SLAT7830 The lexicon and L2 learning

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SLAT7830 The lexicon and L2 learning

• Week 7
• Semester 1, 2005

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Vocabulary learning strategies

• What is a learning strategy?

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Vocabulary learning strategies taxonomySchmitt,
N (2000) Vocabulary in language teaching.
Cambridge Cambridge University Press, p133-136

• Determination (DET) strategies are used when the
  learner has no recourse to another speaker.
• Social (SOC) strategies use interaction with
  other people to improve vocabulary learning.
• Memory (MEM)strategies involve relating the new
  word to previously learned material.
• Cognitive (COG) strategies involve manipulation
  or transformation of new word.
• Metacognitive (MET) strategies involve planning,
  monitoring or evaluating the learning process.

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Incidental learning

• Terms
• Incidental vs Intentional
• Implicit vs Explicit
• Acquisition vs Learning

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What is incidental vocabulary learning?

• Word learning that takes place when focal
  attention is on meaning but not necessarily on
  form.
• Contextual comprehension and incidental learning
  are separate processes.

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How does incidental acquisition occur?

• Incidental learning is not entirely incidental,
  as the learner must attend to words, probably
  both meaning and form.
• Depth of processing amount of attention and
  amount of learning varies according to context,
  type of attention and task demands

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How much and what kind of vocabulary is needed to
guess effectively?

• Incidental learning requires a basic
  sight-recognition vocabulary of at least 3000
  word families (i.e. 95 text coverage)
• University-level texts require a knowledge of
  5,000-10,000 word families.

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Text coverage

• Number of words Coverage
• 1 7
• 10 25
• 100 50
• 1,000 75
• 2,000 81
• 5,000 89
• 43,831 99
• 86,741 100

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How many and what kind of exposures to a word is
needed for learning?

• Vocabulary learning is an incremental process.
  Multiple exposures are needed but little
  agreement as to how many (5-16?) or what kind of
  exposures are needed.
• Frequency required depends on many factors
  including, salience, recognisability as cognate,
  morphology, learner interest and available cues.
• Frequency required also depends on how learning
  is defined.

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What word-guessing strategies and knowledge
sources are most effective?

• Effective word guessing requires the application
  of local and global strategies.
• Use of local cues like word form, structural
  information within the sentence
• Use of global cues like textual and extratextual
  content knowledge.

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Do students need to be taught explicit guessing
strategies?

• Some strategies seem to arise naturally,
• e.g. cognate recognition
• Others must be taught.
• e.g. backward clues (preceding context) and
  especially the use of forward cues (following
  context)

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Types of contextual cues (Sternberg, 1987)

• TEMPORAL duration or frequency of X or when X
  occurs
• SPATIAL the location or possible location of X
• VALUE worth or desirability of X
• STATIVE DESCRIPTION Size, shape, colour, etc.
  of X
• FUNCTIONAL DESCRIPTION Possible or potential
  uses, purposes or actions of X
• CAUSAL ENABLEMENT Possible causes or enabling
  conditions of X
• CLASS MEMBERSHIP Classes or other members of
  classes X belongs to.
• EQUIVALENCE Meaning or contrasts in meaning to X

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Do students benefit from explicit vocabulary
instruction in a reading program?

• Students generally benefit from explicit
  vocabulary instruction when done in conjunction
  with reading.

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Are some reading texts more conducive to
incidental learning than others?

• Texts of interest to the reader are more
  conducive to incidental learning (Parry, 1997)

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How effective are input modifications like
glossing?

• Input modifications like marginal glosses are
  effective (Hulstijn et a al 1996 Kang, 1995)
• Especially when they actively involve the learner
  (Ellis, Tanaka, Yamazaki, 1994).

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What are the limitations of incidental learning?

• Incidental learning depends on educated guesswork
  and thus can lead to problems like imprecision,
  misrecognition and interference.
• Multiword phrases in particular are resistant to
  incidental learning.

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Evidence for incidental learning

• Stockwell Harrington (2003) examined output by
  Australian university learners of Japanese as a
  foreign language (n 20) participating in an
  ongoing email exchange with native Japanese
  speakers. Quantitative and qualitative evidence
  was sought for the incidental development L2
  syntax and vocabulary.

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Study design

• Messages were sampled at regular intervals (1st,
  5th, 10th and 15th week) over the five week
  collection period. Quantitative and qualitative
  measures of development were used to assess
  development.
• Quantitative measures
• - syntax assessed by mean length of T-unit,
  mean length of error-free T-unit and of
  error-free T-units
• - vocabulary assessed by type/token ratio.
• Qualitative measures
• - ratings of lexical, syntactic and pragmatic
  mastery by native speaking raters.

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Results

• Lexical development
• - no increase in the type-token ratio
• - small but significant improvement in
  qualitative ratings over the collection period.

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Results (2)

• Syntactic development
• - increase in the mean length of T-unit and
  percentage of error-free T-units,
• - systematic improvement in ratings of syntactic
  mastery provided by native speaking raters

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End of slides Week 7 SLAT7830