that most Chinese EFL learners prefer rote learning of vocabulary to learning vocabulary in context or through language use. The experimental studies suggest that strategies-based instruction results in the learners’ vocabulary achievement. Cognitive and metacognitive strategies are the two groups of strategies that Chinese researchers show particular interest in.

  18. Does Phonological Short-Term Memory Causally Determine Vocabulary Learning? Toward a Computational Resolution of the Debate

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gupta, Prahlad; Tisdale, Jamie

    2009-01-01

    The relationship between nonword repetition ability and vocabulary size and vocabulary learning has been a topic of intense research interest and investigation over the last two decades, following the demonstration that nonword repetition accuracy is predictive of vocabulary size (Gathercole & Baddeley, 1989). However, the nature of this…

  19. Grammar and vocabulary for First and First for schools with answers

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    Thomas, Barbara; Matthews, Laura

    2015-01-01

    Grammar and Vocabulary reference and practice for the revised Cambridge English: First (FCE) and Cambridge English: First (FCE) for Schools from 2015 Cambridge Grammar and Vocabulary for First and First for Schools provides complete coverage of the grammar and vocabulary needed for the Cambridge First exams, and develops listening skills at the same time. It includes the full range of First and First for Schools exam tasks from the Reading and Use of English, Writing and Listening papers, and contains helpful grammar explanations. This edition is updated for the new exam to be introduced from 2015. It is informed by the Cambridge Learner Corpus to ensure that the language tackles real learner errors. The accompanying listening material is available online for download.

  20. The Integration of Vocabulary and Effective Sentence Mastery towards Students’ Argumentative Writing Skills

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    Tien Rafida

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available The aims of this result to reveal the integrated of vocabulary and effective sentence mastery against the argumentation writing skill students’ PBI-SU FITK UIN the hypothesis proposed in this results are : (1 vocabulary mastery contribute to the argument to the arguments writing skill of students; (2 effective sentence mastery contribute to the argument writing skill of student; (3 vocabulary mastery and effective sentence mastery together contribute to the argument writing skill of students. This result uses a quantitative approach. The population in this study is PBI UIN-SU as many as 6 classes. As for the samples in this result are students of class II. By using cluster random sampling, obtained a sample of 140 students. The instrument used is a test. These results indicate that: (1 vocabulary mastery contributed positively and significantly to the argument essay writing skills of students. The amount of contribution is 18.4%; (2 Effective sentence mastery contribute positively and significantly to the argument essay writing skills of students. The amount of contribution is 11.7%; (3 mastery of vocabulary and mastery of effective sentences together contributed positively and significantly to the argument essay writing skills of students. The major contribution is 26.5%; (4 mastering vocabulary to effectively contribute by 16.39% against the argument essay writing skills of students; (5 Mastery effective sentence effectively contribute 13.11% against the argument essay writing skills of students. Based on the results of this study, it was concluded that the vocabulary and mastery of effective sentences are the two factors that influence the argument essay writing skills of students in addition to other factors. Therefore, the researchers suggest to all parties concerned to pay more attention to these two factors so that students' skills in essay writing can be further improved.

  1. Patterns of similarity and difference between the vocabularies of psychology and other subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benjafield, John G

    2014-02-01

    The vocabulary of Anglophone psychology is shared with many other subjects. Previous research using the Oxford English Dictionary has shown that the subjects having the most words in common with psychology are biology, chemistry, computing, electricity, law, linguistics, mathematics, medicine, music, pathology, philosophy, and physics. The present study presents a database of the vocabularies of these 12 subjects that is similar to one previously constructed for psychology, enabling the histories of the vocabularies of these subjects to be compared with each other as well as with psychology. All subjects have a majority of word senses that are metaphorical. However, psychology is not among the most metaphorical of subjects, a distinction belonging to computing, linguistics, and mathematics. Indeed, the history of other subjects shows an increasing tendency to recycle old words and give them new, metaphorical meanings. The history of psychology shows an increasing tendency to invent new words rather than metaphorical senses of existing words. These results were discussed in terms of the degree to which psychology's vocabulary remains unsettled in comparison with other subjects. The possibility was raised that the vocabulary of psychology is in a state similar to that of chemistry prior to Lavoisier.

  2. Identifying Core Vocabulary for Urdu Language Speakers Using Augmentative Alternative Communication

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  3. VOCABULARY DEVELOPMENT OF KINDERGARTEN STUDENTS OF APPLE TREE PRE-SCHOOL SAMARINDA BY USING FLASHCARDS

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    Nadia Mustika Rachmita

    2016-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract:This present study aimed to investigate 14 kindergarten students of Apple Tree pre-school Samarinda with various ability toward their English vocabularies development by flashcards. A Class Action Research was applied in this study. The data was collected through observation checklist, sequence of cycles and interview transcript. Then, building on the analysis of the collected data, it further discusses the vocabulary development of YL and provides suggestions for TEYL. This study revealed that; (1 most of the students developed their English vocabularies gradually by flashcards. (2 These result indicated that TEYL especially kindergarten students by using flashcards could give significant vocabularies development in learning process. Flashcards is one of the simplest and effective teaching materials for teaching YL vocabulary due to the fact that flashcards are categorized based on themes with full colored pictures which attractive for YL. As this study showed the students were engaged with the topics given since the teachers used flashcards to teach English vocabulary. It was difficult to make engagement with YL in English teaching and learning because YL have different mood, self-motivation, and self-confidence which influenced to the willingness in grasping the lesson. Finally, through this based-picture learning, the students indicated that their progress in vocabulary development although this phenomena was commonly happened in TEFL for YL that lead to teaching method done by English teachers who are required to do more innovation toward their teaching method, to develop sufficient knowledge and to use proper teaching media.        

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  5. Integrating Curriculum through the Learning Cycle: Content-Based Reading and Vocabulary Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Spencer, Brenda H.; Guillaume, Andrea M.

    2006-01-01

    The content areas provide rich contexts for developing vocabulary. This article presents some principles and a lesson model--the learning cycle--that can be used to develop vocabulary while building understanding in science. Because science instruction and the learning cycle model promote learning in real-world contexts, they provide students with…

  6. Vocabulary and Syntactic Knowledge Factors in 5th Grade Students' Reading Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mokhtari, Kouider; Niederhauser, Dale S.

    2013-01-01

    In this study, we examined 5th grade students' levels of vocabulary knowledge and syntactic awareness relative to their reading comprehension performance. The aim was to explore the contributions of vocabulary and syntactic awareness as potential sources of reading comprehension difficulty for these readers. Overall, we found that both vocabulary…

  7. Boosting Vocabulary Learning through Self-Assessment in an English Language Teaching Context

    Science.gov (United States)

    Duque Micán, Adriana; Cuesta Medina, Liliana

    2017-01-01

    This study explores the influence of self-assessment of vocabulary competence on a group of students' oral fluency. Twenty-four young adult learners participated in a learning process that promoted their oral skills and vocabulary development. Self-assessment was mainly examined through the analysis of students' learning logs, field notes and…

  8. Maternal Correlates of Growth in Toddler Vocabulary Production in Low-Income Families

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pan, Barbara Alexander; Rowe, Meredith L.; Singer, Judith D.; Snow, Catherine E.

    2005-01-01

    This study investigated predictors of growth in toddlers' vocabulary production between the ages of 1 and 3 years by analyzing mother-child communication in 108 low-income families. Individual growth modeling was used to describe patterns of growth in children's observed vocabulary production and predictors of initial status and between-person…

  9. The Role of Consulting a Dictionary in Reading and Vocabulary Learning

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    Carol A. Fraser

    1999-12-01

    Full Text Available Abstract This article reviews recent research on consulting a dictionary in L2 reading and vocabulary learning. From the perspective of cognitive learning theory, the author re-evaluates the limited role that has often been accorded to dictionary consulting. It is noted that, among the three available lexical processing strategies (inferencing, consulting and ignoring, learners tend to use consulting infrequently and selectively and also to differ among each other in their strategy use. Consulting in combination with inferencing is shown to have the greatest positive effect on performance in L2 reading and vocabulary learning, although consulting is found to slow down task completion. Excerpts from think-aloud protocols illustrate the potential contribution of strategic dictionary use to the cognitive processes required for vocabulary acquisition: attention to form-meaning connections, rehearsal of words for storage in long-term memory and elaboration of associations with other knowledge. Among the pedagogical implications of these findings is the need for training in lexical processing strategies in order to help learners use the dictionary effectively and accurately in L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary learning.

  10. The effects of audibility and novel word learning ability on vocabulary level in children with cochlear implants.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Davidson, Lisa S; Geers, Ann E; Nicholas, Johanna G

    2014-07-01

    A novel word learning (NWL) paradigm was used to explore underlying phonological and cognitive mechanisms responsible for delayed vocabulary level in children with cochlear implants (CIs). One hundred and one children using CIs, 6-12 years old, were tested along with 47 children with normal hearing (NH). Tests of NWL, receptive vocabulary, and speech perception at 2 loudness levels were administered to children with CIs. Those with NH completed the NWL task and a receptive vocabulary test. CI participants with good audibility (GA) versus poor audibility (PA) were compared on all measures. Analysis of variance was used to compare performance across the children with NH and the two groups of children with CIs. Multiple regression analysis was employed to identify independent predictors of vocabulary outcomes. Children with CIs in the GA group scored higher in receptive vocabulary and NWL than children in the PA group, although they did not reach NH levels. CI-aided pure tone threshold and performance on the NWL task predicted independent variance in vocabulary after accounting for other known predictors. Acquiring spoken vocabulary is facilitated by GA with a CI and phonological learning and memory skills. Children with CIs did not learn novel words at the same rate or achieve the same receptive vocabulary levels as their NH peers. Maximizing audibility for the perception of speech and direct instruction of new vocabulary may be necessary for children with CIs to reach levels seen in peers with NH.

  11. 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.

  12. Oral vocabulary training program for Spanish third-graders with low socio-economic status: A randomized controlled trial.

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    Clara Gomes-Koban

    Full Text Available Although the importance of vocabulary training in English speaking countries is well recognized and has been extensively studied, the same is not true for Spanish-few evidence based vocabulary studies for Spanish-speaking children have been reported. Here, two rich oral vocabulary training programs (definition and context, based on literature about vocabulary instruction for English-speaking children, were developed and applied in a sample of 100 Spanish elementary school third-graders recruited from areas of predominantly low socio-economic status (SES. Compared to an alternative read-aloud method which served as the control, both explicit methods were more effective in teaching word meanings when assessed immediately after the intervention. Nevertheless, five months later, only the definition group continued to demonstrate significant vocabulary knowledge gains. The definition method was more effective in specifically teaching children word meanings and, more broadly, in helping children organize and express knowledge of words. We recommend the explicit and rich vocabulary instruction as a means to fostering vocabulary knowledge in low SES children.

  13. Mothers' labeling responses to infants' gestures predict vocabulary outcomes.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Olson, Janet; Masur, Elise Frank

    2015-11-01

    Twenty-nine infants aged 1;1 and their mothers were videotaped while interacting with toys for 18 minutes. Six experimental stimuli were presented to elicit infant communicative bids in two communicative intent contexts - proto-declarative and proto-imperative. Mothers' verbal responses to infants' gestural and non-gestural communicative bids were coded for object and action labels. Relations between maternal labeling responses and infants' vocabularies at 1;1 and 1;5 were examined. Mothers' labeling responses to infants' gestural communicative bids were concurrently and predictively related to infants' vocabularies, whereas responses to non-gestural communicative bids were not. Mothers' object labeling following gestures in the proto-declarative context mediated the association from infants' gesturing in the proto-declarative context to concurrent noun lexicons and was the strongest predictor of subsequent noun lexicons. Mothers' action labeling after infants' gestural bids in the proto-imperative context predicted infants' acquisition of action words at 1;5. Findings show that mothers' responsive labeling explain specific relations between infants' gestures and their vocabulary development.

  14. EXPANDING ACADEMIC VOCABULARY WITH AN INTERACTIVE ON-LINE DATABASE

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Marlise Horst

    2005-05-01

    Full Text Available University students used a set of existing and purpose-built on-line tools for vocabulary learning in an experimental ESL course. The resources included concordance, dictionary, cloze-builder, hypertext, and a database with interactive self-quizzing feature (all freely available at www.lextutor.ca. The vocabulary targeted for learning consisted of (a Coxhead's (2000 Academic Word List, a list of items that occur frequently in university textbooks, and (b unfamiliar words students had met in academic texts and selected for entry into the class database. The suite of tools were designed to foster retention by engaging learners in deep processing, an aspect that is often described as missing in computer exercises for vocabulary learning. Database entries were examined to determine whether context sentences supported word meanings adequately and whether entered words reflected the unavailability of cognates in the various first languages of the participants. Pre- and post-treatment performance on tests of knowledge of words targeted for learning in the course were compared to establish learning gains. Regression analyses investigated connections between use of specific computer tools and gains.

  15. Vocabulary development and intervention for English learners in the early grades.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Baker, Doris Luft; Al Otaiba, Stephanie; Ortiz, Miriam; Correa, Vivian; Cole, Ron

    2014-01-01

    The purpose of this chapter is to describe the vocabulary development and promising, evidence-based vocabulary interventions for English learners (ELs) from preschool through second grade. To achieve this purpose, we have taken six steps. First, we describe the elements of language development in the native language (L1) and a second language (L2) and how these elements relate to three phases of reading development (i.e., the prereading phase, the learning to read phase, and the reading to learn phase). We contend that in order for ELs to succeed in school, they need a strong language foundation prior to entering kindergarten. This language foundation needs to continue developing during the "learning to read" and "reading to learn" phases. Second, we describe the limitations of current practice in preschool for ELs related to vocabulary instruction and to family involvement to support children's language development. Third, we report curricular challenges faced by ELs in early elementary school, and we relate these challenges to the increase in reading and language demands outlined in the Common Core State Standards (CCSS). Specific language activities that can help meet some of the demands are provided in a table. Fourth, we synthesize the research on evidence-based vocabulary instruction and intervention and discuss implications for practice with ELs. Fifth, we describe two intervention projects under development that have the potential to improve EL vocabulary and language proficiency in the early grades. We conclude with a summary of the chapter and provide additional resources on the topic.

  16. Dynamic Models of Learning That Characterize Parent-Child Exchanges Predict Vocabulary Growth

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ober, David R.; Beekman, John A.

    2016-01-01

    Cumulative vocabulary models for infants and toddlers were developed from models of learning that predict trajectories associated with low, average, and high vocabulary growth rates (14 to 46 months). It was hypothesized that models derived from rates of learning mirror the type of exchanges provided to infants and toddlers by parents and…

  17. Resolving Controlled Vocabulary in DITA Markup: A Case Example in Agroforestry

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zschocke, Thomas

    2012-01-01

    Purpose: This paper aims to address the issue of matching controlled vocabulary on agroforestry from knowledge organization systems (KOS) and incorporating these terms in DITA markup. The paper has been selected for an extended version from MTSR'11. Design/methodology/approach: After a general description of the steps taken to harmonize controlled…

  18. A Model of Communicative Teaching and Learning of English Vocabulary Through Interactive Actin vities

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    Sahraini Sahraini

    2015-02-01

    Full Text Available Teaching English vocabulary is very important, and it is more than just presenting and introducing new vocabulary to the students. Knowing words is not only memorizing them, but the students need to understand the meaning of the word in context and how the words are used. This can be achieved through correct vocabulary instruction which should involve vocabulary selection, word knowledge, and techniques. The needs of prospective teachers in mastering English both spoken and written, and the ability to teach using English as the language of instruction in the teaching and learning process in the classroom is very important. They also need the skills to teach English effectively and enjoyable to make the students have confident to use English communicatively. Deciding an interesting method for students is also an English teachers’ job to do. In this paper the writer tries to design a model of teaching and learning of English vocabulary through interactive activities. By using a lot of interactive activities, hopefully the students are able to practice to communicate by using English in oral and written.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  1. The Effect of Glosses on Incidental Vocabulary Learning of Iranian EFL learners

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    Abbas Moradan

    2016-11-01

    Full Text Available Reading passages contain many new words. Looking up every word in the dictionary and finding the exact meaning can be a difficult job for learners and may hinder the process of reading. Providing glosses can help learners deal with this issue. The objective of the present study is to make enquiries about the effect of glosses on incidental vocabulary learning. To this end, 45 Iranian EFL learners were selected from 70 according to their performance on KET test. Then they were divided into three groups of 15 randomly. Ten reading texts were selected and unfamiliar vocabularies were glossed in three ways: pictorial, textual and pictorial-textual glosses. Participants were required to read the texts under one of the three conditions. After the completion of ten sessions of treatment, participants were given a vocabulary post-test to measure vocabulary learning. The outcome of the study indicated that the group that received the combination of pictorial and textual glosses outperformed the other two groups. The findings can be of great importance for language teachers and material developers.

  2. On the Efficiency of Text Production in Vocabulary Learning: An Empirical Study on Iranian GFL-Learners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Haghani, Nader; Kiani, Samira

    2018-01-01

    The concept of text-oriented vocabulary exercises is based on Kühn's (2000) three-step model of vocabulary teaching--receptive, reflective and productive vocabulary exercises--which focuses on working with texts. Since the production is in principle more exhausting than the reception--as can be seen from the Levels of Processing Effect--one can…

  3. Individual Differences in Very Young Chinese Children's English Vocabulary Breadth and Semantic Depth: Internal and External Factors

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sun, He; Steinkrauss, Rasmus; Wieling, Martijn; de Bot, Kees

    2018-01-01

    This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child English as a foreign language (FL) learners (age 3.2-6.2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English vocabulary knowledge…

  4. Examining Listening Previewing as a Classwide Strategy to Promote Reading Comprehension and Vocabulary

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hawkins, Renee O.; Musti-Rao, Shobana; Hale, Andrea D.; McGuire, Shannon; Hailley, Jennifer

    2010-01-01

    Classwide instructional strategies to improve not only reading fluency but also comprehension and vocabulary knowledge are essential for student reading success. The current study examined the immediate effects of two classwide listening previewing strategies on reading comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Twenty-one, fourth-grade general…

  5. Expand your English a guide to improving your academic vocabulary

    CERN Document Server

    Hart, Steve

    2018-01-01

    Writing academic prose in English is especially difficult for non-native speakers, largely because the standard vocabulary used in this genre can be quite different from colloquial English. Expand Your English: A Guide to Improving Your Academic Vocabulary is a unique and invaluable guide that will enable the reader to overcome this hurdle. It will become the favourite go-to reference book for both beginners and for intermediate learners struggling with the complexities of English-language academic writing. Steve Hart covers 1,000 vocabulary items that are essential for good academic writing. The first section describes 200 key terms in detail, grouping them into logical sets of 10. Through careful repetition, the reader will find it easy to retain, retrieve, and reuse these essential phrases. The second section explains a further 800 terms, grouping them according to function, meaning, and the areas of an essay where they are likely to be used. The expansive scope of Expand Your English gives non-native spea...

  6. Working Memory and Distributed Vocabulary Learning.

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  7. Notes on an Environmental Pollution Vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC. Science Information Exchange.

    This vocabulary covering the field of environmental pollution was compiled by the staff of the Science Information Exchange, Smithsonian Institution. The view of the approach is to include an outline-classification all physical, life, and social science aspects of environmental pollution, trying to achieve a balance in the representation of each…

  8. Developing a Cross-Platform Web Application for Online EFL Vocabulary Learning Courses

    Science.gov (United States)

    Enokida, Kazumichi; Sakaue, Tatsuya; Morita, Mitsuhiro; Kida, Shusaku; Ohnishi, Akio

    2017-01-01

    In this paper, the development of a web application for self-access English vocabulary courses at a national university in Japan will be reported upon. Whilst the basic concepts are inherited from an old Flash-based online vocabulary learning system that had been long used at the university, the new HTML5-based app comes with several new features…

  9. Dispersion and Frequency: Is There Any Difference as Regards Their Relation to L2 Vocabulary Gains?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Alcaraz-Mármol, Gema

    2015-01-01

    Despite the current importance given to L2 vocabulary acquisition in the last two decades, considerable deficiencies are found in L2 students' vocabulary size. One of the aspects that may influence vocabulary learning is word frequency. However, scholars warn that frequency may lead to wrong conclusions if the way words are distributed is ignored.…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  11. The vocabulary of anglophone psychology in the context of other subjects.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Benjafield, John G

    2013-02-01

    Anglophone psychology shares its vocabulary with several other subjects. Some of the more obvious subjects that have parts of their vocabulary in common with Anglophone psychology include biology (e.g., dominance), chemistry (e.g., isomorphism), philosophy (e.g., phenomenology), and theology (e.g., mediator). Using data from the Oxford English Dictionary as well as other sources, the present study explored the history of these common vocabularies, with a view to broadening our understanding of the relation between the history of psychology and the histories of other subjects. It turns out that there are at least 156 different subjects that share words with psychology. Those that have the most words in common with psychology are mathematics, biology, physics, medicine, chemistry, philosophy, law, music, linguistics, electricity, pathology, and computing. Words that have senses in other subjects and have their origins in ordinary language are used more frequently as PsycINFO keywords than words that were invented specifically for use in psychology. These and other results are interpreted in terms of the ordinary language roots of the vocabulary of Anglophone psychology and other subjects, the degree to which operational definitions have determined the meaning of the psychological senses of words, the role of the psychologist in interdisciplinary research, and the validity of psychological essentialism.

  12. Parasitism as the main factor shaping peptide vocabularies in current organisms.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Zemková, Michaela; Zahradník, Daniel; Mokrejš, Martin; Flegr, Jaroslav

    2017-06-01

    Self/non-self-discrimination by vertebrate immune systems is based on the recognition of the presence of peptides in proteins of a parasite that are not contained in the proteins of a host. Therefore, a reduction of the number of 'words' in its own peptide vocabulary could be an efficient evolutionary strategy of parasites for escaping recognition. Here, we compared peptide vocabularies of 30 endoparasitic and 17 free-living unicellular organisms and also eight multicellular parasitic and 16 multicellular free-living organisms. We found that both unicellular and multicellular parasites used a significantly lower number of different pentapeptides than free-living controls. Impoverished pentapeptide vocabularies in parasites were observed across all five clades that contain both the parasitic and free-living species. The effect of parasitism on a number of peptides used in an organism's proteins is larger than effects of all other studied factors, including the size of a proteome, the number of encoded proteins, etc. This decrease of pentapeptide diversity was partly compensated for by an increased number of hexapeptides. Our results support the hypothesis of parasitism-associated reduction of peptide vocabulary and suggest that T-cell receptors mostly recognize the five amino acids-long part of peptides that are presented in the groove of major histocompatibility complex molecules.

  13. Teaching Vocabulary to English Language Learners

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  14. The Effect of Task-based Teaching on Incidental Vocabulary Learning in English for Specific Purposes

    OpenAIRE

    FALLAHRAFIE, Zahra; RAHMANY, Ramin; SADEGHI, Bahador

    2015-01-01

    Abstract. Learning vocabulary is an essential part of language learning linking the four skills of speaking, listening, reading and writing together. This paper considers the incidental vocabulary teaching and learning within the framework of task-based activities in the hope of improving learners’ vocabulary acquiring in English for Specific Purposes courses (ESP), concentrating on Mechanical Engineering students at Islamic Azad University of Hashtgerd, Iran. A total number of 55 male and fe...

  15. The Role of Home and School Factors in Predicting English Vocabulary among Bilingual Kindergarten Children in Singapore

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dixon, L. Quentin

    2011-01-01

    Research in monolingual populations indicate that vocabulary knowledge is essential to reading achievement, but how vocabulary develops in bilingual children has been understudied. The current study investigated the role of home and school factors in predicting English vocabulary among 284 bilingual kindergartners (168 Chinese, 65 Malay, 51…

  16. How is their word knowledge growing? Exploring Grade 3 vocabulary in South African township schools

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Elizabeth J. Pretorius

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available In this article, we report on a study that examined the active and receptive English vocabulary of two different groups of Grade 3 learners in South African township schools. The groups consisted of English Home Language (HL learners in the Western Cape and Xhosa HL and English First Additional Language (FAL learners in the Eastern Cape. The purpose was to document their different vocabulary trajectories during Grade 3. The Woodcock-Muñoz Language Survey was used to measure the active vocabulary levels of 118 learners at the beginning and the end of the school year. Another 284 learners from the same eight Grade 3 classes participated in a receptive vocabulary test at the end of the year. This test assessed their knowledge of the 60 most frequent words that occur in South Africa Grade 4 English textbooks. Results showed that although the HL learners knew almost double the number of words their English FAL peers did, both groups of learners increased their active word knowledge through the year by about 9%. Regarding their receptive vocabulary, the English FAL learners on average only knew 27% of the most frequent words at the end of their Grade 3. No significant gender differences were found. Learners in both language groups who were above their grade age had significantly lower scores than their younger peers. This confirms findings that children who start school with weak language skills tend to stay weak. Finally, initial active vocabulary knowledge was found to be a strong predictor of vocabulary development during the school year.

  17. Too Close for (Brain) Comfort: Improving Science Vocabulary Learning in the Middle Grades

    Science.gov (United States)

    Shore, Rebecca; Ray, Jenna; Goolkasian, Paula

    2013-01-01

    This article describes how researchers take a multidisciplinary approach to investigating how middle grades students learn science vocabulary. The authors investigated teaching strategies for increasing retention of science vocabulary with seventh graders and stumbled upon an interesting finding that was not even a target for their study, yet it…

  18. Vocabulary knowledge mediates the link between socioeconomic status and word learning in grade school.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Maguire, Mandy J; Schneider, Julie M; Middleton, Anna E; Ralph, Yvonne; Lopez, Michael; Ackerman, Robert A; Abel, Alyson D

    2018-02-01

    The relationship between children's slow vocabulary growth and the family's low socioeconomic status (SES) has been well documented. However, previous studies have often focused on infants or preschoolers and primarily used static measures of vocabulary at multiple time points. To date, there is no research investigating whether SES predicts a child's word learning abilities in grade school and, if so, what mediates this relationship. In this study, 68 children aged 8-15 years performed a written word learning from context task that required using the surrounding text to identify the meaning of an unknown word. Results revealed that vocabulary knowledge significantly mediated the relationship between SES (as measured by maternal education) and word learning. This was true despite the fact that the words in the linguistic context surrounding the target word are typically acquired well before 8 years of age. When controlling for vocabulary, word learning from written context was not predicted by differences in reading comprehension, decoding, or working memory. These findings reveal that differences in vocabulary growth between grade school children from low and higher SES homes are likely related to differences in the process of word learning more than knowledge of surrounding words or reading skills. Specifically, children from lower SES homes are not as effective at using known vocabulary to build a robust semantic representation of incoming text to identify the meaning of an unknown word. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  19. Classroom-based narrative and vocabulary instruction: results of an early-stage, nonrandomized comparison study.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gillam, Sandra Laing; Olszewski, Abbie; Fargo, Jamison; Gillam, Ronald B

    2014-07-01

    This nonrandomized feasibility study was designed to provide a preliminary assessment of the impact of a narrative and vocabulary instruction program provided by a speech-language pathologist (SLP) in a regular classroom setting. Forty-three children attending 2 first-grade classrooms participated in the study. Children in each classroom were divided into high- and low-risk subgroups on the basis of their performance on a narrative test. Narrative and vocabulary instruction was provided by an SLP in 1 classroom for three 30-min periods per week for 6 weeks. The children in the experimental classroom made clinically significant improvements on narrative and vocabulary measures; children in the comparison classroom did not. Within the experimental classroom, children in the high-risk subgroup demonstrated greater gains in narration and fewer gains in vocabulary than children in the low-risk subgroup. There were no subgroup differences in the comparison classroom. These preliminary results provide early evidence of the feasibility of implementing a narrative instruction program in a classroom setting. Children at a high risk for language difficulties appeared to profit more from the narrative instruction than from the embedded vocabulary instruction. More extensive research on this instructional program is warranted.

  20. Enhancing students’ vocabulary knowledge using the Facebook environment

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Muhammad Kamarul Kabilan

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available This study investigates the effectiveness of using Facebook in enhancing vocabulary knowledge among Community College students. Thirty-three (33 Community College students are exposed to the use of Facebook as an environment of learning and enhancing their English vocabulary. They are given a pre-test and a post-test and the findings indicate that students perform significantly better in the post-test compared to the pre-test. It appears that Facebook could be considered as a supplementary learning environment or learning platform or a learning tool; with meaningful and engaging activities that require students to collaborate, network and functions as a community of practice, particularly for introverted students with low proficiency levels and have low self-esteem.

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  2. Vocabulary Growth and Reading Development across the Elementary School Years [Introduction to Special Issue

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Verhoeven, L.T.W.; Leeuwe, J.F.J. van; Vermeer, A.R.

    2011-01-01

    The associations between vocabulary growth and reading development were examined longitudinally for a representative sample of Dutch children throughout the elementary school period. Data on basic and advanced vocabulary, word decoding, and reading comprehension were collected across the different

  3. The Use of Song Worksheet to Enhance EFL Elementary School Students’ Vocabulary Mastery

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ahmad Fadhli

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available This study aimed to enhance students’ vocabulary mastery through the use of song worksheet. Twenty -two fourth graders of an elementary school in Indonesia were selected as participants. Action research was adopted in this study consisting of three cycles. To find out students’ achievement, vocabulary test was given. To investigate students’ responses, observation and interview were implemented.Findings showed that song worksheet could enhance students’ vocabulary mastery. They also gave positive responses to the use of song worksheet. However, students complained that the songs were too fast. This study supports the use of songs in the EFL context which could make teaching - learning processes more fun

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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

  5. Exploring Expressive Vocabulary Variability in Two-Year-Olds: The Role of Working Memory

    Science.gov (United States)

    Newbury, Jayne; Klee, Thomas; Stokes, Stephanie F.; Moran, Catherine

    2015-01-01

    Purpose: This study explored whether measures of working memory ability contribute to the wide variation in 2-year-olds' expressive vocabulary skills. Method: Seventy-nine children (aged 24-30 months) were assessed by using standardized tests of vocabulary and visual cognition, a processing speed measure, and behavioral measures of verbal working…

  6. Expanding Third Graders' Vocabulary Using a Data Base, Individual Thesauri and Brainstorming Strategies.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Gaffuri, Ann

    A practicum was developed to expand written vocabulary for third graders through training in using a data base and brainstorming strategies. Individual thesauri were written and published to demonstrate the results of collecting vocabulary and applying it to specific topics. Daily process writing became an integral part of the curriculum. Class…

  7. Building a Strong Vocabulary: A Twelve-Week Plan for Students. 2nd Edition.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Smith, Carl B.

    This second edition presents 12 strategies (focusing on one strategy a week) for students to increase vocabulary and boost communication skills, suggesting that these techniques can easily double the average person's vocabulary. After an introduction, the book presents the following 12 techniques: (1) Expand on What You Know: Synonyms, Antonyms,…

  8. Male Learners' Vocabulary Achievement through Concept Mapping and Mind Mapping: Differences and Similarities

    Science.gov (United States)

    Tarkashvand, Zahra

    2015-01-01

    While learning English plays an essential role in today's life, vocabulary achievement is helpful to overcome the difficulties of commanding the language. Drawing on data from three months experimental work, this article explores how two mapping strategies affect the learning vocabularies in EFL male learners. While females were studied before,…

  9. Semantic Boggle: A Game for Vocabulary Acquisition

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    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

  10. Comparing dictionary-induced vocabulary learning and inferencing ...

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    This research examines dictionary-induced vocabulary learning and inferencing in the context of reading. One hundred and four intermediate English learners completed one of two word-focused tasks: reading comprehension and dictionary consultation, and reading comprehen-sion and inferencing. In addition to ...

  11. The acquisition of productive vocabulary in Spanish children with Down syndrome.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Galeote, Miguel; Soto, Pilar; Checa, Elena; Gómez, Aurora; Lamela, Elena

    2008-12-01

    It is generally assumed that children with Down syndrome (DS) present a deficit in lexical production relative to their cognitive abilities. However, the literature on this topic has recently shown several contradictory results. In addition, most studies only consider vocabulary production in its vocal modality. However it is also necessary to take into account gesture production, since this is a strength in children with DS. Our main purpose in this study, therefore, was to investigate the relationship between cognitive development and vocabulary size in both its vocal and gestural modalities in a broad sample of Spanish children with DS. Participants in the study were 66 children with DS and 66 children with typical development (TD), with a mental age (MA) of 14-28 months (divided into five groups with a MA of 14-16, 17-19, 20-22, 23-25 and 26-28 months). Children were matched on the basis of their gender and MA. Productive vocabularies were collected using an adaptation of the MacArthur-Bates CDI for children with DS. In vocal modality, the number of words produced by children with DS and children with TD is similar. As in previous studies, our data confirmed that gestural communication is superior in children with DS. However, when words and gestures are combined, the performance of both groups of children is practically equal. Our results do not support a specific dissociation between cognitive and lexical development in children with DS.

  12. "Yes, Your Honor!": A Corpus-Based Study of Technical Vocabulary in Discipline-Related Movies and TV Shows

    Science.gov (United States)

    Csomay, Eniko; Petrovic, Marija

    2012-01-01

    Vocabulary is an essential element of every second/foreign language teaching and learning program. While the goal of language teaching programs is to focus on explicit vocabulary teaching to promote learning, "materials which provide visual and aural input such as movies may be conducive to incidental vocabulary learning." (Webb and Rodgers, 2009,…

  13. Adapting a receptive vocabulary test for preschool-aged Greek-speaking children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Okalidou, Areti; Syrika, Asimina; Beckman, Mary E; Edwards, Jan R

    2011-01-01

    Receptive vocabulary is an important measure for language evaluations. Therefore, norm-referenced receptive vocabulary tests are widely used in several languages. However, a receptive vocabulary test has not yet been normed for Modern Greek. To adapt an American English vocabulary test, the Receptive One-Word Picture Vocabulary Test-II (ROWPVT-II), for Modern Greek for use with Greek-speaking preschool children. The list of 170 English words on ROWPVT-II was adapted by (1) developing two lists (A and B) of Greek words that would match either the target English word or another concept corresponding to one of the pictured objects in the four-picture array; and (2) determining a developmental order for the chosen Greek words for preschool-aged children. For the first task, adult word frequency measures were used to select the words for the Greek wordlist. For the second task, 427 children, 225 boys and 202 girls, ranging in age from 2;0 years to 5;11 years, were recruited from urban and suburban areas of Greece. A pilot study of the two word lists was performed with the aim of comparing an equal number of list A and list B responses for each age group and deriving a new developmental list order. The relative difficulty of each Greek word item, that is, its accuracy score, was calculated by taking the average proportion of correct responses across ages for that word. Subsequently, the word accuracy scores in the two lists were compared via regression analysis, which yielded a highly significant relationship (R(2) = 0.97; p word item from the two lists was a better fit. Finally, new starting levels (basals) were established for preschool ages. The revised word list can serve as the basis for adapting a receptive vocabulary test for Greek preschool-aged children. Further steps need to be taken when testing larger numbers of 2;0 to 5;11-year-old children on the revised word list for determination of norms. This effort will facilitate early identification and remediation

  14. Towards a Unified Business Model Vocabulary: A Proposition of Key Constructs

    OpenAIRE

    Mettler, Tobias

    2014-01-01

    The design of business models is of decisive importance and as such it has been a major research theme in service and particularly electronic markets. Today, different definitions of the term and ideas of core constructs of business models exist. In this paper we present a unified vocabulary for business models that builds upon the elementary perception of three existing, yet very dissimilar ontologies for modeling the essence of a business. The resulting unified business model vocabulary not...

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  16. The Application of SPSS in Analyzing the Effect of English Vocabulary Strategy Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chen, Shaoying

    2010-01-01

    The vocabulary learning is one of very important part in the college English teaching. Correct analysis of the result of vocabulary strategy instruction can offer feedbacks for English teaching, and help teachers to improve the teaching method. In this article, the issue how to use SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Science) to…

  17. Task complexity, student perceptions of vocabulary learning in EFL, and task performance.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Wu, Xiaoli; Lowyck, Joost; Sercu, Lies; Elen, Jan

    2013-03-01

    The study deepened our understanding of how students' self-efficacy beliefs contribute to the context of teaching English as a foreign language in the framework of cognitive mediational paradigm at a fine-tuned task-specific level. The aim was to examine the relationship among task complexity, self-efficacy beliefs, domain-related prior knowledge, learning strategy use, and task performance as they were applied to English vocabulary learning from reading tasks. Participants were 120 second-year university students (mean age 21) from a Chinese university. This experiment had two conditions (simple/complex). A vocabulary level test was first conducted to measure participants' prior knowledge of English vocabulary. Participants were then randomly assigned to one of the learning tasks. Participants were administered task booklets together with the self-efficacy scales, measures of learning strategy use, and post-tests. Data obtained were submitted to multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) and path analysis. Results from the MANOVA model showed a significant effect of vocabulary level on self-efficacy beliefs, learning strategy use, and task performance. Task complexity showed no significant effect; however, an interaction effect between vocabulary level and task complexity emerged. Results from the path analysis showed self-efficacy beliefs had an indirect effect on performance. Our results highlighted the mediating role of self-efficacy beliefs and learning strategy use. Our findings indicate that students' prior knowledge plays a crucial role on both self-efficacy beliefs and task performance, and the predictive power of self-efficacy on task performance may lie in its association with learning strategy use. © 2011 The British Psychological Society.

  18. A model-Driven Approach to Customize the Vocabulary of Communication Boards: Towards More Humanization of Health Care.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Franco, Natália M; Medeiros, Gabriel F; Silva, Edson A; Murta, Angela S; Machado, Aydano P; Fidalgo, Robson N

    2015-01-01

    This work presents a Modeling Language and its technological infrastructure to customize the vocabulary of Communication Boards (CB), which are important tools to provide more humanization of health care. Using a technological infrastructure based on Model-Driven Development (MDD) approach, our Modelin Language (ML) creates an abstraction layer between users (e.g., health professionals such as an audiologist or speech therapist) and application code. Moreover, the use of a metamodel enables a syntactic corrector for preventing creation of wrong models. Our ML and metamodel enable more autonomy for health professionals in creating customized CB because it abstracts complexities and permits them to deal only with the domain concepts (e.g., vocabulary and patient needs). Additionally, our infrastructure provides a configuration file that can be used to share and reuse models. This way, the vocabulary modelling effort will decrease our time since people share vocabulary models. Our study provides an infrastructure that aims to abstract the complexity of CB vocabulary customization, giving more autonomy to health professionals when they need customizing, sharing and reusing vocabularies for CB.

  19. Individual differences in very young Chinese children’s English vocabulary breadth and semantic depth : Internal and external factors

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Sun, He; Steinkrauss, Rasmus; Wieling, Martijn; de Bot, Cornelis

    2018-01-01

    This study examines the English vocabulary development of 43 very young child EFL learners (age 3;2-6;2) in China. They were tested twice for vocabulary breadth (reception and production) and semantic depth (paradigmatic and syntagmatic vocabulary knowledge). The development of the English

  20. Enhanced Context Recognition by Sensitivity Pruned Vocabularies

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Madsen, Rasmus Elsborg; Sigurdsson, Sigurdur; Hansen, Lars Kai

    2004-01-01

    a latent semantic indexing representation and a probabilistic neural network classifier. Pruning the vocabularies to approximately 20% of the original size, we find consistent context recognition enhancement for two mid size data-sets for a range of training set sizes. We also study the applicability...

  1. Personalization of Reading Passages Improves Vocabulary Acquisition

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  2. Pictures Improve Memory of SAT Vocabulary Words.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Price, Melva; Finkelstein, Arleen

    1994-01-01

    Suggests that students can improve their memory of Scholastic Aptitude Test vocabulary words by associating the words with corresponding pictures taken from magazines. Finds that long-term recall of words associated with pictures was higher than recall of words not associated with pictures. (RS)

  3. Visuospatial and Verbal Short-Term Memory Correlates of Vocabulary Ability in Preschool Children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stokes, Stephanie F; Klee, Thomas; Kornisch, Myriam; Furlong, Lisa

    2017-08-16

    Recent studies indicate that school-age children's patterns of performance on measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) differ across types of neurodevelopmental disorders. Because these disorders are often characterized by early language delay, administering STM and WM tests to toddlers could improve prediction of neurodevelopmental outcomes. Toddler-appropriate verbal, but not visuospatial, STM and WM tasks are available. A toddler-appropriate visuospatial STM test is introduced. Tests of verbal STM, visuospatial STM, expressive vocabulary, and receptive vocabulary were administered to 92 English-speaking children aged 2-5 years. Mean test scores did not differ for boys and girls. Visuospatial and verbal STM scores were not significantly correlated when age was partialed out. Age, visuospatial STM scores, and verbal STM scores accounted for unique variance in expressive (51%, 3%, and 4%, respectively) and receptive vocabulary scores (53%, 5%, and 2%, respectively) in multiple regression analyses. Replication studies, a fuller test battery comprising visuospatial and verbal STM and WM tests, and a general intelligence test are required before exploring the usefulness of these STM tests for predicting longitudinal outcomes. The lack of an association between the STM tests suggests that the instruments have face validity and test independent STM skills.

  4. Current trends in small vocabulary speech recognition for equipment control

    Science.gov (United States)

    Doukas, Nikolaos; Bardis, Nikolaos G.

    2017-09-01

    Speech recognition systems allow human - machine communication to acquire an intuitive nature that approaches the simplicity of inter - human communication. Small vocabulary speech recognition is a subset of the overall speech recognition problem, where only a small number of words need to be recognized. Speaker independent small vocabulary recognition can find significant applications in field equipment used by military personnel. Such equipment may typically be controlled by a small number of commands that need to be given quickly and accurately, under conditions where delicate manual operations are difficult to achieve. This type of application could hence significantly benefit by the use of robust voice operated control components, as they would facilitate the interaction with their users and render it much more reliable in times of crisis. This paper presents current challenges involved in attaining efficient and robust small vocabulary speech recognition. These challenges concern feature selection, classification techniques, speaker diversity and noise effects. A state machine approach is presented that facilitates the voice guidance of different equipment in a variety of situations.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  6. An Investigation of Three Methods of Teaching Vocabulary at the Junior High Level.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Geiger, Evangeline Drury

    This study of methods of teaching vocabulary in the junior high school investigated three approaches: use of a programed text in vocabulary development that emphasized context clues, use of the programed text augmented by listening assistance, and use of the programed text augmented by a word-analysis supplement. Over 300 students with I.Q.'s…

  7. Exploring Taiwanese Students' Perceptions of Active Explicit Vocabulary Instruction: A Case Study in an English Medium Course

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chou, I-Chia

    2018-01-01

    Vocabulary knowledge is considered important in second and foreign language learning because learners' insufficient vocabulary has been consistently reported as a significant problem in their achievement of second-language (L2) learning. Despite of numerous vocabulary studies, few of them have implemented a learner-centered and interactive…

  8. Parenting Supports for Early Vocabulary Development: Specific Effects of Sensitivity and Stimulation through Infancy

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vallotton, Claire; Mastergeorge, Ann; Foster, Tricia; Decker, Kalli B.; Ayoub, Catherine

    2016-01-01

    Growing recognition of disparities in early childhood language environments prompt examination of parent-child interactions which support vocabulary. Research links parental sensitivity and cognitive stimulation to child language, but has not explicitly contrasted their effects, nor examined how effects may change over time. We examined maternal sensitivity and stimulation throughout infancy using two observational methods – ratings of parents’ interaction qualities, and coding of discrete parenting behaviors - to assess the relative importance of these qualities to child vocabulary over time, and determine whether mothers make related changes in response to children’s development. Participants were 146 infants and mothers, assessed when infants were 14, 24, and 36 months. At 14 months, sensitivity had a stronger effect on vocabulary than did stimulation, but the effect of stimulation grew throughout toddlerhood. Mothers’ cognitive stimulation grew over time, whereas sensitivity remained stable. While discrete parenting behaviors changed with child age, there was no evidence of trade-offs between sensitive and stimulating behaviors, and no evidence that sensitivity moderated the effect of stimulation on child vocabulary. Findings demonstrate specificity of timing in the link between parenting qualities and child vocabulary which could inform early parent interventions, and supports a reconceptualization of the nature and measurement of parental sensitivity. PMID:28111526

  9. The Impact Of Using Computer Software On Vocabulary Learning Of Iranian EFL University Students

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Samira Pahlavanpoorfard

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available Today, using computer is common in all fields. Education is not an exception. In fact, this approach of technology has been using increasingly in language classrooms. We have witnessed there are more and more language teachers are using computers in their classrooms. This research study investigates the impact of using computer   on vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL university students. To this end, a sample of 40 university students in Islamic Azad University, Larestan branch were randomly assigned into the experimental and control groups. Prior the treatment and to catch the initial deferences between the participants, all the students sat for a pre-test that was an Oxford Placement Test. Then the students were received the treatment for 10 weeks. The students in the experimental group were taught by computer software for vocabulary learning while the students in the control group were taught through traditional method for vocabulary learning. After the treatment, all the students sat for a post-test. The statistical analysis through running Independent-Sample T-tests revealed thatthe students in the experimental group who used the computer software for vocabulary learning performed better than the students in the control group were taught through traditional method for vocabulary learning.

  10. THE INFLUENCE OF MIND-MAPPING STRATEGY ON STUDENTS‘ VOCABULARY MASTERY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Rahmatika Dewi

    2017-12-01

    Full Text Available This paper is a quasi-experimental research. It was aimed to investigate the significant difference on vocabulary achievement between two groups who were taught by using Mind Mapping strategy and those who were taught by using Making Notes strategy. The subjects of this study were the students in class 5B and 5D of An-Nissa Islamic Billingual Elementary School of Semarang. 5B was the experimental group and 5D was the control group. In this research, I gave them a pre-test, treatments, and a post-test. I used the same instrument in the pre-test for both groups. They were asked to answer some questions of vocabulary test. The treatments were given in three meetings. The treatment used in the experimental group was Mind Mapping strategy, while the treatment in the control group was Making Notes strategy. The post-test in both groups were conducted after the treatments by using the same instrument as the pre-test but the position of question numbers were reshuffled. The result of the test was analyzed by using t-test formula to know the difference of the students‘ achievement in vocabulary between two groups. The analysis of the test result showed that the experimental group got better score than the control group. That calculation revealed that the hypothesis 1 (Ha was accepted and the hypothesis 2 (Ho was rejected. Based on the proven hypotheses, I concluded that Mind Mapping strategy is more effective to be implemented in teaching vocabulary than Making Notes strategy.

  11. Four Practical Principles for Enhancing Vocabulary Instruction

    Science.gov (United States)

    Manyak, Patrick C.; Von Gunten, Heather; Autenrieth, David; Gillis, Carolyn; Mastre-O'Farrell, Julie; Irvine-McDermott, Elizabeth; Baumann, James F.; Blachowicz, Camille L. Z.

    2014-01-01

    This article presents four practical principles that lead to enhanced word-meaning instruction in the elementary grades. The authors, a collaborative team of researchers and classroom teachers, identified and developed these principles and related instructional activities during a three-year vocabulary instruction research project. The principles…

  12. Quizlet in the EFL Classroom: Enhancing Academic Vocabulary Acquisition of Japanese University Students

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dizon, Gilbert

    2016-01-01

    This study examined the efficacy of using Quizlet, a popular online study tool, to develop L2 English vocabulary. A total of 9 Japanese university EFL students participated in the study. The learners studied Coxhead's (2001) academic vocabulary list (AWL) via Quizlet over the course of 10 weeks. Results of the pre- and post-tests revealed that the…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  14. THE EFFECT OF USING FLASH CARD AND PICTURE STORY IN VOCABULARY MASTERY TO THE SEVENTH GRADER OF SMP PGRI 1 MARGATIGA

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Khoirul Hidayat -

    2017-05-01

    Full Text Available Based on the content standard, junior high school students are hoped to master vocabulary about 1000 words, so they can understand the conversation. But it fact, most of the students in junior high school do not master vocabulary well. So, the teacher should be able to choose a good media to help students to increase their vocabulary. In this case, flash card with picture story is two of media that can be used to transfer vocabulary material for the students.   The objective of this research is to find the significant differences of using flash card with picture story in vocabulary, and to find which medium is more effective to use as media in vocabulary. This research was true experiment design. Pre test and post test were use to collect the data. There are two problems of the study, (1 are there any significant differences between flash card with picture story in vocabulary mastery for the seventh grade students in SMP PGRI 2 Margatiga academic years 2013/2014?, (2 which one is more effective media in vocabulary learning process, is it flash card or picture story at seventh grade of SMP PGRI 2 Margatiga, academic years 2013/2014?. As a source of data, the researcher utilized flash card with picture story to teach vocabulary for the students. The media help students to learn vocabulary easier and more interesting to understand the subject, so their vocabulary would increase.   The result of the research, it was found that the mean score of picture story in pre test is 53,86, in treatment is 81, and in post test 85,33. Meanwhile the mean score of the flash card media in pre test 59,33, in treatment is 73,5, and in post test is 80,66. It means that the student’s vocabulary has increased, and there is significant difference of using picture story and flash card in vocabulary instruction, and picture story was more effective to use in vocabulary instruction.

  15. Atomic Energy Control Board vocabulary - preliminary edition

    Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

    Nolet, D [Public Works and Government Services Canada, Montreal, PQ (Canada). Terminology and Documentation Directorate

    1995-09-01

    This preliminary edition was prepared at the Board`s request to help it establish a standardized terminology. It was produced by scanning the 99 French and English documents listed at the end of this Vocabulary. The documents include legislation concerning atomic energy and the transportation of radioactive materials, as well as the Board`s publications, such as the Consultative Documents, Regulatory Documents and Notices. The terms included from the following areas are: radiation protection, reactor technology, nuclear fuel cycle, radioactive material packaging and transportation, radioactive waste management, uranium mines, and medical and industrial applications of radioelements. Also included are the titles of publications and the names of organizations and units. The vocabulary contains 2,589 concepts, sometimes accompanied by definitions, contexts or usage examples. Where terms have been standardized by the Canadian Committee for the Standardization of Nuclear Terminology, this has been indicated. Where possible, we have verified the terms using the TERMIUM, the Government of Canada Linguistic Data Bank. (author).

  16. Atomic Energy Control Board vocabulary - preliminary edition

    International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

    Nolet, D.

    1995-09-01

    This preliminary edition was prepared at the Board's request to help it establish a standardized terminology. It was produced by scanning the 99 French and English documents listed at the end of this Vocabulary. The documents include legislation concerning atomic energy and the transportation of radioactive materials, as well as the Board's publications, such as the Consultative Documents, Regulatory Documents and Notices. The terms included from the following areas are: radiation protection, reactor technology, nuclear fuel cycle, radioactive material packaging and transportation, radioactive waste management, uranium mines, and medical and industrial applications of radioelements. Also included are the titles of publications and the names of organizations and units. The vocabulary contains 2,589 concepts, sometimes accompanied by definitions, contexts or usage examples. Where terms have been standardized by the Canadian Committee for the Standardization of Nuclear Terminology, this has been indicated. Where possible, we have verified the terms using the TERMIUM, the Government of Canada Linguistic Data Bank. (author)

  17. A Taxonomy of Vocabulary Learning Strategies Used in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games

    Science.gov (United States)

    Bytheway, Julie

    2015-01-01

    Initiated in response to informal reports of vocabulary gains from gamers at universities in New Zealand and the Netherlands, this qualitative study explored how English language learners autonomously learn vocabulary while playing massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). Using research processes inherent in Grounded Theory, data…

  18. Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning: The Effects of Reading and Writing on Word Knowledge

    Science.gov (United States)

    Webb, Stuart

    2005-01-01

    This study investigates the effects of receptive and productive vocabulary learning on word knowledge. Japanese students studying English as a foreign language learned target words in three glossed sentences and in a sentence production task in two experiments. Five aspects of vocabulary knowledge--orthography, syntax, association, grammatical…

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  20. Vocabulary Learning as the Predictor of Third-Grader EFL Learners’ Achievement: A Case for Translation

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Ali Jahangard

    2010-09-01

    Full Text Available The purpose of the study was to formulate a model to predict the performance of Iranian high school third-graders on the End of the Course Achievement (ECA tests through their performance on the vocabulary tests, which were administered throughout the course. To meet this end, thirty two learners – aging seventeen to nineteen, all male – participated in the study which took nine months to complete. Their linguistic abilities were approximately at Intermediate-Mid level according to the ACTFL proficiency guidelines (1998. The sampling procedure was the intact group method. 333 lexical items were taught to the learners in the decontextualized paired-associate
    translation method. The classes were held two hours a week in a nine-month course of time. Six sets of vocabulary tests were administered and every learner’s average was calculated. The learners’ scores on the ECA tests and their average scores on the vocabulary tests were analyzed through the regression analysis procedure to derive a model that could reliably predict the learners’ ECA scores through their average performance on the vocabulary scores. The analysis yielded the following
    formula: (AVERAGE VOCABULARY × 0.713 + 2.871± [3.1].

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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

  2. 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

  3. Vocabulary knowledge, phonological representations and phonological sensitivity in Spanish-speaking low-and middle-SES preschoolers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Beatriz Diuk

    2013-08-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this study was to examine the relationships among vocabulary knowledge, phonological representations and phonological sensitivity in 80 Spanish-speaking preschool children from middle- and low-SES families. Significant social class differences were obtained on all tasks except syllable matching. Regression analyses were carried out to test the predictive power of vocabulary knowledge and accuracy of phonological representations on the phonological sensitivity measures. Receptive vocabulary predicted rhyme identification. Syllable matching was predicted by a task tapping accuracy of phonological representations. The fact that rhyme identification was predicted by vocabulary knowledge but syllable matching was predicted by a measure tapping accuracy of phonological representations in both groups suggests that early lexical development sets the stage for the development of the lower levels of phonological sensitivity but identification of smaller units requires more accurate and segmented phonological representations.

  4. Baby Sign but Not Spontaneous Gesture Predicts Later Vocabulary in Children with Down Syndrome

    Science.gov (United States)

    Özçaliskan, Seyda; Adamson, Lauren B.; Dimitrova, Nevena; Bailey, Jhonelle; Schmuck, Lauren

    2016-01-01

    Early spontaneous gesture, specifically deictic gesture, predicts subsequent vocabulary development in typically developing (TD) children. Here, we ask whether deictic gesture plays a similar role in predicting later vocabulary size in children with Down Syndrome (DS), who have been shown to have difficulties in speech production, but strengths in…

  5. Individualized early prediction of familial risk of dyslexia : A study of infant vocabulary development

    NARCIS (Netherlands)

    Chen, Ao; Wijnen, Frank; Koster, Charlotte; Schnack, Hugo

    2017-01-01

    We examined early vocabulary development in children at familial risk (FR) of dyslexia and typically developing (TD) children between 17 and 35 months of age. We trained a support vector machine to classify TD and FR using these vocabulary data at the individual level. The Dutch version of the

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  7. Shared Reading to Build Vocabulary and Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kesler, Ted

    2010-01-01

    The author presents four approaches to shared reading that he used with first through third graders in a high-needs, urban elementary school with a large population of students from immigrant homes. Using sociocultural and cognitive constructivist principles, the author shows how these approaches built students' academic vocabulary and…

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  9. Developmental changes in maternal education and minimal exposure effects on vocabulary in English- and Spanish-learning toddlers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Friend, Margaret; DeAnda, Stephanie; Arias-Trejo, Natalia; Poulin-Dubois, Diane; Zesiger, Pascal

    2017-12-01

    The current research follows up on two previous findings: that children with minimal dual-language exposure have smaller receptive vocabularies at 16months of age and that maternal education is a predictor of vocabulary when the dominant language is English but not when it is Spanish. The current study extends this research to 22-month-olds to assess the developmental effects of minimal exposure and maternal education on direct and parent-report measures of vocabulary size. The effects of minimal exposure on vocabulary size are no longer present at 22months of age, whereas maternal education effects remain but only for English speakers. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

  10. Risk factors for children's receptive vocabulary development from four to eight years in the longitudinal study of Australian children.

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Catherine L Taylor

    Full Text Available Receptive vocabulary develops rapidly in early childhood and builds the foundation for language acquisition and literacy. Variation in receptive vocabulary ability is associated with variation in children's school achievement, and low receptive vocabulary ability is a risk factor for under-achievement at school. In this study, bivariate and multivariate growth curve modelling was used to estimate trajectories of receptive vocabulary development in relation to a wide range of candidate child, maternal and family level influences on receptive vocabulary development from 4-8 years. The study sample comprised 4332 children from the first nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC. Predictors were modeled as risk variables with the lowest level of risk as the reference category. In the multivariate model, risks for receptive vocabulary delay at 4 years, in order of magnitude, were: Maternal Non- English Speaking Background (NESB, low school readiness, child not read to at home, four or more siblings, low family income, low birthweight, low maternal education, maternal mental health distress, low maternal parenting consistency, and high child temperament reactivity. None of these risks were associated with a lower rate of growth from 4-8 years. Instead, maternal NESB, low school readiness and maternal mental health distress were associated with a higher rate of growth, although not sufficient to close the receptive vocabulary gap for children with and without these risks at 8 years. Socio-economic area disadvantage, was not a risk for low receptive vocabulary ability at 4 years but was the only risk associated with a lower rate of growth in receptive vocabulary ability. At 8 years, the gap between children with and without socio-economic area disadvantage was equivalent to eight months of receptive vocabulary growth. These results are consistent with other studies that have shown that social gradients in children

  11. Risk factors for children's receptive vocabulary development from four to eight years in the longitudinal study of Australian children.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Taylor, Catherine L; Christensen, Daniel; Lawrence, David; Mitrou, Francis; Zubrick, Stephen R

    2013-01-01

    Receptive vocabulary develops rapidly in early childhood and builds the foundation for language acquisition and literacy. Variation in receptive vocabulary ability is associated with variation in children's school achievement, and low receptive vocabulary ability is a risk factor for under-achievement at school. In this study, bivariate and multivariate growth curve modelling was used to estimate trajectories of receptive vocabulary development in relation to a wide range of candidate child, maternal and family level influences on receptive vocabulary development from 4-8 years. The study sample comprised 4332 children from the first nationally representative Longitudinal Study of Australian Children (LSAC). Predictors were modeled as risk variables with the lowest level of risk as the reference category. In the multivariate model, risks for receptive vocabulary delay at 4 years, in order of magnitude, were: Maternal Non- English Speaking Background (NESB), low school readiness, child not read to at home, four or more siblings, low family income, low birthweight, low maternal education, maternal mental health distress, low maternal parenting consistency, and high child temperament reactivity. None of these risks were associated with a lower rate of growth from 4-8 years. Instead, maternal NESB, low school readiness and maternal mental health distress were associated with a higher rate of growth, although not sufficient to close the receptive vocabulary gap for children with and without these risks at 8 years. Socio-economic area disadvantage, was not a risk for low receptive vocabulary ability at 4 years but was the only risk associated with a lower rate of growth in receptive vocabulary ability. At 8 years, the gap between children with and without socio-economic area disadvantage was equivalent to eight months of receptive vocabulary growth. These results are consistent with other studies that have shown that social gradients in children's developmental outcomes

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  13. The Influence of Spelling Ability on Vocabulary Choices When Writing for Children with Dyslexia

    Science.gov (United States)

    Sumner, Emma; Connelly, Vincent; Barnett, Anna L.

    2016-01-01

    Spelling is a prerequisite to expressing vocabulary in writing. Research has shown that children with dyslexia are hesitant spellers when composing. This study aimed to determine whether the hesitant spelling of children with dyslexia, evidenced by frequent pausing, affects vocabulary choices when writing. A total of 31 children with dyslexia,…

  14. Strengthening Academic Vocabulary with Word Generation® Helps Sixth-Grade Students Improve Reading Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mokhtari, Kouider; Velten, Justin

    2015-01-01

    In this quasi-experimental study, we assessed the promise of Word Generation, a research-based academic vocabulary program, on improving the reading achievement outcomes of struggling sixth-grade readers in an after-school small group instructional setting. After 34 hours of academic vocabulary instruction, we compared the performance of a…

  15. Translating Vocabulary Research to Social Studies Instruction: Before, during, and after Text-Reading Strategies

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hairrell, Angela; Simmons, Deborah; Swanson, Elizabeth; Edmonds, Meaghan; Vaughn, Sharon; Rupley, William H.

    2011-01-01

    In the upper elementary grades, content-area text gains increasing importance as a primary source of reading and information. This article focuses on the specialized vocabulary demands of social studies texts and presents a framework of teaching and learning strategies based on vocabulary research. Strategies are introduced before, during, and…

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  17. Towards a Southern African English Defining Vocabulary

    African Journals Online (AJOL)

    user

    of parameters, such as avoiding synonyms and antonyms, to determine which words are necessary to write definitions in a concise and simple way. It has been found that existing defining vocabularies lack certain words that would make definitions more accessible to southern African learners, and therefore there is a need ...

  18. Vocabulary Growth in Armenian-English Bilingual Kindergarteners

    Science.gov (United States)

    Hovsepian, Alice

    2018-01-01

    Four-year-old (n = 20) and five-year-old (n = 22) bilingual children were tested twice in six months on Armenian (minority language) and English (majority language) picture identification and picture naming tasks to examine receptive and expressive vocabulary growth in both languages. Parental education, Armenian/English language exposure, and…

  19. The learner as lexicographer: using monolingual and bilingual corpora to deepen vocabulary knowledge

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kristina HMELJAK SANGAWA

    2014-12-01

    Full Text Available Learning vocabulary is one of the most challenging tasks faced by learners with a non-kanji background when learning Japanese as a foreign language. However, learners are often not aware of the range of different aspects of word knowledge they need in order to successfully use Japanese. This includes not only the spoken and written form of a word and its meaning, but also morphological, grammatical, collocational, connotative and pragmatic knowledge as well as knowledge of social constraints to be observed. In this article, we present some background data on the use of dictionaries among students of Japanese at the University of Ljubljana, a selection of resources and a series of exercises developed with the following aims: a to foster greater awareness of the different aspects of Japanese vocabulary, both from a monolingual and a contrastive perspective, b to learn about tools and methods that can be applied in different contexts of language learning and language use, and c to develop strategies for learning new vocabulary, reinforcing knowledge about known vocabulary, and effectively using this knowledge in receptive and productive language tasks.

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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…

  1. An In-Depth Investigation into the Relationship between Vocabulary Knowledge and Academic Listening Comprehension

    Science.gov (United States)

    Teng, Feng

    2016-01-01

    The present study was conducted in the context of learning English as a Foreign Language (EFL) with the purpose of assessing the roles of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge in academic listening comprehension. The Vocabulary Size Test (VST, Nation & Beglar, 2007) and the Word Associates Test (WAT, Read, 2004) were administered to…

  2. Good caring and vocabularies of motive among foster carers

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Jennifer Doyle

    2013-12-01

    Full Text Available Employing C. Wright Mills’ concept of vocabulary of motives, this article examines the motives and attitudes of people who volunteer to foster children with high support needs. Data is drawn from a larger qualitative study involving indepth interviewing of 23 carers. When asked why they had become foster carers participants produced conventional accounts of child-centred altruistic motives–an acceptable vocabulary of motives which satisfied institutional and cultural expectations regarding caregiving. However, closer examination of participants’ experiences and attitudes revealed the likelihood that economic motives were also factors in decisions to foster. It is argued that participants chose to exclude economic motives from their accounts so as to avoid the risk of being seen to be ‘doing it for the money’.

  3. Investigating the Role of Pop Songs on Vocabulary Recall, Attitude and Retention of Iranian EFL Learners: The Case of Gender

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Pouya Shakerian

    2016-04-01

    Full Text Available Pop songs are, in fact, an ideal source for incidental vocabulary learning because teenagers often spend large amounts of their free time listening to music and in particular to pop songs. Employing an experimental approach, this study attempted to investigate the role of pop songs on vocabulary recall, attitude and retention of Iranian advanced adult EFL learners based on their gender. In so doing a language placement test (Quick Oxford Placement Test was administered to 100 male and female language learners studying English at different language institutes in Esfahan, Iran. Ultimately, 60 advanced learners (30 males - 30 females were selected by leaving out the students of other levels of proficiency and randomly divided into two relatively homogenous groups as musical and non-musical groups. While the students of musical group (=30 were taught the new vocabulary in the syllabus through 60 different pop songs chosen by themselves through a questionnaire, the students of the non-musical group (n=30 were taught new vocabulary without using the songs. The participants were examined based on an English vocabulary test developed by the researchers, which probed into the learners’ vocabulary recall. A questionnaire was also used to investigate the attitude of the learners towards the instruction. A month later the vocabulary test was re-administered as a delayed retention test and obtained data were statistically analyzed. The results of t-tests demonstrated that the musical group outscored the non-musical group on vocabulary recall and retention. The results also showed the male learners perform better than the females. Keywords: incidental vocabulary, pop songs, vocabulary recall, attitude, retention

  4. Studies of Danish L2 learners’ vocabulary knowledge and the lexical richness of their written production in English

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Henriksen, Birgit; Danelund, Lise

    2015-01-01

    A number of lexical studies report a strong correlation between L2 learners’ vocabulary size and depth and their writing skills. Three Danish empirical studies explore this relationship further by looking at the vocabulary knowledge of young upper-secondary school learners of English...... analysis of written essays from learners across two educational levels. All studies show a surprisingly low level of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge for the pupils tested. Moreover, the lexical analyses of the texts reveal that the learners do not exploit the vocabulary resources they have...... in their written production. Even the high-level learners, who have more L2 vocabulary, are using a “playing-it-safe strategy”, relying on familiar high-frequent lexical items in their writing. The results are discussed in light of the meaning-based teaching approaches used in Danish EFL classrooms and the lack...

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

    OpenAIRE

    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...

  6. Analysis of EFL Students' Ability in Reading Vocabulary of Synonyms and Antonyms

    OpenAIRE

    Vina Fathira

    2017-01-01

    Reading is an important thing for academic level. Every student must have many vocabularies to encourage her/his reading skill. The aim of this research is to analyze the students' understanding of reading vocabularies of synonyms and antonyms in the higher education level. Synonyms and antonyms are two important things should be mastered to get better reading comprehension. The method used in this research was quantitative with survey design. The population same as the sample of this researc...

  7. Desirable difficulties in vocabulary learning

    OpenAIRE

    Bjork, RA; Kroll, JF

    2015-01-01

    © 2015 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois. In this article we discuss the role of desirable difficulties in vocabulary learning from two perspectives, one having to do with identifying conditions of learning that impose initial challenges to the learner but then benefit later retention and transfer, and the other having to do with the role of certain difficulties that are intrinsic to language processes, are engaged during word learning, and reflect how language is underst...

  8. The Effect of Mnemonic and Mapping Techniques on L2 Vocabulary Learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Abbas Ali Zarei

    2016-01-01

    Full Text Available The present study investigated the effects of selected presentation techniques including the keyword method, the peg word method, the loci method, argument mapping, concept mapping and mind mapping on L2 vocabulary comprehension and production. To this end, a sample of 151 Iranian female students from a public pre-university school in Islam Shahr was selected. They were assigned to six groups. Each group was randomly assigned to one of the afore-mentioned treatment conditions. After the experimental period, two post-tests in multiple choice and fill-in-the-blanks formats were administered to assess the participants’ vocabulary comprehension and production. Two independent One-Way ANOVA procedures were used to analyze the obtained data. The results showed that the differences among the effects of the above-mentioned techniques were statistically significant in both vocabulary comprehension and production. These findings can have implications for learners, teachers, and materials’ developers.

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    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.

  10. Flooding Vocabulary Gaps to Accelerate Word Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Brabham, Edna; Buskist, Connie; Henderson, Shannon Coman; Paleologos, Timon; Baugh, Nikki

    2012-01-01

    Students entering school with limited vocabularies are at a disadvantage compared to classmates with robust knowledge of words and meanings. Teaching a few unrelated words at a time is insufficient for catching these students up with peers and preparing them to comprehend texts they will encounter across the grades. This article presents…

  11. The relationship between prelinguistic vocalization and later expressive vocabulary in young children with developmental delay.

    Science.gov (United States)

    McCathren, R B; Yoder, P J; Warren, S F

    1999-08-01

    This study tested the relationship between prelinguistic vocalization and expressive vocabulary 1 year later in young children with mild to moderate developmental delays. Three vocalization variables were tested: rate of all vocalization, rate of vocalizations with consonants, and rate of vocalizations used interactively. The 58 toddlers in the study were 17-34 months old, not sensory impaired, and had Bayley Mental Development Indices (Bayley, 1969; Bayley, 1993) from 35-85. In addition, the children had fewer than 3 words in their expressive vocabularies and during classroom observation each showed at least one instance of intentional prelinguistic communication before testing. Selected sections of the Communication and Symbolic Behavior Scales procedures (CSBS; Wetherby & Prizant, 1993) were administered at the beginning and at the end of the study. The vocal measures were obtained in the initial CSBS session. One measure of expressive vocabulary was obtained in the CSBS session at the end of the study. In addition, expressive vocabulary was measured in a nonstructured play session at the end of the study. We predicted that rate of vocalization, rate of vocalizations with consonants, and rate of vocalizations used interactively would all be positively related to later expressive vocabulary. The results confirmed the predictions.

  12. Is Storytelling Effective in Improving the English Vocabulary Learning among Iranian Children in Kindergartens?

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Maasumeh Abasi

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available The aim of this study is to investigate the effectiveness of storytelling in improving English vocabulary learning among children in kindergarten. Twenty Iranian children (9 boys and 11 girls in a private kindergarten in Kerman, Iran, were the participants of the study. All of the children were five years old and were taught English with the same teacher in a class in a kindergarten. The design of the study was one group pre-test post-test quasi experimental design. Both pre and post-tests included 20 vocabulary picture items taken from a story book teaching in the kindergarten. The statistical analysis revealed that storytelling was effective in increasing vocabulary learning among kindergarten children.

  13. Operational Demands of AAC Mobile Technology Applications on Programming Vocabulary and Engagement During Professional and Child Interactions.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Caron, Jessica; Light, Janice; Drager, Kathryn

    2016-01-01

    Typically, the vocabulary in augmentative and alternative communication (AAC) technologies is pre-programmed by manufacturers or by parents and professionals outside of daily interactions. Because vocabulary needs are difficult to predict, young children who use aided AAC often do not have access to vocabulary concepts as the need and interest arises in their daily interactions, limiting their vocabulary acquisition and use. Ideally, parents and professionals would be able to add vocabulary to AAC technologies "just-in-time" as required during daily interactions. This study compared the effects of two AAC applications for mobile technologies: GoTalk Now (which required more programming steps) and EasyVSD (which required fewer programming steps) on the number of visual scene displays (VSDs) and hotspots created in 10-min interactions between eight professionals and preschool-aged children with typical development. The results indicated that, although all of the professionals were able to create VSDs and add vocabulary during interactions with the children, they created more VSDs and hotspots with the app with fewer programming steps than with the one with more steps, and child engagement and programming participation levels were high with both apps, but higher levels for both variables were observed with the app with fewer programming steps than with the one with more steps. These results suggest that apps with fewer programming steps may reduce operational demands and better support professionals to (a) respond to the child's input, (b) use just-in-time programming during interactions, (c) provide access to more vocabulary, and (d) increase participation.

  14. An Investigation of High School Social Studies Teachers' Understandings of Vocabulary Teaching and Learning

    Science.gov (United States)

    Harmon, Janis; Antuna, Marcos; Juarez, Lucinda; Wood, Karen D.; Vintinner, Jean

    2018-01-01

    This qualitative study focused on high school social studies teachers' understandings of and perspectives about vocabulary acquisition and instruction. The research questions were the following: (1) What do high school social studies teachers understand about vocabulary instruction? and (2) How do high school social studies teachers support…

  15. DESIGNING AND BUILDING EXERCISE MODEL OF TECHNICAL ENGLISH VOCABULARIES USING CALL (COMPUTER ASSISTED LANGUAGE LEARNING

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Yogi Widiawati

    2017-11-01

    Full Text Available The research is aimed to assist and facilitate the students of Electrical and Electronics Department of Politeknik Negeri Jakarta (State Polytechnics of Jakarta, Indonesia, in learning technical English vocabulary. As technical students, they study ESP (English for Specific Purposes and they find some obstacles in memorizing technical vocabularies which are very important in order to read and understand manual books for laboratory and workshop. Some English technical vocabularies among others are “generate”, “pile”, “bench”, et cetera. The research outcome is software which will be beneficial for technical students, especially electrical and electronics students. This software can be used to practice their vocabulary skills, so they will be more skillful and knowledgeable. This software is designed by using the program of Rapid E-Learning Suite Version 5.2 and Flash CS3. The software practice contains some exercises on reading text and reading comprehension questions and presented with the multiple answers. This software is handy and flexible because students can bring it anywhere and be studied anytime. It is handy because this software is put and saved in CD (compact disc, so the students can take it with them anywhere and anytime they want to learn. In other words, they have flexibility to learn and practice English Technical Vocabularies. As a result, the students are found one of the ways to overcome their problems of memorizing vocabularies. The product is a kind of software which is easily used and portable so that the students can use the software anywhere and anytime. It consists of 3 (three sections of exercises. At the end of each exercise, the students are evaluated automatically by looking at the scoring system. These will encourage them to get good score by repeating it again and again. So the technical words are not problem for them. Furthermore, the students can practice technical English vocabulary both at home and

  16. Checking the effectiveness of Quizlet® as a tool for vocabulary learning

    OpenAIRE

    Barr, Blair

    2016-01-01

    Inspired by the need to aid low-proficiency English users to increase their knowledgeof vocabulary, this preliminary study measures the success of digital-flashcard usersby comparing their vocabulary test scores to those of non-users in the same class.Thirty-two, low-level, first year students in Tamagawa University’s English as aLingua Franca program were asked to use Quizlet® to prepare for tests that wouldrecycle fill-in-the-blank contents from the flashcards available on this Web 2.0appli...

  17. Effect of Instructional vs. Authentic Video Materials on Introvert and Extrovert Iranian EFL Learners' Vocabulary Learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Parya Isazadeh

    2016-10-01

    Full Text Available The study delved into the effect of instructional video materials vs. authentic video materials on vocabulary learning of extrovert and introvert Iranian EFL learners. To this end, Nelson proficiency test was administered to one hundred eighty (n=180 language learners. Considering 1 standard deviation above and below the mean score, one hundred twenty three (n=123 language learners were selected for the study. These participants were distributed into 4 experimental groups (with 25 learners and a control group (with 23 learners. Researcher-made vocabulary pretest and posttest which were designed using the vocabularies from the movies were also administered to the participants. The findings of the study after three weeks of treatment revealed that both authentic video materials and instructional video materials can have positive effect on vocabulary learning of Iranian EFL leaners. This effect, however, is not different among extrovert learners. It was also revealed that introvert EFL learners benefit more from authentic video materials. The findings of the study could be used by material developers or language teachers who may wish to use video materials in their classes. Keywords: Authentic video materials, Instructional video materials, Vocabulary learning, Introversion, Extroversion

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

    Science.gov (United States)

    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.

  19. Measuring growth in bilingual and monolingual children's english productive vocabulary development: the utility of combining parent and teacher report.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Vagh, Shaher Banu; Pan, Barbara Alexander; Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette

    2009-01-01

    This longitudinal study examined growth in the English productive vocabularies of bilingual and monolingual children between ages 24 and 36 months and explored the utility and validity of supplementing parent reports with teacher reports to improve the estimation of children's vocabulary. Low-income, English-speaking and English/Spanish-speaking parents and Early Head Start and Head Start program teachers completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventory, Words and Sentences for 85 children. Results indicate faster growth rates for monolingual than for bilingual children and larger vocabularies for bilingual children who spoke mostly English than mostly Spanish at home. Parent-teacher composite reports, like parent reports, significantly related to children's directly assessed productive vocabulary at ages 30 and 36 months, but parent reports fit the model better. Implications for vocabulary assessment are discussed.

  20. Direct Vocabulary Instruction in Preschool: A Comparison of Extended Instruction, Embedded Instruction, and Incidental Exposure

    Science.gov (United States)

    Loftus-Rattan, Susan M.; Mitchell, Alison M.; Coyne, Michael D.

    2016-01-01

    Based on its coincidence with a significant period in language development for children, preschool provides a favorable setting to foster vocabulary growth. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the effectiveness of two instructional conditions and an incidental exposure condition for teaching targeted vocabulary words to preschool students…

  1. Does the introduction of newborn hearing screening improve vocabulary development in hearing-impaired children? A population-based study in Japan.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Ohmori, Shuhei; Sugaya, Akiko; Toida, Naomi; Suzuki, Etsuji; Izutsu, Masato; Tsutsui, Tomoko; Kataoka, Yuko; Maeda, Yukihide; Fukushima, Kunihiro; Nishizaki, Kazunori

    2015-02-01

    Permanent hearing impairment has a life-long impact on children and its early identification is important for language development. A newborn hearing screening (NHS) program has started in Okayama Prefecture, Japan, in 1999 to detect hearing impairment immediately after birth. We aim to examine the effect of this screening program on vocabulary development in pre-school children in a before and after comparative study design. A total of 107 5-year-old children who graduated from Okayama Kanariya Gakuen (an auditory center for hearing-impaired children) between 1998 and 2011 were enrolled in this study. The pre-NHS group (n=40) was defined as those who graduated between 1998 and 2003, while the post-NHS group (n=67) was defined as those who graduated between 2004 and 2011. The primary outcome was receptive vocabulary, which was assessed by the Picture Vocabulary Test [score vocabulary, or the number of productive words, which was assessed by an original checklist [vocabulary development and compared both groups. The adjusted Picture Vocabulary Test score and number of productive words were significantly higher (pvocabulary and 4.17 (95% confidence interval: 1.69-10.29) for productive vocabulary. The introduction of NHS in Okayama Prefecture significantly improved both receptive and productive vocabulary development in hearing-impaired children. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

  2. Motherese, affect, and vocabulary development: dyadic communicative interactions in infants and toddlers.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Dave, Shruti; Mastergeorge, Ann M; Olswang, Lesley B

    2018-07-01

    Responsive parental communication during an infant's first year has been positively associated with later language outcomes. This study explores responsivity in mother-infant communication by modeling how change in guiding language between 7 and 11 months influences toddler vocabulary development. In a group of 32 mother-child dyads, change in early maternal guiding language positively predicted child language outcomes measured at 18 and 24 months. In contrast, a number of other linguistic variables - including total utterances and non-guiding language - did not correlate with toddler vocabulary development, suggesting a critical role of responsive change in infant-directed communication. We further assessed whether maternal affect during early communication influenced toddler vocabulary outcomes, finding that dominant affect during early mother-infant communications correlated to lower child language outcomes. These findings provide evidence that responsive parenting should not only be assessed longitudinally, but unique contributions of language and affect should also be concurrently considered in future study.

  3. The New Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-III: An Illusion of Unbiased Assessment?

    Science.gov (United States)

    Stockman, Ida J

    2000-10-01

    This article examines whether changes in the ethnic minority composition of the standardization sample for the latest edition of the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test (PPVT-III, Dunn & Dunn, 1997) can be used as the sole explanation for children's better test scores when compared to an earlier edition, the Peabody Picture Vocabulary Test-Revised (PPVT-R, Dunn & Dunn, 1981). Results from a comparative analysis of these two test editions suggest that other factors may explain improved performances. Among these factors are the number of words and age levels sampled, the types of words and pictures used, and characteristics of the standardization sample other than its ethnic minority composition. This analysis also raises questions regarding the usefulness of converting scores from one edition to the other and the type of criteria that could be used to evaluate whether the PPVT-III is an unbiased test of vocabulary for children from diverse cultural and linguistic backgrounds.

  4. Metaphorical Awareness: A New Horizon in Vocabulary Retention by Asian EFL Learners

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Natasha Pourdana

    2014-07-01

    Full Text Available The present study investigates the impact of English metaphorical awareness on the vocabulary retention by 60 intermediate EFL learners in Iran. Participants in this study were all English as a Foreign language (EFL learners placed in the intermediate level of both genders ranging from 16 to 20 years of age at Qeshm language institute, Kerman, Iran. An Oxford Placement Test (OPT was administered to homogenize the participants and divided them into two intact experimental and control groups. The experimental group was exposed to and performed on 20 minutes English metaphorical awareness tasks of Pictorial Idioms, Poems, and Matching in sixteen 90-minute sessions. The controllgroup received the vocabulary exercises in New Cutting Edge (3rd Edition (Cunningham, Moor & Eales 2007 in turn The experimental group outperformed the controlgroup in this study.  In an independent sample t-Test, and a high effect size (Cohn’s d=2.84 supported the positive impact of metaphorical awareness on EFL learners' vocabulary retention.

  5. Teachers’ Vocabulary Develops Educational Awareness by Constructing Practical Arguments

    DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

    Lund, Lea; Robinson, Sarah

    From a perspective of teachers’ continuing professional development (CPD) this paper considers the importance of the influence of teachers’ vocabulary in relation to their understanding and development of teaching practices. As the teacher spends most of her/his career teaching inside the classroom...... and discussing – teachers’ educational awareness strengthens and teachers develop clearer and more precise methods/tools for shaping and taking advantage of the opportunities offered in their everyday teaching. This paper demonstrates how teachers’ vocabulary forms and shapes dialogical procedures and the extent...... so it may be argued that much their CPD takes place there. However little attention has been given to how teachers develop understanding of their everyday practices, of what works and what doesn’t inside the classroom and how these experiences are reflected upon and articulated. How when teaching...

  6. WORDS AS “LEXICAL UNITS” IN LEARNING/TEACHING VOCABULARY

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Moisés Almela

    2007-12-01

    Full Text Available One of the genuine contributions of theoretical linguistics to the interdisciplinary field of applied linguistics is to elucidate the nature of what should be taught and how it should be taught. Traditionally, the input supplied in vocabulary teaching has consisted either of word lists (most often or of words-in-context (more recently. In the first case, words are treated as self-contained receptacles of meaning, and in the second case, they are considered as nodes of semantic relationships. However, recent directions in corpus-driven lexicology are exploring the gulf between the concept of a “word” and that of a “semantic unit”. The main purpose of this paper is to update some implications of this discussion for one of the applied disciplines, namely FL/L2 vocabulary teaching and learning.

  7. Word Lists for Vocabulary Learning and Teaching

    Science.gov (United States)

    Lessard-Clouston, Michael

    2013-01-01

    Within the communicative approach, often the assumption has been that with the right exposure, students will simply "pick up" the vocabulary required for learning and using English, and thus there is no need to focus on or teach it. Yet, as many teachers can attest, this is frequently not the case, and there have been recent efforts to…

  8. Better Search Through Query Expansion Using Controlled Vocabularies and Apache Solr

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    Scott Williams

    2013-04-01

    Full Text Available This article describes how the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology (Penn Museum modified its Solr-based discovery interface to improve recall and enable end users to benefit from the power of their in-house controlled vocabularies. These modifications automatically expand the query generated by any search term that matches their controlled vocabulary to include all related alternate and narrower terms. For example, if a user enters Ohio, that search will retrieve the record for an arrowhead found in Cincinnati (a narrower term of Ohio even if that record does not include the term Ohio.

  9. 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.

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

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Kham Sila Ahmad

    2017-04-01

    Full Text Available 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 their first language (L1, low proficiency in English, and isolated fulltime stay-at-home mothers. Methodology: A case study method using semi-structured interviews and observations was used. Six migrant women learners attended a minimum of five non-MALL sessions and three participants continued on and attended a minimum of five MALL sessions. Participants were interviewed pre- and post-sessions. Data were analysed thematically. Contribution: The MALL framework is capable of enriching migrant women’s learning experience and vocabulary acquisition. Findings: Vocabulary acquisition occurred in women from both non-MALL and MALL environment; however, the MALL environment provided significantly enriched vocabulary learning experience. Future Research: A standardised approach to measure the effectiveness of MALL for vocabulary acquisition among migrant women in non-formal setting

  11. Multimedia Glosses and Their Effect on L2 Text Comprehension and Vocabulary Learning

    Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

    Iñigo Yanguas

    2009-06-01

    Full Text Available The present study investigates the effects that different types of multimedia glosses, namely textual, pictorial, and textual + pictorial, have on text comprehension and vocabulary learning when the goal is exclusively comprehension of a computerized text. This study is based on the theoretical framework of attention, which maintains that attention is critical in the acquisition process of an L2 (Robinson, 1995; Schmidt, 1995, 2001; Tomlin and Villa, 1994. Ninety-four participants read a text under one of four gloss conditions while asked to think aloud. This study investigated whether any of the conditions promoted noticing and whether this noticing led to better comprehension of the text and learning of the target vocabulary words. Reading comprehension, recognition, and production measures were utilized in a pre-post test design. Results of quantitative and qualitative analyses of the data gathered showed first that all multimedia gloss groups noticed and recognized significantly more of the target words than the control group. Second, no significant differences were found among any of the groups in production of the target vocabulary items. Finally, regarding comprehension, results showed that the combination gloss group significantly outperformed all other groups. These results confirm that the multimedia glosses under investigation have a different effect on comprehension and vocabulary learning respectively.

  12. Low-SES children's eyewitness memory: the effects of verbal labels and vocabulary skills.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Chae, Yoojin; Kulkofsky, Sarah; Debaran, Francisco; Wang, Qi; Hart, Sybil L

    2014-01-01

    This study examined the effects of the verbal labels procedure and vocabulary skills on low-socioeconomic status (SES) preschool children's eyewitness memory. Children (N = 176) aged 3-5 years witnessed a conflict event and were then questioned about it in either a standard or a verbal labels interview. Findings revealed that children with higher rather than lower vocabulary skills produced more complete and accurate memories. Children who were given the verbal labels interview recalled more information, which included both correct and incorrect details. Overall, the verbal labels procedure did not improve children's performance on direct questions, but children with low vocabulary skills answered direct questions more accurately if they were given the verbal labels interview than when they were not. Implications of the findings for memory performance of low-SES children are discussed. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

  13. Parent Reports of Young Spanish-English Bilingual Children's Productive Vocabulary: A Development and Validation Study

    Science.gov (United States)

    Mancilla-Martinez, Jeannette; Gámez, Perla B.; Vagh, Shaher Banu; Lesaux, Nonie K.

    2016-01-01

    Purpose: This 2-phase study aims to extend research on parent report measures of children's productive vocabulary by investigating the development (n = 38) of the Spanish Vocabulary Extension and validity (n = 194) of the 100-item Spanish and English MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories Toddler Short Forms and Upward Extension…

  14. The Effect of Semantic Mapping as a Vocabulary Instruction Technique on EFL Learners with Different Perceptual Learning Styles

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    Esmaeel Abdollahzadeh

    2009-05-01

    Full Text Available Traditional and modern vocabulary instruction techniques have been introduced in the past few decades to improve the learners’ performance in reading comprehension. Semantic mapping, which entails drawing learners’ attention to the interrelationships among lexical items through graphic organizers, is claimed to enhance vocabulary learning significantly. However, whether this technique suits all types of learners has not been adequately investigated. This study examines the effectiveness of employing semantic mapping versus traditional approaches in vocabulary instruction to EFL learners with different perceptual modalities. A modified version of Reid’s (1987 perceptual learning style questionnaire was used to determine the learners’ modality types. The results indicate that semantic mapping in comparison to the traditional approaches significantly enhances vocabulary learning of EFL learners. However, although visual learners slightly outperformed other types of learners on the post-test, no significant differences were observed among intermediate learners with different perceptual modalities employing semantic mapping for vocabulary practice.

  15. The Role Of Playing Online Games In Teen’s Developing English Vocabulary

    OpenAIRE

    Ambarita, Ridho Vandi H

    2016-01-01

    This Thesis entitled "The Role of playing Online Games in Teens' Developing Vocabulary" This is a study of the influence of online gaming in the development of English vocabulary teenagers. This study using qualitative methods. Miles and Huberman (1994) defined the way of qualitative research was to find the meaning of data based on the goals stated by the researcher. This study is held in the SMP Neg. 45 Medan and some of his students became participant. Data from this study are the words co...

  16. Definitions and explanations of the new financial vocabulary.

    Science.gov (United States)

    Thurgood, J

    NHS reforms have led to a new vocabulary for nurses. This article explains the meaning of the terms budgetary control, establishment, pay and non-pay, zero-based budgeting, trust regimens and the external financing limit. An understanding of these terms will help nurses implement the reforms.

  17. Comparing the efficacy of digital flashcards versus paper flashcards to improve receptive and productive L2 vocabulary

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    Gilbert Dizon

    2017-06-01

    Full Text Available Several researchers have compared the efficacy of digital flashcards (DFs versus paper flashcards (PFs to improve L2 vocabulary and have concluded that using DFs is more effective (Azabdaftari & Mozaheb, 2012; Başoğlu & Akdemir, 2010; Kiliçkaya & Krajka, 2010. However, these studies did not utilize vocabulary learning strategies (VLSs as a way to support the vocabulary development of those using PFs. This is significant because DFs often offer a range of features to promote vocabulary development, whereas PFs are much more basic; thus, learners who study via paper materials are at a disadvantage compared with those who use DFs. Given the success that VLSs have had in fostering L2 vocabulary enhancement (e.g., Mizumoto & Takeuchi, 2009, their incorporation could have influenced the previous studies. Therefore, one of the primary aims of this study was to find if there were significant differences in receptive and productive L2 vocabulary improvements between students who used PFs in conjunction with 3 VLSs – dropping, association, and oral rehearsal – and those who used the DF tools Quizlet and Cram. Additionally, the researchers examined the learners’ opinions to see if there was a preference for either study method. A total of 52 EFL students at two Japanese universities participated in the 12-week study. Pre- and post-tests were administered to measure the vocabulary gains in the PF group (n = 26 and the DF group (n = 26. Results from a paired t-test revealed that both groups made significant improvements in receptive and productive vocabulary. However, the difference between the gains was not significant, which contrasts with past comparison studies of DFs and PFs and highlights the importance of VLSs. A 10-item survey with closed and Likert-scale questions was also administered to determine the participants’ opinions towards the study methods. Higher levels of agreement were found in the experimental group, indicating that the

  18. Towards a controlled vocabulary on software engineering education

    Science.gov (United States)

    Pizard, Sebastián; Vallespir, Diego

    2017-11-01

    Software engineering is the discipline that develops all the aspects of the production of software. Although there are guidelines about what topics to include in a software engineering curricula, it is usually unclear which are the best methods to teach them. In any science discipline the construction of a classification schema is a common approach to understand a thematic area. This study examines previous publications in software engineering education to obtain a first controlled vocabulary (a more formal definition of a classification schema) in the field. Publications from 1988 to 2014 were collected and processed using automatic clustering techniques and the outcomes were analysed manually. The result is an initial controlled vocabulary with a taxonomy form with 43 concepts that were identified as the most used in the research publications. We present the classification of the concepts in three facets: 'what to teach', 'how to teach' and 'where to teach' and the evolution of concepts over time.

  19. Automated Diagnosis of Otitis Media: Vocabulary and Grammar

    Science.gov (United States)

    Kuruvilla, Anupama; Hoberman, Alejandro; Kovačević, Jelena

    2013-01-01

    We propose a novel automated algorithm for classifying diagnostic categories of otitis media: acute otitis media, otitis media with effusion, and no effusion. Acute otitis media represents a bacterial superinfection of the middle ear fluid, while otitis media with effusion represents a sterile effusion that tends to subside spontaneously. Diagnosing children with acute otitis media is difficult, often leading to overprescription of antibiotics as they are beneficial only for children with acute otitis media. This underscores the need for an accurate and automated diagnostic algorithm. To that end, we design a feature set understood by both otoscopists and engineers based on the actual visual cues used by otoscopists; we term this the otitis media vocabulary. We also design a process to combine the vocabulary terms based on the decision process used by otoscopists; we term this the otitis media grammar. The algorithm achieves 89.9% classification accuracy, outperforming both clinicians who did not receive special training and state-of-the-art classifiers. PMID:23997759

  20. Profiling vocabulary in psychology journal abstracts: A comparison between Iranian and Anglo-American journals

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    Is’haaq Akbarian

    2017-01-01

    Full Text Available Lexical profiling has yielded fruitful results for language description and pedagogy (Liu, 2014, and particularly highlighted the significance of academic vocabulary for EFL learners in this process. This investigation, likewise, attempts to comparatively profile the vocabulary, more particularly the academic vocabulary, in the ‘abstract’ section of scholarly articles in Iranian and Anglo-American refereed journals in psychology. Iranian journals under study publish articles in Persian but also include an English abstract whereas the latter publish papers in English. For this purpose, a corpus (consisting of 307,126 words, with two sub-corpora of almost similar size and characteristics, was collected from Iranian and Anglo-American journals and analyzed through the software Range. The analyses conducted show a coverage of over 15 percent and the use of over 500 words of the Academic Word List (AWL in both Iranian and Anglo-American sub-corpora. However, there are variations in academic and nonacademic vocabulary use in abstracts across the two sub-corpora above. Most of the academic words used belong to the beginning AWL sub-lists. Pedagogical implications are made for reading and writing, particularly in EAP contexts.