Incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary through brief multi-modal exposure

Bisson, Marie-Jos�e; van Heuven, Walter J.B.; Conklin, Kathy; Tunney, Richard J.

Abstract

First language acquisition requires relatively little effort compared to foreign language acquisition and happens more naturally through informal learning. Informal exposure can also benefit foreign language learning, although evidence for this has been limited to speech perception and production. An important question is whether informal exposure to spoken foreign language also leads to vocabulary learning through the creation of form-meaning links. Here we tested the impact of exposure to foreign language words presented with pictures in an incidental learning phase on subsequent explicit foreign language learning. In the explicit learning phase, we asked adults to learn translation equivalents of foreign language words, some of which had appeared in the incidental learning phase. Results revealed rapid learning of the foreign language words in the incidental learning phase showing that informal exposure to multi-modal foreign language leads to foreign language vocabulary acquisition. The creation of form-meaning links during the incidental learning phase is discussed.

Citation

Bisson, M., van Heuven, W. J., Conklin, K., & Tunney, R. J. (2013). Incidental acquisition of foreign language vocabulary through brief multi-modal exposure. PLoS ONE, 8(4), Article 7. https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060912

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Publication Date: Apr 8, 2013
• Deposit Date: Apr 14, 2014
• Publicly Available Date: Apr 14, 2014
• Journal: PLoS ONE
• Electronic ISSN: 1932-6203
• Publisher: Public Library of Science
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 8
• Issue: 4
• Article Number: 7
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0060912
• Public URL: https://nottingham-repository.worktribe.com/output/714559
• Publisher URL: http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0060912