Paul Meara_Vocabulary Acquisition

8/12/2019 Paul Meara_Vocabulary Acquisition

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Vocabulary acquisition: a neglected aspect of language learning.

Paul Meara

Introduction

Vocabulary acquisition is part of the psychology of second language learning that has

received short shrift from applied linguistics, and has been very largely neglected by

recent developments in research. This neglect is all the more striing in that learners

themselves readily admit that they e!perience considerable difficulty "ith vocabulary,and once they have got over the initial stages of acquiring their second language, most

learners identify the acquisition of vocabulary as their greatest single source of

problems.

This article is an attempt to redress this neglect. #t summarises the current "or being

done on vocabulary acquisition, and dra"s attention to a number of studies carried out

by e!perimental psychologists "hich may have implications for the development of

vocabulary in the second language. The article ends "ith a number of questions "hich

have not been investigated in any depth, but "hich seem to me to be "orth looing at

more closely.

A: Bibliographies and general works

$espite the comments above about the general level of neglect in the study of

vocabulary acquisition, there do e!ist a number of bibliographies of relevance to

anybody "oring in this field. The most important of these is $ale and %a&i 19'(, a

very e!tensive "or, not primarily concerned "ith foreign language acquisition, but

containing three relevant subsections "ith some 1)0 references. The 19'( edition of this

"or is actually a re"oring of an earlier edition, and this may account for the fact that

most of the references relate to second language "or carried out in the 19(0s. The most

recent bibliography dealing specifically "ith *+ vocabulary acquisition is T"omey 199.

This "or is patchy in its coverage, ho"ever, and a fuller bibliography, using a largerdatabase, is in preparation -Meara, in prep..

The principal impression that emerges from these bibliographies is that research in

vocabulary acquisition has been largely atheoretical and unsystematic. There are no

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clear theories of vocabulary acquisition, and the level of research activity is in general

fairly lo". T"omey, for instance, contains a large number of references "hich are short

articles aimed at providing practical tips for teachers concerned "ith particular items of

vocabulary for a particular target audience -e.g. /ro"n 19 Martin 19' 2alt 19'%idout 19, and on the "hole, research in the field has avoided the serious theoretical

questions that arise once one moves a"ay from this very basic level.

3 number of generalised approaches to vocabulary acquisition do e!ist. 4alisson 190

discusses vocabulary teaching at length, and considers the effectiveness of different

types of vocabulary learning e!ercises. These ideas are e!panded in 4alisson 199. 3n

approach to vocabulary teaching based on contrasting le!ical structure is to be found in

5olec 19 -cf. also $agut, 19, for a shorter argument on the same lines. T"o other

large6scale "ors, $ale, 7%oure and /amman 191 and 7%oure 19 are also "orth

mentioning at this stage. They are both concerned e!clusively "ith first languagevocabulary development, but the ideas discussed are clearly of some relevance to second

language learners.

The also e!ists a number of shorter articles "hich dra" attention to the need for further

"or on vocabulary acquisition. Marton 19 discusses the problems of idioms, "hich

he sees as the biggest obstacle to fluent comprehension in advance learners. *ord 19

dra"s attention to the importance of *eopolds 198 study of semantic development in a

bilingual child -cf. also oshida 198 for an empirical study along these same lines. 3

brief but e!cellent critique of vocabulary research is *evenston 199, "ho reiterates a

number of points made in this paper, criticising applied linguistics for its general neglect

of vocabulary learning in favour of the study of syntactic development. *evenston

discusses a number of research pro:ects "hich have only recently begun, and "hich are

therefore difficult to assess satisfactorily. These include *evenstons o"n "or, -/lum

and *evenston 198 and *evenston and /lum 19, "here it is argued that the le!ical

simplification strategies used by learners may follo" universal rules and *innarud

199, "ho suggests that foreign language learners may have characteristically lo" levels

of vocabulary richness compared to normal speaers. -7n this use of type toen ratios as

a measure of learners vocabulary cf. also ;ebber 19,


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B: Vocabulary control

The best developed and most systematic "or in the field is to be found in attempts to

:ustify the selection of vocabulary items for inclusion in courses and e!aminations on the

basis of frequency counts and similar ob:ective measures. This "or is too "ell6no"nto need discussion here. 4ood summaries can be found in /ongers 19 Macey 19')

and 2yracuse =niversity %esearch >orporation 19(.

$espite their obvious merits, frequency counts are no" very much out of favour "ith

applied linguists -cf. ;ilins, 19+, for a fairly typical criticism of this sort approach. #n

contrast to the very carefully chosen vocabulary of earlier course boos, many modern

boos appeared to rely almost entirely on sub:ective assessments of the usefulness of

"ords. Van ? -19, for instance, contains no discussion of "hat criteria "ere used for

the inclusion of "ords in the Threshold *evel vocabulary -cf. also 5offman 19'. #n

general, language teachers seem to be una"are of more recent developments in "ordcounts. ;estsGeneral Service List19)( is often cited by publishers and e!amining boards

as guiding their choice of "ords in readers and e!aminations for learners in ?nglish, for

e!ample, despite the fact that both this list and the related Thorndie6*orge list have

no" been superseded by the more recent @ucera6Arancis count -@ucera and Arancis

19'. %ecent counts for a number of other languages commonly taught to learners also

e!ist, and ought to be more "idely no"n. These include Builland and >hang6

%odrigue& 19' for 2panish Builland, /rodin and $avido"itch 190 for Arench and

Builland and Traversa 19( for #talian. 3n important feature that differentiates most of

these modern counts from their earlier counterparts is the use of computers in their

preparation. 3ll the early counts "ere carried out by hand -the Thorndie6*orge count

"as in fact begun during the $epression as a "ay of providing "or for the

unemployed, and "ere accordingly both e!pensive and slo" to reach completion. The

rapid processing facilitated by computers maes it possible to produce "ord counts at

minimal cost, and to eep them regularly updated.

This use of computers to carry out simple statistical analyses of te!ts is a development

"hich is liely to be of some importance to language teachers, as it has considerable

implications for the preparation teaching materials. >omputer programs "hich "ill do

"ord counts and similar basic statistics on continuous te!t have e!isted for some time,

and they are no" beginning to appear in the form of easy6to6use pacages, designed for

amateurs "ith no real e!perience of computer programming, and they require onlyminimal instruction before they can be used. 3n e!cellent e!ample of an easy to use

pacage of this sort is the Oxford Concordance Project -5oceyand Marriott 199680

/urnard, 5ocey and Marriott 199. This pacage produces basic "ord counts for te!ts

of any reasonable length, alphabetical listings, frequency listings, concordances "ith

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conte!ts of specified lengths, and so forth. Though the pacage is primarily aimed at

literary scholars, its uses are of course not limited to literary te!ts. #t could also be used,

for e!ample, to provide accurate frequency counts of the vocabulary used in special6

purpose situations or to prepare a glossary to accompany set te!t, and so forth. =se oftools of this ind seems liely to become increasingly important in the preparation

teaching materials -cf. *yne and 19) >ulhane 19 and Bohnson 19+. 3n interesting

general introduction to this sort of "or is Morton 199.

This outline of research into vocabulary control and selection has been deliberately brief,

and is not intended to be a comprehensive one. 7n the "hole this "or is "ell6no"n

and reasonably familiar. My main reason for raising it here is because "or of this type

has played such a preponderant part in the study of vocabulary acquisition that no

revie" "ould be complete "ithout at least a cursory mention. 5o"ever, the "or is

also important because it illustrates t"o aspects of research into vocabulary acquisition"hich are characteristic of the field is "hole, and therefore deserve further comment. #n

the first place, this "or is characteristic in that it concentrates on "hat is basically a

problem to do "ith the management of learning, rather than "ith the learning process

itself 6 i.e. the ob:ect of this type of research is to decide "hat "ords are to be taught, not

to find out ho" "ords are actually learned. This is an important point, and "ill be

returned to later at the end of the ne!t section. #n the second place, this "or also

illustrates ho" easy it is to fall into the trap of accepting uncritically a "hole set of

assumptions, and to design a large research programme around these assumptions,

"ithout ever calling their validity into question. #n this case, the central assumption is

that it really is necessary to place a severely restricted upper limit on the number of

"ords that the learners can reasonably be e!pected to acquire in a foreign language.

2ome simple arithmetic indicates that a vocabulary of +000 "ords could be learned in 11

months if ne" "ords "ere acquired at a rate si! per day. This figure does not appear to

be "ildly e!cessive, given "hat "e no" about the capacity of the brain to acquire ne"

information. Cevertheless, most teachers "ould undoubtedly consider +000 "ords to be

"ell beyond the capacity of many learners, even over a five6year course instruction -cf.

for instance, ;iclo" 19, and /arnard 191, "here these assumptions are made quite

e!plicit. Co doubt there is some practical :ustification, based on e!perience, for this

general belief that learners cannot easily acquire a large foreign language vocabulary in

a short space of time, but the theoretical basis for this agreement is by no means clear.

This is obviously an area in "hich further research "ould be most useful.

C. Mnemonics

The second ma:or area of research to be discussed is one "hich has, in a "ay, addressed

itself to this problem, challenging the assumption that massive vocabularies cannot be


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acquired by introducing mnemonic techniques into the teaching of vocabulary.

The best studied of these methods is the ey"ord method "hich has been the ob:ect of

considerable attention in the last fe" years particularly in the =nited 2tates -3tinsonand %augh 19) 3tinson 19) %augh and 3tinson and 19 3/3**7

-pronounced cob6eye6oh DsicE might be lined to ?nglish ?? and ?? to 57%2? via

the image of horse "ith a great side cyclopean eye in the middle of its forehead. 7r

more prosaically, >3/3**7 might be lined to the ?nglish "ord >3/, "hich in turn

"ould be lined to 57%2? via the image of horse dra"ing a cab. The papers listedabove report a number of e!periments "hich compare more traditional "ays of learning

vocabulary -e.g. list repetition "ith this ey"ord method, and despite its initial

implausibility, present some impressive results in support of this sort of practice. %augh

and 3tinson -19, for e!ample, report that learners using the ey"ord method can

cope "ith very long list of "ords -'0 items and still get 80 percent correct on a

subsequent test, a figure that is considerably better than that produced by learners using

repetition and rehearsal methods. More importantly, the ey"ord groups preserve their

advantage over time, and sho" less evidence of forgetting than is found "ith control

groups.

This evidence is very impressive at first sight, but "or of this ind is actually rather

problematical at a deeper level, and needs to be treated "ith some caution. The most

obvious problem is that e!periments of this sort treat vocabulary items as discreet pairs

of translation equivalents, and completely ignore the comple! patterns of meaning

relationships that characterise a proper, fully formed le!icon, as opposed to a mere "ord

list. *earning vocabulary is not :ust a matter of acquiring translation equivalentsF it is

"ell6no"n that languages rarely map their le!ical items onto each other in a one6to6one

fashion. 2ome le!ical structuring must go on even "hen the shortest "ord list is

learned, and any vie" of vocabulary acquisition "hich treats the problem as a simple

matter of pairing "ords "ith their translation equivalents is an oversimplified one,

"hich cannot adequately account for ho" these semantic relationships are built up in aforeign language vocabulary. 3ll the e!perimental studies of vocabulary acquisition

"hich mae use of mnemonic devices are basically subscribing to model of paired

associate learning "hich does not seem to me to be sufficiently rich to account for "hat

is involved in the acquisition of a second language vocabulary -cf. for e!ample >rothers

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and 2uppes 19' "here a model of vocabulary acquisition based on paired associate

learning e!plicitly discussed.

3 second problem that characterises the ey"ord studies is that they are generally one6off e!periments that do not study real language learners in the course of learning a

language, but only sub:ects prepared to tae part in a small number of e!perimental

sessions in a laboratory setting. This means that the sub:ects tested often have initial

vocabulary of &ero, and it is unclear ho" far and results in such e!periments might be

generalisable to more advanced learners. More importantly, it means that the

comparison bet"een the ey"ord method and other methods is usually limited in

practice to methods that can also be contained "ithin a single e!perimental session, such

as rote learning by repetition. ;hether the ey"ord method is in the long6term more

effective than other methods "hich are not readily comparable "ith it, such as the 2ilent

;ay, or Total #mmersion, or even methods "hich place special emphasis on vocabularyacquisition such as 4ouins 2eries Technique -4ouin 1880 or /arters >omaparative

Method -/arter 190 /ecer 19, is typically a question "hich is not ased. #ndeed,

even "ithin its o"n terms of reference, the comparisons made are rather spurious. #t is

difficult to imagine that even the most ardent believers in rote learning methods might

require their students to use this method "ith lists containing '0 items. #t seems

important, then, that these laboratory tests should be complemented by properly

controlled longitudinal classroom tests, before their findings are "idely accepted.

3 third problem is that the ey"ord method is used principally in situations "here the

target language "ord is required to evoe the native language equivalent. The phonetic

lin idea seems to "or reasonably "ell in this respect, and the method does seem to

have some value as far as recognition vocabulary is concerned. The value of the method

for developing active vocabulary is much less clear, ho"ever, and it seems liely that the

practice of stressing crude phonetic similarities bet"een *1 "ords and target language

"ords "ould in the long6term have a serious detrimental effect on the pronunciation of

target language "ords.

3 final point to be made about this "or is that %augh and 3tinson, at least, have a

highly directive approach to the choice of ey"ords. 7ne might have e!pected that this

choice could easily be left to the individual learner, but %augh and 3tinson actually go

to some lengths to stress that not all ey"ords are equally effective, and only ey"ordssho"n by e!tensive research to be effective should be used.

3 more recent mnemonic technique is the 5oo ;ord technique, described by


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suffer some of the same problems as the ey"ord method. The same criticism also

applies to 7tt, /lae and /utler 19', "ho report a number of studies using elaborative

techniques -*ado, /ald"in and *obo 19' /utler, 7tt and /lae 19( @nop

1914roberg 19+ 5olley 191 cf also 2et&ler and >lar 19'.

. !eneral comments

2o far "e have covered t"o areas of research in the broad field of vocabulary

acquisition. These t"o areas may at first sight appear to be relatively unconnected. #n

fact, ho"ever, they are both lined in that they share common defectF their concern "ith

the peripheral aspects of vocabulary acquisition rather than central ones. #n the case of

research into the uses of frequency counts, "e have already seen ho" the management

of learning rather than an understanding ho" learning taes place and "hat it involves,

is the principal driving force behind the investigations reported. /asically, the learners

load is lightened for them by "oring out beforehand "hich "ords are liely to be ofuse to them, and "hich ones are not "orth the trouble of learning. ;hat happens to the

"ords that are learned is not in question. ;ith mnemonics, too, the emphasis is placed

squarely on the management of the learning process, the main theoretical questions

ased being ones concerned "ith the effectiveness of different forms of presentation.

/oth these approaches, then, are concerned "ith "hat is basically the periphery of

acquiring ne" vocabulary. et it must be obvious that these peripheral aspects,

important though they may be, leave unans"ered a large number of questions "hich

are of considerable relevance to our understanding of ho" vocabulary is acquired.

*earning ne" "ords is not an instantaneous process 6 if it "ere, and if presentation "ere

the only critical variable involved, then "ords "ould not be forgotten and need to be re6

learned. 3s it is, ho"ever, it seems that "ords are absorbed slo"ly over time, and that

only gradually do they become fully integrated into the learners personal stoc of

"ords, "hen they can use them "ith the same sort of fluency and that characterises the

"ords they use in their native language. 2ome "or that is relevant to this rather more

difficult question is discussed in the sections that follo".

There does e!ist a reasonably large body of e!perimental "or "hich has attempted to

investigate ho" bilingual speaers store "ords in their mental dictionaries. These

studies may not appear to be of direct relevance to language teaching and language

learning, but in fact their relevance is often greater then appears at first sight. Theirimportance lies in the fact that they provide us "ith some clues about "hat the end

product of learning a foreign language might consist of, and "hat sort of behaviour can

be e!pected of a fluent bilingual. #nformation of this ind should, in theory at least,

enable us to compare the behaviour of non6fluent bilinguals 6 i.e. language learners 6


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"ith that of fluent bilinguals, and so to mae inferences about the "ay a developing

vocabulary in a second language gro"s. /asically, this "or can provide us "ith a

model, albeit a setchy one, against "hich to assess the more limited abilities of less

fluent learners.

Most of the "or to be described in the ne!t sections is not ostensibly concerned "ith

foreign language learners the sub:ects used in these e!periments are usually balanced

bilinguals 6 i.e. speaers "ho are :udged to be equally fluent in both their languages.

The main purpose of this research has been to compare t"o types of bilinguals 6

compound and coordinate 6 a distinction first dra"n by ?rvin and 7sgood 19). ?rvin

and 7sgood argued that the "ay in "hich a language "as acquired might be e!pected

to produce different types of structuring in a bilinguals mental dictionary. >ompound

bilinguals, those "ho have acquired the t"o languages together in a single environment,

usually in infancy, might be e!pected to have a single set of meanings tagged by t"osets of labels, one for each language. #n contrast, ?rvin and 7sgood argued that

coordinate bilinguals, "ho learned their t"o languages in largely separate

environments, might develop "hat are effectively t"o separate le!icons, one for each

language, "hich function independently of each other.

3gain, this "or may not seem to be directly relevant to second language acquisition,

but the relevance is there, nonetheless. *ambert has argued that certain types of

teaching method may be more liely to produce behaviour characteristic of one type of

bilingual, rather than the other. $irect Method teaching, for instance, "hich tries to

eliminate reference to a learners mother tongue, might be more liely to produce the

learners "ith the characteristics of coordinate bilinguals. ?!perimental evidence to

support this claim is not available, ho"ever, and a rather different claim has been put

for"ard by %iegel 19'8. %iegel argues that this dichotomy is a false one, and that there

is actually a natural development from a sort of compound system to one "hich is closer

in ind to the classical coordinate model, irrespective of the language acquisition

bacground.

The reason "hy this "or is of some relevance to second language acquisition is that

many of the balanced bilinguals the used as sub:ects in these e!periments are actually

far from equally fluent in their t"o languages. #n fact, the criteria used to decide on an

acceptable level of ability in the second language are often ill defined and crude, and inpractice the term bilingual can mean anything from fully and equally fluent in both

languages, to someone "ho has only barely begun to acquire their second language and

could not be considered equally fluent by any stretch of the imagination. The

unsatisfactory nature of the tests used to measure second language fluency -often only

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self6ratings, or impressionistic :udgements made by the e!perimenter is a ma:or fla" in

this literature. #t does mean, ho"ever, that a number of the studies, despite their

pretensions, are actually concerned "ith ordinary language learners.

The "or to be considered in the ne!t sections fall into t"o partsF -a e!periments

concerned "ith the general question of "hether the bilinguals le!icons are separate or

independent, and -b e!periments concerned "ith the semantic relationships that e!ist

bet"een "ords in the bilinguals le!icons. 3 third area 6 the ability of bilinguals to

handle "ords in each of their t"o languages in very demanding situations such as

tachistoscopic recognition tass, or dichotic listening tass, and so forth 6 "ill not be

considered here, due to lac of space. #nterested readers are referred to 3lbert and

7bler 199, an e!cellent boo "ith a superb bibliography -though cf. 4reen and

Ce"man 1980 for critical revie". This "or suggests that there may be ma:or

differences bet"een stronger and "eaer languages, and provides some evidence for theclaim that second language "ords may be processed less effectively by certain parts of

the brain. #n particular, a number of studies suggest that there are hemispheric

asymmetries for different languages -cf. ;alters and Gatorre 198 for 2panish 5amers

and *ambert 19 for Arench @ershner and Beng 19+ for >hinese and 7rbach 19)( for

5ebre". This type of research is becoming increasingly sophisticated and influential

and loos lie becoming one of the ma:or gro"th areas in psycholinguistics in the

immediate future.

". Memory e#periments

The "or to be revie"ed in this section consists of a number of e!perimental studies

"hich have all attempted to test the claim that bilinguals have t"o separate,

independently functioning le!icons, rather than a single fully integrated one.

Aor reasons "hich are not "holly clear, this claim seems to have been most often

investigated by the use of memory tass, and in particular by the use of tass "here

interference from one language to another is observed. This is obviously a fairly crude

tool, and the results found in these e!periments are correspondingly limited. The

general line of argument is that if bilinguals t"o sets of "ords "ere stored totally

independently, then very little interference "ould be e!pected in tass that require

sub:ects to use both of their languages. ;here interference is found, this is usually

interpreted as supporting the claim that the t"o languages function interdependently,and are not "holly separated.

The more important studies of this ind are summarised in table 1. =seful discussions

of this "or "ill be found in 3lbert and 7bler 199 and Mc>ormac 19. The e!peri6

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$able %: &ist learning and recall tasks

Author &angs $ask Comments

LambertHavelka

Crossby

1958

Arench?nglish

*earn ?nglish "ord list*earn Arench "ord list or learn

nonsense "ord list

%ecall ?nglish "ord list

Aor compound bilinguals learning a Arenchlist facilitates recall of ?nglish "ords. Aor co6

ordinates, both interference tass are equally

disruptive

Ervin

1961

#talian

?nglish

Came pictures in ?nglish

or #talian


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mental methods may seem rather obscure, but in general they are techniques "hich

have been "idely used in e!periments "ith monolingual sub:ects, and "hich produce

robust results "hich are reasonably "ell understood.

The bul of the "or reported in table 1 is generally taen as supporting the

interdependence position, rather than the independence positionF i.e. it seems to support

the claim that "ords in a second language are indeed integrated in some "ay "ith

"ords in the first language to form a comple! "hole le!icon. The logic of this argument

is not al"ays as clear as it might be, ho"ever and some of the data argues strongly

against this position. Tulving and >olotla 190 for e!ample sho"ed that in mi!ed

language lists of "ords, recall "as much "orse than in single language lists, and that the

greater part of this deficit seems to be due to the fact that *1 "ords are handled less

satisfactorily in secondary memory than "ords from "eaer languages. This finding is

at odds "ith some of the other findings reported, and is not "hat "ould have beene!pected, but there are no obvious faults "ith this e!periment, and it therefore needs to

be taen seriously. 2ome of the other e!periments, particularly the ones that use

2panish as one of the languages tested, are rather less satisfactory and need to be treated

"ith some caution. The sub:ects in these studies are usually schoolchildren brought up

speaing 2panish as their mother tongue, but being taught ?nglish as the medium of

instruction in 3merican schools. Most of the sub:ects rated themselves as more fluent in

?nglish than in 2panish, and "ere thus classified as ?nglish dominant, but this seems

rather implausible. The use of self6ratings "ith sub:ects such as these seems to be an

unreliable method of assessment in vie" of the obvious pressure that sub:ects must be

under to overrate their competence in ?nglish and to underplay their abilities in

2panish.

4enerally speaing, the results of these studies sho" that sub:ects are a"are of the

language in "hich "ords are presented, and that they use language as a classifying label

more successfully than they use other more arbitrary coding features such as colour, but

this last finding is hardly surprising in vie" of the artificiality and unfamiliarity of the

colour coding tas -cf. Mc>ormac 19'. More interesting is the finding that it is much

harder to remember the language of presentation "hen languages and semantic

categories are confused, and the finding that sub:ects have some difficulty in recognising

"ords in a list as ne" ones "hen they have previously been presented in translated

form. These results sho" clearly than "hen some ind of cognitive operation other thansimple recall of the phonetic form is called for, it does become e!tremely difficult to eep

t"o languages apart. #n this sense, forms in one language clearly evoe the

corresponding related forms in the other language, a finding "hich "ould be very

difficult to e!plain if the independent le!icons claim "ere true.

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. -emantic tests

The "or reported in the previous section is rather unsatisfactory in that it all treats the

bilinguals le!icon as though it consisted of one or t"o undifferentiated "holes about

"hich it "as possible to mae s"eeping generalisations. There is, of course, no reasonto assume that all the "ords in the le!icon should behave in the same "ay as each other,

and :ust as "ords are differentiated in the le!icons of monolingual speaers in terms of

frequency, length, and other similar ob:ective characteristics, it is quite liely that similar

features may produce subsets of "ords in the bilinguals mental le!icon "hich also have

quite different behavioural properties.


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here. ;hat this "or sho"s, "ithout e!ception, is that interlingual conditions do sho"

strong evidence of interference, though less than "ould be e!pected in the case of

monolingual sub:ects. $yer sho"ed that the level of interference "as in part related to

the phonetic shape of the "ords. Thus, for ?nglish speaer, for e!ample "hen ased toname the "ord printed in red in, the 2panish "ord azul"ould be much less disruptive

than the Arench bleubecause of the similarity bet"een bleuand the ?nglish "ord blue.

7ther things being equal, ho"ever, the amount of interference caused by the foreign

language "ords appears to depend on the level of proficiency of the sub:ects, but this

correspondence has been measured only in very gross terms. 3gain, the logic of these

data is that they support the idea that bilinguals t"o le!icons are integrated into a single

"hole. 5o"ever, if bilinguals colour "ords in a second language "ere totally

integrated "ith their *1 colour "ords, then one "ould e!pect to find 2troop interference

equally great in either language. #n as much as the "eaer language produces less

interference, this suggests that "ords in second language are not fully integrated at thesemantic level, or at least than they are not treated "ith the fluency that is usually

accorded to first language "ords. 3 similar argument based on data using semantic

differentials in t"o languages is to be found in Baobovits and *ambert 19'1 and

*ambert and Baobovits 19'0.

7ne of the most accessible and most easily understood methods of studying the

structure of semantic relationships in bilingual le!icons is the use of "ord associations.

#n its simplest form, this technique involves the presentation of a number of single

"ords to the sub:ects participating, and they are then instructed to reply "ith the first

"ord that each of these stimulus "ords maes them thin of. The bul of the responses

produced in tass of this sort are note"orthy principally for their banality, at least as

long as unemotive, common "ords are used. Aar from being original, most peoples

responses are characteristically shared "ith a large proportion of the rest of the

population of normal adult native speaers -cf.


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Meara 1980

$able /. 0rincipal studies of word associations in a second language.

author language sub1ects main question

Lambert1956

?nglishArench

CH+native speaers and students

si!teen "ords in each language

continuous associations ) seconds

compared responses produced bygroups at different levels of

proficiency in terms of stereotypy

and quantity

Kolers

196+

4erman

2panish

Thai

?nglish

CH(8

10 4ermans 1 2panish 1 Thais

)) nouns in five different categories

from the


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Meara 1980

language s"itching

4ol

Car,ay

19#

4erman single responses

Cam,agnol

19#

Arench

?nglish

'0 Arench children learning ?nglish

0 common nouns and their

translations

continuous associations 1 minute

compares inter6 and intra6lingual

responses and relate frequency

response to probability and recall in

a subsequent memory tas

.iegel

7ivian

19#

?nglish

4erman

+ undergraduates

0 nouns of high, mid and lo"6

frequency

restricted associations

compares inter6 and intra6lingual

responses

Polit)er

19#8

Arench

?nglish

+0( f irst6year high 2chool

+0 Arench "ords, +0 ?nglish "ords

single responses

frequency of syntagmatic and

paradigmatic responses

Meara19#9

?nglishArench

' fifth6year high 2chool@ent6%osanoff list

single responses

differences bet"een learnerresponses and native speaer norms

.an3all

198$

?nglish +' ?A* students from various *1

bacgrounds

half the @ent6%osanoff list

continuous associations (0 seconds

changes over time and relationship

to language proficiency group

and there thus e!ist "ell6documented sets of response norms for these 100 "ords,

covering different dates of collection, geographical locations, and types of sub:ects

providing the responses. This "ord list has also been translated into a number of

languages other than ?nglish -%osen&"eig 19'1 for Arench, #talian and 4erman5a"orth 199 for 2panish and this maes it possible to compare the responses of native

?nglish speaing learners of these languages "ith responses that "ould be e!pected of a

normal native speaer population. The principal disadvantage of using the @ent6

%osanoff list is that a large proportion of the "ords that mae it up consist of high

frequency "ords "hich produce highly stereotyped response patterns "hich do not

vary greatly from one language to another. This means that only a small subset of the

list is of any real interest "here the main purpose of the study is to mae cross language

comparisons.

-b method. The standard "ord association method has already been described. 3number of variations on this basic theme "ill be found in table +, ho"ever. The chief of

these is the continuous association method in "hich a single "ord is presented as the

stimulus but instead of providing only a single "ord in response, sub:ects are required

to produce a continuous stream of responses for a given length of time -usually in the

region of one minute. These responses are then pooled and counted as in the standard

1'


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Meara 1980

measure. This technique produces patterns of responses that closely resemble those

produced "ith the standard method using single responses. The continuous association

method has the practical advantage that it is viable "ith a relatively small number of

sub:ects, ho"ever. $eese 19') claims that a minimum of )0 sub:ects is necessary toproduce stable norms for ?nglish using the standard method, and there is some

evidence that other languages may require even larger numbers of sub:ects than this.

;ith the continuous association method, ho"ever, stable response patterns can be

found "ith as fe" as 1) sub:ects.

-c interlingual associations. These are associations made in a language that is not the

same as the one in "hich the stimulus "ord "as presented.

-drestricted associations. This term describes a technique principally used by %iegel and

his associates. #t consists of a basic elicitation technique for single responses, but "ithlimitations imposed on the type of response allo"ed. Thus, for e!ample, sub:ects might

be instructed to produce a response that could describe the stimulus, or one that "as a

superordinate of it.

-e language s"itching. This variation is used only in con:unction "ith the continuous

association method. 2ub:ects are required at specified intervals to stop producing

associations in one language, and to change to their other one.

$espite these important differences in method, it is possible to dra" some general

conclusions from the studies of "ord association behaviour in bilinguals and foreign

language learners. Airstly, on measures of fluency, such as number of responses, speed

of responses and so forth, bilingualspeaers are less adept in their "eaer language than

in their stronger one. 2econdly, responses in a "eaer language tend to be striingly

lessstereotyped than responses in a stronger language. This finding is odd in vie" of

the fact that learners must have smaller vocabularies than native speaers, and this

"ould lead one to e!pect that the range of possible responses "ould be correspondingly

more restricted and less variable. The general inference from these t"o points is that

"ords in a second language are less "ell6organised and less easily accessible than those

in the mental le!icon of native speaer. 5o"ever there is some evidence that these

differences diminish "ith increasing proficiency in the second language, and this

suggests that given the right sort of coa!ing, "ords from the second language do end upby becoming fully integrated into learners personal le!icons.

Thirdly, clang associates -i.e. responses "hich are principally phonetically motivated,

rather than semantically motivated account for a large proportion of the responses

1


18/29


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Meara 1980

in foreign language learners. 5o"ever, even this "or is unsystematic, and fails to

sho" any signs of a coherent and coordinated research strategy. This "or also suffers

from the dra"bac that it is concerned principally "ith groups of learners in an area

"here large individual differences might be e!pected.

>learly, then, the study of vocabulary acquisition is an area "here the sort of research

"or out that has been carried out is far from satisfactory, and "here a large number of

questions still remain to be ans"ered. *evenston 199 concluded his discussion of some

problems in vocabulary research "ith a list of questions and suggestions for further

"or. 3ll these questions are "orth pondering, but they might usefully be

supplemented by some additional questions "hich have a slightly different emphasis.

-a are there any systematic differences bet"een "ell6no"n and recently acquired

"ords in a second languageJ -b do ne"ly acquired "ords in a second language pass

through any identifiable stages of acquisitionJ -c is it the case that *+ "ords everproduce behaviour that is indistinguishable from "hat "ould be e!pected "ith *1

"ordsJ -d are there any clear thresholds "hich it is necessary for an *+ "ord to cross

before it can be considered to be properly acquiredJ #f so, "hat types of activity lead to

these thresholds being crossedJ -e ho" is it that *+ "ords "hich are often learned as

paired associates of their *1 translations eventually come to operate in a "ay that is

relatively independent of their translationJ -f is the acquisition of ne" "ords affected

by such considerations as the morphological structure of *+ "ords, or their phonetic

structureJ -g are the le!ical errors of learners -e.g. malapropisms systematically

different from those of native speaersJ

7ur current understanding of vocabulary acquisition has almost nothing to say on any

of these points, and there is no doubt that "or along the lines suggested here could be

the beginnings of a very useful research programme.

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Meara 1980

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Meara 1980

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Meara 1980

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This paper first appeared in Language #eaching and Linguistics$ (bstracts 1(,-1980, ++16

+'.

+9

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Paul Meara_Vocabulary Acquisition

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