Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition Research Articles

Technological Interface Components That Support Accelerated Learning in the Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary

There is a need to find innovative learning methods that enable accelerated learning of a foreign language. This study examined the effect of computer-assisted language learning (CALL) in acquiring a foreign language, which combines cognitive and emotional stimuli in the background. The study explored two factors related to the acquisition of a foreign language: the duration and scope of the learning process and the depth of internalization of the newly acquired language. Another objective was to assess the learning method in two learning environments, 2D and VR, to determine if the learning environment affects the learning results and leads to better vocabulary retention. One hundred native French speakers, with an average age of 47.5, participated in the study and had no prior knowledge of the newly acquired language. We randomly divided the participants into two groups (2D and VR). They studied 550 words in a new language for five days: 30 min each evening and 15 min in the morning. The post-learning test pointed out that both groups improved their vocabulary scores significantly. Approximately one month after the learning experience, we administered a knowledge retention test to 32 participants and found that the level of knowledge had been retained. Finally, background variables (e.g., gender, age, and previous knowledge of the newly acquired language) did not affect the learning results. The findings indicate that CALL, which integrates background cognitive and emotional stimuli in both learning environments, significantly accelerates learning pace, broadens the scope of newly acquired words, and ensures retention. The level of improvement observed in our study is notably higher than that reported in the literature for studies that had previously evaluated CALL and in-class language acquisition.

Comparison of teaching methods for the emergence and maintenance of untaught relations in foreign language vocabulary acquisition: A systematic replication.

In a replication of Daly and K. Dounavi (2020), the researchers evaluated the effect of foreign tact and bidirectional intraverbal teaching on the emergence of untaught relations. Three university students learned three stimulus sets through three types of teaching: native-foreign intraverbal teaching (vocalizing Spanish words that refer to a Japanese textual stimulus), foreign-native intraverbal teaching (reversed relation of native-foreign condition), and foreign-tact teaching (tacting a picture in Spanish). The researchers used an adapted alternating-treatments design to assess the differential effect of each teaching condition on the emergence of untaught relations in a foreign language and collected data on response maintenance. The results replicated previous findings that native-foreign intraverbal and foreign-tact teachings were more effective than foreign-native intraverbal teaching despite previous reporting that the maintenance outcomes may be a result of carryover effects.

Personalized control in foreign language learning

The article considers personalized control as the basis for an individual development trajectory, an individual plan for improving foreign language communication skills. The tool for its implementation is individual success monitoring in foreign language learning followed by the analysis of test results with the participation of the teacher as a consultant, which makes it possible to identify the ways of overcoming existing problems in mastering a foreign language. The article analyzes the results of monitoring, conducted among students at the Institute of Philology and Intercultural Communication (Kazan Federal University), and concludes that further work should be done to determine the individual path of each student in eradicating their weak points. The decision-making remains with the students themselves; however, additional courses in the development of receptive skills may become a motivating factor, when the period of pseudo-passivity actually lays the foundation for improving communicative competence through the involuntary acquisition of foreign language vocabulary and grammar. Success in listening or reading comprehension, based on authentic texts, inspires confidence in further improvement of communicative competence and allows, through self-analysis and self-assessment, determining guidelines for each student’s progress in learning a foreign language.

A Look into the Effectiveness of Vocabulary Learning Strategies by Foreign Language Students in Undergraduate Classes

One of the foremost challenges encountered by students of foreign languages in the course of acquiring a foreign language is the acquisition of vocabulary. The significance of vocabulary in language acquisition has been acknowledged, as inadequate vocabulary proficiency among learners can impede their progress in acquiring a second language. The present investigation employed Schmitt's (2000) taxonomy of Vocabulary Learning Strategies, which encompasses five distinct categories of strategies, namely "determination", "social", "memory", "cognitive", in addition to meta-cognitive" methods. The primary objective of this study is to analyze and explore the implementation of contemporary techniques for instructing and acquiring vocabulary across students that study foreign language in diverse undergraduate courses. The research goals prompted the selection of a quantitative analysis design as the optimal approach to comprehensively examine the utilization of VLS among the targeted student population. This research employed a questionnaire to examine the circumstances surrounding the acquisition of foreign language vocabulary among an aggregate of 230 undergraduate students. Specifically, the study sought to elucidate the participants' attitudes towards vocabulary learning as well as their employment of learning strategies. The participants for the study were chosen using a randomized method, and the survey was conducted via an online platform. Additionally, upon conducting a statistical evaluation on the results, it was discovered that the metacognitive strategy was highest utilized strategy, with the greatest frequency, while the cognitive strategy was utilized least frequently. The findings suggest that this research's respondents would benefit from additional instruction in Vocabulary Learning Strategies in order to enhance their proficiency with various types of foreign language vocabularies. It is imperative to integrate efficacious strategies for both the acquisition and instruction of vocabulary into the vocabulary learning process of learners.

Input Enhancement on Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition: Current Status and Future Prospect

This study reviewed the empirical research on the role of input enhancement on foreign language vocabulary acquisition published in core journals from 2009 to 2023, from which the current status and future trends of the studies were analyzed. The results manifested that (1) the number of input enhancement research demonstrated a trend of a spiral upward development; (2) the studies used different types of input enhancement as independent variable to explore their effects on the acquisition of target vocabulary; (3) the research materials applied in input enhancement were mostly in the reading mode, while lacked investigation in the listening mode. Therefore, future research could further examine the interactive and comparative effects of input enhancement on vocabulary acquisition as well as enhancing vocabulary in the materials with a variety of modes.

Grasping Virtual Objects Benefits Lower Aptitude Learners’ Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary

Theories of embodied cognition describe language acquisition and representation as dependent on sensorimotor experiences that are collected during learning. Whereas native language words are typically acquired through sensorimotor experiences, foreign language (L2) words are often learned by reading, listening or repeating bilingual word lists. Recently, grasping referent objects has been demonstrated to serve as a useful sensorimotor strategy for L2 vocabulary learning. The effects of grasping virtual objects, however, remain unknown. In a virtual reality cave, we trained adult participants (N = 46) having low language aptitude and high language aptitude on novel L2 words under three conditions. In an audiovisual (baseline) condition, participants were presented with written and spoken L2 words. In an audiovisual observation condition, participants additionally saw virtual visual objects that corresponded to the meanings of L2 words. In an audiovisual, an observation, and a grasping condition, participants were asked to grasp the virtual objects. Participants’ word learning was assessed in free and cued recall tests administered immediately after training. Relative to baseline learning, simply viewing virtual objects during learning benefitted both groups. As expected, grasping virtual objects was found to benefit vocabulary retention in low language aptitude learners. Interestingly, this benefit was not observed in high language aptitude learners. Language learning aptitude scores correlated with vocabulary learning outcomes in both audiovisual learning conditions, but not in the sensorimotor condition, suggesting that grasping altered the typical relationship between aptitude and language learning performance. The findings are interpreted in terms of differences in the extent to which procedural and declarative memory systems are accessed in low language aptitude and high language aptitude learners during sensorimotor-based vocabulary learning. Additionally, the results suggest that simulated interactions without tangible feedback can benefit learning. This outcome expands our understanding of how physical experience extends cognition and paves the way for the application of sensorimotor enrichment strategies to virtual environments.

Second and Foreign Language Vocabulary Learning through Digital Reading: A Meta-Analysis

Digital reading facilitates L2 development by allowing anytime-anywhere learning with various digital resources. Although there has been increasing research exploring the role of digital reading on L2 vocabulary learning, synthesized evidence regarding the overall facilitating power of digital reading is still lacking. This meta-analysis aggregates 21 important empirical studies published within the last 20 years and indexed in scholarly recognized databases, so as to provide a comprehensive panoramic assessment of how effectively digital reading has enhanced second and foreign language vocabulary acquisition with diversified learner backgrounds and learning environments. A total of 77 effect sizes were yielded across different studies, and random-effect modeling was employed for analyzing the study-level heterogeneity and sub-group variability. Results demonstrate that digital reading had an overall significant effect (dimmediate = 1.45, p < .01; ddeleayed = 2.98, p < .01) on L2 vocabulary learning of between-subject studies. For within-subject studies, digital reading was found to have an upper-medium (d = 1.39, p < .01) and medium (d = .86, p < .01) effect on immediate and delayed L2 vocabulary post-tests. Moderating factor analysis results show that L2 proficiency, vocabulary test formats, and digital resources could robustly explain the variance of effect sizes. The findings have strong pedagogical implications on the effective design for digital reading tasks, including the development of adaptive learning algorithms and personalized lexical glosses. Recommendations for future research in the field are provided by pinpointing where to improve in terms of experimental design and the focus of the learner group.

An Exploration of Artificial Intelligence in English Language Teaching As a Foreign Language

The aim of this study is to analyze the technologies which are currently being used in foreign language teaching and learning English as an applied language at the university level based on the findings of the detected experimental studies. The PRISMA criteria for systematic reviews and meta-analyses were compiled in the methodology. The findings of the experimental studies shown the lack of innovative technologies, such as chatbots or virtual reality (VR) devices, which are commonly utilized in foreign language (FL) education. Furthermore, mobile apps are primarily concerned with the acquisition of foreign language vocabulary. The findings shown that foreign language teachers might allegedly understand the latest technology devices, such as neural machine translation, they do not combine them accurately in their teaching process. As a result, this study indicates that teachers should be educated and know how to employ them in their foreign language lessons as well as traditional instruction in order to determine which skills or structures of language could have been created as a result of their use. Additionally, it is suggested that further experimental studies must be conducted to explicate the evidence and how useful it is in teaching a foreign language as an applicable language.

The acquisition of foreign language vocabulary: Does spacing effect matter?

Introduction. Research that investigated effective strategies for learning foreign language vocabulary revealed that long spacing facilitates learning more than short or no spacing. This phenomenon is known as distributed practice effect.Aim. The present study aimed to examine the effect of spaced instruction on vocabulary learning and retention among Saudi EFL learners.Methodology and research methods. The sample of this study includes 30 English major students at King Khalid University. The students were divided into two groups (15 students for the massed instruction group and 15 students for the spaced instruction group). Both groups were taught 20 new words which were selected based on the results of the Vocabulary Size Test by Nation P., Beglar D. In the condition of massed class, the target words were taught in 45-minute weekly session (lasted for two weeks). In the condition of spaced class, 45 minutes were distributed into three 15-minutes session presented throughout the week at intervals with two intervening days between each session (lasted for two weeks). Both groups received a post-test after eight weeks of training, while the delayed post-test was administered three weeks later (week 11).Results. The results of the study revealed that there was statistically significant difference between the massed and spaced instruction groups on both post-test and delayed post-test in favor to the spaced instruction group.Scientific novelty. The present study makes several contributions to the body of literature. First, it adds to the relatively small amount of research on the spacing effect on the acquisition of foreign language vocabulary. Second, it is one of the very few studies that have been conducted in the Arab world, more specifically in the Saudi context. Finally, the study provides better understanding of the importance of spacing in learning foreign language vocabulary among Arab learners.Practical significance. In the light of the obtained results, several recommendations have been provided for EFL practitioners and curriculum designers. This study suggests that EFL practitioners should consider spaced learning as beneficial teaching strategy, and to synthesise it in the educational materials.

Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention in Print Text vs. Digital Media Environments

In the context of very current trends in digital language education generally supported by governments and educational institutions, it seems necessary to evaluate the efficiency of these tools from various points of psycholinguistics and applied linguistics, mostly when it comes to learning a foreign/second language (L2). Therefore, this paper aims to evaluate vocabulary retention in L2 when using print text in contrast with digital media. The research was conducted among 122 participants who were university students and were divided into two groups to learn 60 new phrasal verbs; one group of them using a standard print text, the other using the same text displayed and annotated on their digital devices. There were two memory tests after four weeks of studying the four sets of phrasal verbs, i.e., 15 verbs a week, and another test after another month to evaluate students’ memory retention of the given vocabulary in time. The results clearly show a slight but clear discrepancy in these two groups in favor of the group using the print text in both tests performed. The findings of this study suggest that students can retain L2 vocabulary better in conditions where they have access to printed vocabulary and if they can make notes, highlight or write their translation in their native language. However, these findings should be verified from other perspectives as well to obtain more reliable data.

Input-Based Incremental Approach versus Image Schema Instruction for Improving Preparatory Schoolers’ English as a Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Input-Based Incremental Approach versus Image Schema Instruction for Improving Preparatory Schoolers’ English as a Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Investigation into the Effective Use of Dictionaries in Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Words lay in the core position in language acquisition, however, acquiring a word is far more than its meaning acquisition. Aiming at helping foreign language learners who want to become good language learners or native-like learners through the word (or vocabulary) acquisition, the goal of becoming high intake generators at vocabulary acquisition is targeted and the learning method concerning the effective use of a carefully selected dictionary is explored. How to select a desirable dictionary and how to effectively use the carefully selected dictionary are the two main aspects to be investigated. The essence of the two investigation aspects is to guarantee the optimal input and strategically maximized intake developed from the input. Based on the analyses of the required functions and components of dictionary, it is investigated thoroughly that an optimal monolingual foreign dictionary is selected out, with the optimal input including a desirable type of meaning definitions, corresponding pictures to vocabulary items and “complete knowledge”. Next, effective learning strategies when using the selected dictionary are explored to realize learners’ strategically maximization of language intake from the input, which includes the adaption to the monolingual model, the applications of transfer, note-taking, effective mnemonic strategies and the psychological preparations.

Рациональные приемы запоминания иноязычной лексики в системе профильной подготовки студентов вуза: теоретический и практический аспекты

The study aims to identify ways to improve the quality of foreign language vocabulary acquisition by students of the “Foreign Language” training programme specialisation. The paper examines the peculiarities of teaching the lexical aspect of a foreign language, focuses, on the one hand, on the objective difficulties of learning new lexical units, on the other hand, on the importance of forming a sufficient active vocabulary in students. The researcher notes that students poorly memorise new foreign language vocabulary, sheds light on some reasons for this phenomenon, using statistical data of the study. One of the main reasons is the insufficient use of rational techniques for teaching foreign language vocabulary in the learning process. Further, the paper analyses a number of rational techniques for memorising foreign words, provides data on the extent to which these techniques are used by students, offers methodological recommendations for improving the quality of foreign language vocabulary acquisition. Scientific novelty of the study lies in an attempt to consider in a full and comprehensive manner the issue of memorising foreign language lexical units from the perspective of involuntary memorisation and avoiding traditional mechanical memorisation. As a result of the study, a number of rational techniques for memorising foreign language vocabulary that can help foreign language learners convert lexical units to memorise into long-term memory more effectively and quickly have been identified. Given that students of the “Foreign Language” training programme specialisation mostly memorise vocabulary mechanically and the potential of rational techniques for memorising foreign language vocabulary is not used enough in the educational process of foreign language teaching, which is confirmed by the data of the study, the paper provides some methodological recommendations for a more effective organisation of the process of foreign language vocabulary acquisition.

A mixed-methods study of the incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary and healthcare knowledge through serious game play

While the study of serious games has received due attention, few studies have investigated their potentials of simultaneously offering a route to both content and language acquisition. Understanding the interdisciplinary educational affordance of serious game play is significant, as it might provide game designers and teachers with insight into how to best design and implement serious games. In our study, the serious game Saving Lives was used to teach healthcare knowledge and English vocabulary to Iranian nursing students in an experimental group (N = 80), while control group students were taught healthcare knowledge and English vocabulary using traditional methods (N = 80). Using a mixed-methods approach (pre- and post-tests, an open- and closed-ended questionnaire), intentional content learning, incidental vocabulary acquisition, and learners’ perceptions of digital game play were investigated. Results showed statistically significant improvement in participants’ healthcare knowledge and incidental vocabulary acquisition in the experimental group compared to the control group. Vocabulary and content knowledge gains in the experimental group were the result of students’ positive attitudes toward game play, the multimodal contextual clues provided during game play, and repetitive exposure to target words in the game instructions. Using serious games to integrate content and language teaching for specific purposes, such as nursing, was found to be both a viable option for teachers and a preferable medium for fostering students’ learning and engagement.

Effectiveness of virtual reality game in foreign language vocabulary acquisition

This study explored the influence of the virtual reality (VR) game House of Languages on the English as a Foreign Language (EFL) vocabulary acquisition of intermediate school students. A quasi-experimental design helped determine the impact of the VR intervention on the learning process over the traditional EFL vocabulary acquisition method. A nonrandom convenience sample of (n = 64) male students was divided into an experimental group and control group; each group contained (n = 32) students. The findings from this study of independent t-tests at the end of the experimental period indicated that students using the VR game House of Languages had greater achievement in vocabulary acquisition than those using the traditional method of vocabulary acquisition. This study seeks to create awareness among educators that the use of the new VR technology as an effective vocabulary acquisition method in the learning process could be engaged to improve vocabulary acquisition and go beyond previous methods to enhance the degree of achievement in classroom.

Video Games: Their Influence on English as a Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

In this particular project, a four-week video game-based activity is proposed, using videogames as main sources to improve participants' vocabulary. Moreover, the data gathered in the project is triangulated by using tests, teacher's journal, and students' journal during the four weeks. The project aims to demonstrate the bond between videogames and vocabulary acquisition as well as breaking the superstition that videogames cannot be helpful in EFL contexts. Besides, during the activity, students are asked to play two games, Scribblenauts and Age of Empires II. Consequently, the research tries to understand and analyze the process and roles students and teachers develop through the usage of videogames in an EFL classroom; reflecting upon experiences from the games.

Psycholinguistic conditions in vocabulary acquisition

Present article examines the psycholinguistic factors that affect ease of learning foreign language vocabulary acquisition. Demonstrate the orthographic and phonological patterns of vocabulary acquisition.

Learning by Stimulation: Investigating the Effect of tDCS on Repetition Priming and Incidental Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition in Healthy Young Adults.

Learning by Stimulation: Investigating the Effect of tDCS on Repetition Priming and Incidental Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition in Healthy Young Adults.

Effects of the Word Presentation Modes on English Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

Effects of the Word Presentation Modes on English Foreign Language Vocabulary Acquisition

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

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