Word Knowledge Research Articles

A comparison of contextualized and non-contextualized meaning-recall vocabulary test formats

Meaning-recognition and meaning-recall are two commonly-used test modalities to assess second language vocabulary knowledge for the purpose of reading. Although considerable variation in item format exists within each modality, previous research has examined this variation almost exclusively among meaning-recognition item types. This article reports on two exploratory studies, each comparing a fully-contextualized and a non-contextualized meaning-recall variant for one specific testing purpose: coverage-comprehension research. The fully-contextualized test utilized the same 622-word passage in each study. In the non-contextualized tests, target words appeared in short, non-defining sentences; in Study A, the elicited response was a translation of only the target item while in Study B, it was the entire prompt sentence. Scores on the compared tests differed significantly only in Study A. In both studies, the consistency with which the compared item formats yielded the same outcome (correct or incorrect) when the same target word was encountered by the same learner was rather low. The provision of relatively authentic context sometimes seemed to aid lexical inferencing, but other times it increased task difficulty relative to the limited-context formats. These findings suggest that different meaning-recall formats could lead to different conclusions regarding knowledge of specific words, and this could impact coverage-comprehension research findings.

Productive vocabulary knowledge in L2 German: Which word-related variables matter?

In vocabulary research, factors affecting second/foreign language (L2) receptive vocabulary have been investigated extensively. However, few studies have examined factors affecting productive knowledge (i.e., form recall), especially concerning Languages Other Than English (LOTEs). Moreover, not much is known about the influence of time on L2 learners' productive single word knowledge. Nevertheless, it is crucial to understand which variables affect productive vocabulary learning in order to optimize the learning process. A 3-year longitudinal study was conducted with Dutch-speaking university learners of German (N = 64) to investigate to what extent time, frequency, cognateness, concreteness, and age of acquisition (AoA) play a role in the development of productive single word knowledge in L2 German. Results revealed that time, frequency, cognateness, and AoA together explained 28% of the variance. L2 frequency was found to be the main predictor for L2 form recall. Cognateness also played a role, although the impact was lower compared to the findings of studies on receptive vocabulary knowledge. Concreteness did not affect L2 learners’ form recall scores. Based on the results of the study, suggestions for materials and pedagogical implications will be discussed.

Matthew effect in vocabulary and reading: A comparison of good and average readers in Grade 1 to Grade 3

There is quite a large body of research about the influence that vocabulary plays in poor comprehenders reading. Yet, little is known about the role of vocabulary in good comprehenders’ reading skills. In the present study, third graders with a one-year advantage in reading comprehension (N = 105) were compared to average comprehenders (N = 177) in terms of vocabulary knowledge at three timepoints (Grade 1 to 3). Vocabulary was operationalized as vocabulary breadth (receptive and expressive) and vocabulary depth in form of semantic word knowledge. Latent growth models showed a superiority of good over average comprehenders both cross-sectionally and longitudinally in all assessed vocabulary skills. Moreover, the impact of vocabulary skills on sentence and text reading increased significantly from Grade 1 to Grade 3 in both groups. These results substantiate the increasing importance of vocabulary skills on reading comprehension yielding a Matthew effect.

The Effects of Multimodal Teaching on English Vocabulary Knowledge of Thai Primary School Students

It is increasingly prevalent in digital learning and teaching strategies for discerning a global perspective on creating the student learning experience. Multimodality is an emergent phenomenon that may influence how digital learning is designed, especially during the COVID-19 pandemic in which immersive learning environments, such as a virtual learning platform, were employed. This immersive platform may assist learners in engaging in, paying attention to, and reflecting on their learning. This quasi-experimental study examined the effects of multimodal teaching on primary school learners’ English vocabulary and their attitude toward the learning environment. The participants were 59 primary school students in the northeastern part of Thailand. They were divided into two groups: experimental and control groups. The former consisted of 33 students, while the latter comprised 26. Following Nation’s (2013) word knowledge framework, two tests were developed to measure participants’ receptive and productive knowledge of the words. L2 vocabulary scholars validated the tests, and the reliability of the tests was checked using Cronbach’s alpha coefficient. The questionnaire was also developed to explore the participants’ attitudes toward using multimodal teaching methods to improve their vocabulary knowledge. The results showed that although both groups increased their vocabulary knowledge, the statistical analysis revealed that the multimodal teaching technique significantly enhanced participants’ receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The results also indicated that primary school participants had a positive attitude toward using multimodal teaching methods to improve their vocabulary knowledge. The current study suggests that the multimodal teaching method effectively improves Thai primary school learners’ receptive and productive word knowledge and helps them learn new vocabulary.

Multimodal languaging: Reification profiles in language and gesture

Abstract The paper explores multimodal languaging of objects and words as an encultured practice. We report the results of the experiment where the participants explained the difference between close synonyms, enacting them as either objects or words in speech and gesture. The basic claim of the study is that speech and gesture as second-order language reflect the way they were acquired in developing the knowledge of objects and words in reification image-schemas. We found that i) object reification occurs twice more often; ii) enacting objects and words is affected by the same image-schemas expressed in speech and gesture types, still there are differences in their distribution in speech. This observation evidences that both gesture-specific and language-specific notions are part of languaging since the speech and gesture patterns present the way of packaging the shared idea of objects of reference.

Assessing the size of non-Māori-speakers' active Māori lexicon.

Most non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders are regularly exposed to Māori throughout their lives without seeming to build any extensive Māori lexicon; at best, they know a small number of words which are frequently used and sometimes borrowed into English. Here, we ask how many Māori words non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders know, in two ways: how many can they identify as real Māori words, and how many can they actively define? We show that non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders can readily identify many more Māori words than they can define, and that the number of words they can reliably define is quite small. This result adds crucial support to the idea presented in earlier work that non-Māori-speaking New Zealanders have implicit form-based (proto-lexical) knowledge of many Māori words, but explicit semantic (lexical) knowledge of few. Building on this distinction, we further ask how different levels of word knowledge modulate effects of phonotactic probability on the accessing of that knowledge, across both tasks and participants. We show that participants' implicit word knowledge leads to effects of phonotactic probability-and related effects of neighbourhood density-in a word/non-word discrimination task, but not in a more explicit task that requires the active definition of words. Similarly, we show that the effects of phonotactic probability on word/non-word discrimination are strong among participants who appear to lack explicit word knowledge, as indicated by their weak discrimination performance, but absent among participants who appear to have explicit word knowledge, as indicated by their strong discrimination performance. Together, these results suggest that phonotactic probability plays its strongest roles in the absence of explicit semantic knowledge.

The Students’ Development of Discourse Competence in the Elementary Chinese Courses for International Learners

Based on the theoretical approaches to interlanguage and discourse cohesiveness, this study examines international students' growth in discourse awareness and discourse competence in the teaching of elementary Chinese reading and writing, and explores a set of assessment methods for teaching discourse. The learners' knowledge and production of Chinese conjunctive words were assessed with multiple test methods, including the sentence sequencing test for testing learners' cognitive understanding of discourse cohesiveness, the elicitation tasks for assessing learners' production of conjunctive words, the tests of picture-based sentence writing and essay writing for evaluating learners' discourse awareness of the cohesiveness in form and meaning. 13 students were recruited by us to participate in these tests. A comprehensive discussion of the data supports that appropriate reading and writing instruction can develop learners' discourse competence and enhance their discourse awareness to a certain extent.

Can Japanese learners of English comprehend inflectional and derivational forms in listening? Testing the validity of the word family counting unit

AbstractIn second language (L2) research, the lexical unit is often defined as a base word plus inflectional and derivational forms through Level 6 of Bauer and Nation's framework (WF6). WF6 use has been justified by the assumption that once a form is known, recognition of other WF6 members requires little extra effort. A more lenient view holds that an incomplete understanding of derivational forms is permissible if words containing the most frequent derivational affixes are known. This study assessed the validity of these views for L2 listening. Participants (N = 120) provided translations of 27 base words and 43 related affixational forms when listening. When participants knew one form (either the base word or an affixed form) they also knew the other just 25.1% of the time. For target words containing the most frequent derivational affixes, this was just 26.5%. Logistic regression found that learners’ overall vocabulary level, several aspects of word frequency, and base word knowledge were all significant predictors of knowing affixed forms. However, when other variables were held constant, base word knowledge was a weak predictor of affixational form knowledge. These findings support neither the strict assumption nor the more lenient view of WF6 use for L2 listening among study participants.

A Longitudinal Study of Swedish Upper Secondary School Students’ Vocabulary Development

The importance of vocabulary is stressed as a central aspect of language learning. The aim of this investigation1 was to study how lexical input from a textbook and use of individual vocabulary notebooks affected Swedish upper secondary school students’ vocabulary acquisition by answering the three following research questions: What frequency levels are represented in the vocabulary taught in the textbook? To what extent does the productive vocabulary knowledge of the group, as measured by the Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT), change after exposure to the textbook? To what extent did the students benefit from the vocabulary notebooks? Firstly, a corpus of texts from the textbook was created and analysed to establish the frequency levels of the vocabulary in the corpus. Laufer and Nation’s Vocabulary Levels Test was then used to establish the group’s productive vocabulary knowledge. Lastly, the effectiveness of the vocabulary notebook was examined. The results indicate that the particular textbook was well-suited in terms of frequency levels and the students’ knowledge of K3 words improved, but the vocabulary notebook was not found to be effective.

Why Are Causal and Temporal Connectives Difficult to Understand? A Comparison Between Italian Hearing Good and Poor Comprehenders and Deaf Poor Comprehenders.

Both hearing poor comprehenders (PCs) and deaf or hard-of-hearing (DHH) PCs have problems in understanding causal and temporal coherence relations signaled by connectives. The study examined whether hearing and DHH PCs' problems with connective understanding are similar and mainly related to their limited vocabulary, including knowledge of connective words, or to their poor reading comprehension abilities more generally. Three groups of 7- to 10-year-old readers, matched on grade level (hearing PCs, DHH PCs, and hearing good comprehenders [GCs]) performed a reading comprehension task, a vocabulary task, and causal and temporal connective understanding tasks. Hearing and DHH PCs were also matched on reading comprehension and decoding abilities. The DHH PCs performed significantly worse than both the hearing GCs and PCs in temporal and causal connective understanding. Significant differences between hearing PCs and GCs were found only in causal connective understanding. DHH readers' difficulties in causal connective understanding were significantly associated with poorer vocabulary knowledge. In contrast, vocabulary knowledge did not uniquely contribute to hearing PCs' difficulties with causal connective understanding, once their reading comprehension skills were controlled for. The results suggest that despite a similar reading profile, DHH PCs' difficulties with causal connective understanding are more closely related to their vocabulary delay, whereas hearing PCs' difficulties are more strongly influenced by their poor text integration processes (as indexed by their reading comprehension skills). Neither vocabulary knowledge nor reading comprehension skills contributed to the explanation of DHH readers and hearing PCs' temporal connective understanding.

Contributions toward Understanding the Acquisition of Eight Aspects of Vocabulary Knowledge

With the intent of adding to the literature leading toward a more complete theory of second language vocabulary acquisition, this study elicited accuracy data from 110 ESL learners ranging from novice high to advanced low on 64 words randomly selected in the 2K–3K range of Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) (32 verbs, 24 nouns, 8 adjectives) covering eight aspects of word knowledge. These included spelling based on hearing the spoken form, selecting collocations based on the written form, pronunciation based on the written form, selecting inflections based on the written context, selecting the definition based on hearing the spoken form, selecting the written definition based on the written form, selecting appropriate derivations based on the written form, and selecting the written form based on the written definition. ANOVA results show accuracy levels varied across word knowledge aspects and that implicational scaling was possible with some but not all aspects of word knowledge examined simultaneously. In aggregation with other current and future studies, this has important implication for developing L2 vocabulary acquisition theory.

Parent Certainty and Consistency When Completing Vocabulary Checklists in Young Autistic Children.

Using a novel parent report measure, this study investigated whether asking parents to rate their certainty when reporting on child vocabulary skills provided additional insight into parent report and emerging language abilities in young autistic children. Specifically, we investigated whether parent certainty varied based on whether the child was reported to understand, understand and say, or neither understand nor say the word and whether standardized measures of expressive and receptive language abilities and/or autistic traits predicted parent certainty. Lastly, we investigated whether certainty was associated with inconsistency in parent report of child word knowledge. Twenty-one parents and their autistic children ages 2-5 years participated. One parent per child completed the MacArthur-Bates Communicative Development Inventories (MCDI) Words and Gestures form and a custom vocabulary checklist including 24 object nouns from the MCDI. Within the custom form, parents indicated whether their child understood, understood and said, or neither understood nor said 24 target nouns and reported how certain they were about their responses using a 5-point scale. Expressive language, receptive language, and autistic traits were measured via direct assessment using standardized measures. Parent certainty varied widely and was higher for words the parents reported the children understood and said compared to that for words children either understood or neither understood nor said. Certainty ratings were higher when a child had higher standardized receptive and expressive language scores. Lastly, parent certainty was associated with reporting consistency, clarifying previous findings of inconsistencies in parent report of child vocabulary. Findings from this study indicate that measuring parent certainty provides critical information when assessing early vocabulary skills in autistic children. https://doi.org/10.23641/asha.23671497.

The effects of text-based and audio-based dynamic glosses on L2 vocabulary learning: a dynamic assessment approach

ABSTRACT The present study investigated the effects of text-based and audio-based dynamic glosses on L2 vocabulary learning within a sociocultural approach. Dynamic glosses were operationalised as a set of incrementally ordered prompts, provided during text-based and audio-based interactions that guided the participants to identify the meaning of unknown vocabulary. Fifty-seven EFL learners were assigned to three experimental groups – dynamic text-based, dynamic audio-based and traditional glosses – as well as a control condition. The participants of the two dynamic glossing conditions received dynamic glosses via written ‘chat’ or orally for a number of unknown words while reading a text. In addition to a non-dynamic post-test, a computerised dynamic assessment tool was also designed to investigate learners’ mediated and unmediated knowledge of the target words following the treatment sessions. The results provided evidence for the efficacy of both text-based and audio-based dynamic glosses for L2 vocabulary learning. The analysis of learners’ mediated and unmediated scores calculated by the computerised tool also revealed that the learners’ mediated scores provide valuable information for assessing learners’ vocabulary knowledge. In particular, the findings suggested that text-based dynamic glosses could result in higher mediated scores compared to the audio-based dynamic glosses.

EXPLORING THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN WORD KNOWLEDGE AND EFFECTIVE COMMUNICATION

Many studies have explored strategies to master word knowledge and communication in English as a Foreign Language (EFL), but only a few have yielded satisfying findings regarding the correlation between these two domains. This research aimed to investigate the significant correlation between English word knowledge proficiency and communication skills. An Ex Post Facto research design was employed, involving a sample of 40 students selected from a total of 150 students at SMK PGRI 3 Badung. Tests were administered to measure the variables, and the data were analyzed using SPSS 25.0 to determine the correlation between English word knowledge mastery and communication skills. The results indicated a significant positive correlation between students' English word knowledge proficiency and their communication skills. These findings imply that a higher level of word knowledge mastery is associated with enhanced communication abilities, highlighting the importance of word knowledge acquisition in facilitating effective communication.

A study on the emergence of sound-sign correspondence in Italian-speaking 5-year-old pre-schoolers

This study investigates the emergence of sound-sign correspondence in Italian-speaking 5-year-old pre-schoolers. There are few experimental studies on the precursors of reading and writing skills and those existing mainly focus on letter knowledge or logographic processing of words in pre-schoolers. This paper evaluates and compares 5-year-old children’s use of the logographic processing or the use of sound-sign processing to decode target words in original and modified versions. Furthermore, we verify whether pre-schoolers’ type of reading words (logographic versus sound-sign processing) vary in accordance with children’s socio-cultural differences (i.e., type of school and socio-cultural information from parents). This study tested 94 children (M-age = 5 years and 8 months) at the end of the last year of preschool. Six stimulus logos were used to evaluate children’s ability to decode words and the type of decoding (logographic or sound-sign processing). The Chi-square results confirm that the achievement of the correspondence between sound-sign at the base of reading and writing has already started in preschool. Our findings shed light on a significant proportion of pre-schoolers who can already read words via sound-sign processing or show the emergence of notational awareness, while the others still rely on logographic processing. Moreover, the results show that pre-schoolers’ notational awareness is related to socio-cultural characteristics pertaining to schools and families. These findings suggest that 5 years is an important age for the disentanglement between logographic and sound-sign correspondence in pre-schoolers and provide useful implications for theory and practice.

Using structural equation modeling to examine the relationship between receptive vocabulary knowledge and receptive language proficiency: A new light on an old issue

AbstractIn recent years, applied linguists have paid more attention to the contributory roles of vocabulary knowledge in language subskills. However, little evidence has been collected to shed light upon the cross‐modality relationship between the two modalities of receptive word knowledge, namely phonological and orthographic vocabulary, and receptive language skills, namely reading and listening comprehension. Moreover, the majority of studies conducted on the topic only examined the bivariate correlations between the modalities and did not take the shared variance of the constructs into account, making their findings superficial. The present study analyzed a dataset which reported the performance of 234 students on two validated tests of receptive phonological and orthographic vocabulary knowledge and two standardized tests of listening and reading proficiency. Multi‐group, covariance‐based structural equation modeling was applied. Results from the analyses showed that both aural and orthographic knowledge of words were of equal importance to learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge. While whole‐group results revealed that vocabulary knowledge contributed equally to learners’ reading and listening proficiency, multi‐group analyses indicated noticeable differences in the contributory role of receptive word knowledge in comprehension between learners of different vocabulary size groups. The role of vocabulary size in the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension was discussed and practical implications for vocabulary assessment were provided.

Pemberian Pembelajaran Ekstrakurikuler Mata Pelajaran PAI Di SDN 79 Lajae

Extracurricular learning is the process of providing assistance to students in order to overcome the problems they face and to deepen their understanding of learning materials, especially religious basics, this is the basis for community service at SDN 79 Lajae because based on the results of observations made, the authors found that grade VI students still did not understand on basic religious material, especially in terms of the procedures for performing ablution and prayer, strengthening the material for the pillars of faith and the pillars of Islam, and providing material on moral aqidah. The importance of Islamic religious education for adolescents, one of which is applied in formal education, in this case elementary school, at this level of education, students are in a fertile situation to construct their religious understanding. The method used is the lecture method. The implementation of additional extracurricular activities is able to make further enhance their religious understanding. The implementation of providing additional learning shows that students experience an increase in knowledge in other words the lecture

The Implementation of Academic Word List and Its Implication to the Improvement of EFL Students’ Academic Writing Quality

The research aimed to investigate the effectiveness or ineffectiveness in implementing an academic word list and its implication for improving English as a Foreign Language (EFL) students’ writing quality. Academic Word List (AWL) played an important role in expanding the student’s academic vocabulary knowledge. Basically, an academic word list was considered one of the effective ways to reduce students’ errors in writing. The research was proposed to review several related preceding studies, and the data found were described qualitatively. From the research conducted, it is found that fifteen out of eighteen studies (83,33%) confirm that the implementation of academic word lists provides a significant contribution to the improvement of students’ writing quality. On the other hand, three out of eighteen studies (16,67%) confirm that implementing an academic word list does not significantly contribute to improving students’ academic word knowledge. This may be attributable to the given portion of the academic word list utilized as supplementary material, and it can only be used outside the classroom without any teacher guidance. The result shows that implementing the academic word list may act as an effective/ineffective tool for improving students’ academic writing quality based on the portion and utilization of this tool in the course.

Building word knowledge through integrated vocabulary explanations in ESL tutorials

This conversation analytic study explores how a tutor and tutees collaboratively negotiate word knowledge in English as a second language (ESL) tutorials. Specifically, we focus on integrated vocabulary explanations, where explaining the meaning and use of a word is intertwined with teaching its spelling and pronunciation. The data come from 18 hours of dyadic and multi-party tutorials held at an urban community college in the USA. The findings show that for the participants such aspects of word knowledge as orthography, pronunciation, associations, connotations, syntax and grammatical functions form an essential part of vocabulary work. Notably, we argue that negotiations of these integrated vocabulary explanations are realized through multimodal resources, drawing on linguistic, prosodic, embodied and material resources, among others. The findings highlight the unique context of these ESL tutorials that affords individualization and immediacy, enabling tutors to be responsive to the tutees’ second language (L2) learning needs. The study also has implications for tutor education and classroom instruction with regard to the development of L2 word knowledge.

Learning Spelling From Meaning.

According to the instance-based approach, each novel word encounter is encoded as an episodic trace, including different aspects of word knowledge (orthography, semantics, phonology) and context. Experiencing the novel word again leads to reactivating the previous instances to support word identification. Accordingly, once a link between orthography and meaning is established through several instances of co-occurrence, presenting the novel word form enhances semantic learning even if the contexts are uninformative about the meaning (Eskenazi et al., 2018). Here, we investigated whether informative contexts enhance orthographic learning in the absence of the novel word form. Participants read pseudowords in three definition-like sentences, followed by three unrelated filler sentences (baseline condition), three uninformative sentences (orthographic condition), or three informative sentences with synonyms replacing the pseudoword (semantic condition). After reading, participants were better at spelling pseudowords exposed in the semantic than in the baseline condition and recalled more definitions of the pseudowords exposed in the orthographic than in the baseline condition. Such results indicate that both semantic and orthographic learning benefit from the contexts where the target information is absent. Overall, this supports the instance-based approach and contributes to the understanding of the interplay between orthography and semantics in contextual word learning.