Semantic Categories and Context in L2 Vocabulary Learning

Bolger, Patrick; Zapata, Gabriela

Abstract

This article extends recent findings that presenting semantically related vocabulary simultaneously inhibits learning. It does so by adding story contexts. Participants learned 32 new labels for known concepts from four different semantic categories in stories that were either semantically related (one category per story) or semantically unrelated (four categories per story). They then completed a semantic-categorization task, followed by a stimulus-match verification task in an eye-tracker. Results suggest that there may be a slight learning advantage in the semantically unrelated condition. However, our findings are better interpreted in terms of how learning occurred and how vocabulary was processed afterward. Additionally, our results suggest that contextual support from the stories may have surmounted much of the disadvantage attributed to semantic relatedness.

Citation

Bolger, P., & Zapata, G. (2011). Semantic Categories and Context in L2 Vocabulary Learning. Language Learning, 61(2), 614-646. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00624.x

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Nov 19, 2009
• Publication Date: 2011-06
• Deposit Date: Oct 3, 2024
• Journal: Language Learning
• Print ISSN: 0023-8333
• Electronic ISSN: 1467-9922
• Publisher: Wiley
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 61
• Issue: 2
• Pages: 614-646
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00624.x
• Keywords: vocabulary; context; semantics; eye movements; teaching methods
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/17087389
• Publisher URL: https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/j.1467-9922.2010.00624.x