Language Learning 46:1, March 1996, pp. 101-135

The Vocabulary-Learning Strategies of Foreign-Language Students

Michael J. Lawson and Donald Hogben Flinders University

Using a think-aloud procedure, we observed the behav- ior of 15 university students in Australia with experience in Italian as they attempted to learn the meanings of new foreign language (Italian) words. The great majority of the procedures they used involved some form of repetition of the new words and their meanings-mostly a simple reading of the dictionary-like entries provided, or repeti- tions of the word-meaning complexes. They gave rela- tively little attention t o the physical or grammatical fea- tures of words, nor did they commonly use elaborative acquisition procedures. The lack of association between use of context and recall of word meaning is of major interest, given the stress placed on context by many researchers and commentators. Even when students did use the cues in the sentences to generate possible mean- ings for the target words, this did not help them establish representations for the meanings of the words. Consider- ation of the use of context in vocabulary acquisition sug- gests a need to distinguish between the use of context for

Michael J. Lawson and Donald Hogben, School of Education. This research was supported by a grant from the Flinders University

Research Budget. We gratefully acknowledge the cooperation of students of the University of Adelaide, and the assistance of Roy Meli with the project.

Correspondence should be addressed to Michael Lawson, School of Education, Flinders University, General Post Office Box 2100, Adelaide 5001 South Australia. Telephone: (08) 201-2829. Internet: edmjl@flinders.edu.au

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generation of meaning of a new word and the use of context for acquisition of the meaning for subsequent recall.

During the past decade, researchers and commentators have pointed to the importance of vocabulary acquisition for second language (L2) learners (Allen, 1983; Laufer, 1986; Nation, 1990; Richards, 1980). Paradoxically, they have also noted that vocabu- lary has until recently been something of a “poor relation” as far as linguists and language teachers have been concerned (Maiguashca, 1993). Meara (1982) contrasted the neglect of L2 vocabulary acquisition by applied linguists with the importance afforded it by students:

This neglect is all the more striking in that learners themselves readily admit that they experience consider- able difficulty with 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 source of problems. (p. 100)

Although the amount of empirical research on vocabulary acquisition is increasing (e. g., Haastrup, 1991; Mondria & Wit- de-Boer, 1991; Wang, Thomas, Inzana, & Primicerio, 1993), con- sensus is lacking over issues such as the conceptualization of the process by which vocabulary acquisition occurs, the importance of context use for acquiring vocabulary, and the extent to which students do develop specific strategies for vocabulary learning during their language studies. To gain further information about each of these issues, we observed the behavior of a group of experienced foreign language students as they attempted to learn the meaning of new words. We presented students with a number of sentences in the foreign language (Italian), each of which contained a word unknown to them. At the same time, they had access to dictionary-like definitions in English. Their task was to think aloud as they attempted to learn the meaning of the new words by whatever means they chose.

The task is representative of several situations in which foreign-language students typically find themselves. They fre-

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quently encounter unknown words in text material and need to learn and retain the meanings of some of these words for later use. In this situation, because the reading purpose is not simply comprehension-which could be satisfied by inferring word mean- ing and leaving it at that, students are likely to adopt some deliberate procedure designed to facilitate long-term retention of word meaning. They probably consult a dictionary to check on a guess made in the initial reading. In addition, they might write the word’s meaning in the margin of the text; or they might add the word to a personal word list; or perhaps they enter the word and its meanings into a card system of the kind recommended by Mondria and Mondria-de Vries (1994). In another language learning situation, students may be using a textbook that is part of a graded series. Many such textbooks, even for advanced learners, present learners with new words whose meaning they should acquire (e.g., the Headway series by Soars & Soars, 1986- 1993). In this case, the student must again decide on some deliberate procedure. It may be one of the procedures above, or it may simply involve repeating the word and its meaning several times. In each case, students make a decision to use deliberate procedures for remembering word meanings. In designing our study, we did not intend to cover all language-learning situations, nor to enter the debate about the extent to which vocabulary learning is a conscious activity. We focused on investigating the procedures students use in situations where they attempt some deliberate acquisition of vocabulary.

Deliberate Vocabulary Acquisition

There seems no reason to believe that deliberate vocabulary acquisition should proceed in a manner different from any other deliberate knowledge acquisition. The learner must undertake some analysis of the to-be-acquired word-meaning complex and must then establish a representation of this complex in memory. A considerable body of research from other fields demonstrates that the quality of this representation is central to the success or

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otherwise of subsequent retrieval (Anderson, 1990). The more effectively the to-be-learned material is elaborated during acqui- sition, the more readily it will be recalled (Mayer, 1992; Wittrock, 1992). Hence, in learning vocabulary, the active, constructive elaboration of the word-meaning complex during acquisition in- fluences its subsequent recall during reading. Other strategies, such as rehearsal, may be important for maintaining a particular item; but simple rehearsal alone should not be very effective for long-term use, because it does not involve extensive elaboration of the word-meaning complex. Carter (19871, having reviewed the elaborative keyword technique for vocabulary learning, argued that:

the clear principle which emerges is that the more that words are analysed or are enriched by imagistic and other associations, the more likely it is that they will be retained. Such a technique, linking as it does form, meaning, and structure through cues which, in turn, facilitate a combi- nation of productive and receptive senses, does appear to have advantages over an exclusive focus on straightfor- ward translation and rote learning. (p. 155)

For long-term recall, the successful learner not only can analyze and rehearse the new word and its meanings, but also can elaborate the word-meaning complex and establish it within a suitable network of meaning. As noted above, this elaboration probably increases the chances that the word and its meaning will be available for use at a later time. In the early stages of language learning, when the tasks being undertaken by the student are more novel, this processing activity is more deliberate than automatic (Hasher & Zacks, 1979). The deliberate procedures, or strategies, developed during this period are probably retained; these strategies should be apparent in the behavior of students as they undertake a vocabulary learning task. Given this view of knowledge acquisition, we should expect that the strategies em- ployed by sophisticated language learners involve significant elaboration as well as rehearsal, and that the strategies involving more elaboration would be associated with better retention than

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less elaborative strategies. So, central to the present research was identification of the extent to which advanced foreign-language students, when presented with a vocabulary-learning task, would employ complex, elaborative learning strategies in addition to the common strategy of repetition.

Use of Context

Writers such as Moulton (1966), Twaddle (1980), Schouten- van Parreren (cited in Mondria & Wit-De-Boer, 1991), Sternberg (19871, and Krashen (1989) have placed considerable emphasis on the value of reading and the importance of context in the learning of word meanings. However, in discussions of vocabulary learning and the value of context, it is not always clear how the discussants conceptualized the influence of the context surrounding the un- known word. This lack of clarity arises because writers do not always clearly draw the distinction between comprehension of word meaning in context and the acquisition of word meaning from context.

Comprehension of the meaning of a new word in context might involve no more than generation of a meaning that suggests a coherent interpretation of the sentence or passage. No addi- tional, deliberate analysis of the features of the word or the word- meaning complex need be undertaken at this time. The student’s intention is simply to generate a meaning for the momentary task of interpretation of a section of the text. By way of contrast, acquisition of meaning through analysis of surrounding contex- tual cues would involve deliberate use of some such procedures as those discussed above.

In the report of her study of language learners’ lexical inferencing procedures for vocabulary acquisition, Haastrup (1991) made clear the distinction between procedures for comprehension of words in context and those for learning of those words: “In my view it [inferencing] is a comprehension procedure that does not automatically lead to learning, although it has the potential for doing so”(p. 23). Others have not always explicitly differentiated

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the learners’ two different sets of intentions and procedures. Carter (19871, for example, detailed a five-step strategy that language learners might follow in deriving word meaning, noting that the more advanced learners are “the more likely they are to benefit from learning words in context” (p. 169). Carter appar- ently had in mind deliberate learning of word meaning from context, although he actually said in. Nattinger (1988) seems to be referring to comprehension when he asserted: “Guessing vo- cabulary from context is the most frequent way we discover the meaning of new words”(p. 63). Oxford and Scarcella (1994) also appear to be talking about comprehension when they wrote: “By far the most useful [vocabulary learning] strategy is guessing from context” (p. 236). In contrast, Nation and Coady (1988) clearly had learning in mind when they threw doubts on the value of context: “Studies on learning words from context have not shown the large amounts oflearning we might expect, considering the rates at which first-language learners seem to increase their vocabulary” (p. 103). Beheydt (1987) left no doubt as to his view: “From a psychological as well as a linguistic point of view, undeniably the first guideline would be that vocabulary must be learned in context. The meanings of words are more easily semanticized if they are embedded in a meaningful context” (p. 63). Ahmed (1989) and Schouten-van Parreren (cited in Mondria and Wit-de Boer, 1991) agreed. Our concern with context in this study is how, and to what extent, students make use of context in learning meanings of new words.

Students’ Strategies for Vocabulary Learning

Graves (1987) suggested that, because students actually do most of their learning of new words independently, it makes sense to encourage them “to adopt personal plans to expand their vocabularies over time” (p. 177). In fact, theorists now place considerable stress on the importance of foreign language stu- dents’ developing autonomous learning strategies (see, e.g., Rossini Favretti, Silver, Gasser, & Tamburini, 1994), and books aimed at

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teachers provide practical advice on teaching vocabulary and encourage student language-learning strategies (e.g., McCarthy, 1990; Nation, 1990; Oxford, 1990).

At issue, however, is the extent to which students will spontaneously develop or adopt effective vocabulary-learning practices as a result of their language learning experience. For example, some theorists have assumed that, even quite early in their foreign language studies, high-school students acquire vo- cabulary-learning techniques that are at least as effective as, for example, the powerful keyword mnemonic technique. Thus con- cluded Fuentes (19761, Levin, Pressley, McCormick, Miller, and Shriberg (1979), and Willerman and Melvin (19791, explaining the lack of effect in their studies using the keyword method with high-school foreign language students. Levin et al. (1979) re- ported that about half of the high-school Spanish students in their control group used “strategies involving cognates, phoneme corre- spondences, and some other mnemonic tricks” (p. 5871, though less than 10% reported use of a keyword strategy. This latter figure stands in contrast to Fuentes’ (1976) finding that 55% of his control participants used keyword-like techniques. Fuentes re- ported that:

Apparently, successful second-year foreign language stu- dents spontaneously use mnemonic techniques closely akin to the keyword as a matter of course. In addition their learning repertoire includes other approaches such as the use of root words and occasionally rote. (Fuentes, cited in Nation, 1982, p. 26).

Willerman and Melvin (1979) did not gather data on the strategies actually used by the French language students in their experiment, but, in contrasting their participants with those more commonly used-university students enrolled in psychology courses-they observed: “Students who have been studying a foreign language, even if only for a month or so, have most likely developed conscious or unconscious learning strategies to master the material” (p. 452).

In contrast to the above studies, Hogben and Lawson (1993)

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found that experienced high-school Italian students did not report a high frequency of use of strategies of similar complexity to the keyword procedure. Most of the strategies reported by these students focused on some simple form of repetition of the target word and its meaning. Very few reported strategies that involved detailed elaboration of the word-meaning complex. This evidence suggests that these students typically did not use complex vocabu- lary-learning strategies. Hogben and Lawson asked students to report on strategy use; possibly the use of a self-report procedure about a vocabulary acquisition task leads to underestimation of the strategic resources available to students for it. So, in contrast to the self-report studies discussed above, we used a think-aloud procedure in our present study. Using this procedure enabled us to undertake detailed observation of the strategies students spontaneously employed as they engaged in the vocabulary acqui- sition task we set for them. In exploring the vocabulary-learning strategies used by advanced foreign language students, the study was designed to seek answers to the following questions:

1. What types of strategies do experienced learners use when asked to undertake a deliberate vocabulary acquisition task, and how frequently are these different strategies used?

2. What relationships exist between particular vocabulary- learning strategies and the number of words recalled at the conclusion of a word learning session?

To what extent do students attempt to derive word meaning from context as a means toward vocabulary acquisition before resorting to translations/definitions? Does this vary with the degree of contextual cue existing in sentences containing the words?

3.

Method

Participants

The students involved in our study were all enrolled in the advanced section of the first-year Italian course at a university in

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Adelaide. This course is designed for students who have previ- ously studied Italian to Year 12 standard prior to commencing university Italian studies. For most students, this means at least five years of high-school study of the language. In 1993, 25 students were enrolled in this course and 19 agreed to take part in the study. By the time that interviewing began, 17 women students were available for interview. Unfortunately, during the interviewing, two tapes were spoiled due to equipment failure and so the results are based on 15 interviews. Ten of the students came from families with an Italian background, though only 3 of these students spoke Italian or dialect with parents or grandpar- ents. The remaining 5 students had no family background involving use of Italian language.

The Learning Task

In the course of the interviews, we asked the students to learn 12 Italian nouns. We used the following five criteria in the selection of the 12 words:

1. Each word had to be one for which the students did not know the meaning. This was established with each student. (See details in The Interviews below.)

2. It had to represent a familiar object or concept. 3. It had to be no longer than three syllables. 4. Four of the words were to contain suffixes: two, the suffix

ezza; two, the suffix astro. (These words will be referred to as “suffix” words.)

All words were to have at least one “related word” commonly found as an accompanying entry in a dictionary. Re- lated words were usually adjectives, verbs, or adverbs; occasion- ally another noun.

To cover the possibility of some of the words being known to the students, we also selected six reserve words as fulfilling the above criteria. If any student knew the meaning of a word on the standard list, we substituted one of the reserve words of the same type.

5.

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We provided the information for the word-learning task to the students on 3"x5" index cards. The front of each card con- tained the particular Italian word followed by a sentence contain- ing that word. Half of the sentences provided some salient clue(s) to the words' meanings; half provided no such assistance. The example below is of a sentence providing clue(s) to the meaning. The layout is that employed on each of the 3"x5" cards:

DRAGA La draga e stata usata per aumentare la profondita del porto.

Following is an example of a suffix word and a sentence providing no clue:

GRETTEZZA Senza dubio quella risposta sa di molto grettezza.

Following is an example of the layout employed on the reverse side of each card:

GRETTEZZA means stinginess, meanness, miserliness. Can also mean narrow-mindedness. Related words: Grettamente: meanly, stingily, pettily,

narrow-mindedly. Gretto: mean, stingy, petty.

The Think-Aloud Procedure

In a self-report procedure, students provide a retrospective report on cognitive actions already carried out. Such reports are potentially limited by significant degrees of interpretation by the student, or even by rationalization (Matsumoto, 1993). In con- trast, the present study produced a concurrent report of cognitive action, generated through use of a think-aloud procedure (Ericsson & Simon, 1993). The think-aloud procedure, like all data-gather- ing procedures, has limitations. The verbal report will not produce a complete report of all possible strategies used for the vocabulary learning task. But the products of cognitive activity that are in the current focus of attention will be reported. The

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individuals are not asked to describe or explain what is being done-they report on the thoughts that are in the focus of their attention. This restriction is placed on the interaction between participant and observer so that the sequence of thoughts is not changed, as might occur when an explanation of a past cognitive event is called for. Ericsson and Simon (1993) reviewed a wide range of evidence indicating that the concurrent think-aloud procedure does not lead to changes in the sequence of thoughts, although it does tend to increase the time for completion of the task when compared with silent conditions. This perspective has received broad support (see Crutcher, 1994; Payne, 1994; Wilson, 1994), though there is evidence that some tasks are reactive to the method. However, the vocabulary acquisition task examined here would not be highly reactive to use of the think-aloud procedure because the strategic procedures of interest are high-level pro- cesses (Payne, 1994). Think-aloud procedures have now been employed in several language learning studies (e.g., Ahmed, 1989; Haastrup, 1991; Zimmermann & Schneider, 19871, although none of these studies has engaged students in the type of task employed here.

The Interviews

We tape recorded all interviews; these lasted an average of25 minutes (range 17 to 38 minutes). The interview schedule with each student proceeded as follows. We first reminded each student of the general purpose of the research and what was required of her. Part of this introduction ran as follows:

To get information on ways in which people learn new [Italian] words, I want to observe you as you go about learning a small group of 12 words. I will ask you to tell me what you are thinking to yourself, and saying to yourself, as you try to learn them. At the end of the session I will ask you to write down the meanings of the words you have learned.

We then gave the student a sheet listing the 12 core Italian nouns

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followed by the 6 reserve words. The words were in a single list. We asked the student to mark any word whose meaning she was sure of. If no words were marked, the interviewer proceeded with the core set of 12 cards. If any words in the 12-word core were known, the cards for those words were replaced with the appropri- ate card from the reserve set. The experimenter then explained the think-aloud procedure to the student.

This explanation was followed by the student listening to a tape-recording of a person from another research project using a think-aloud procedure. The interviewer drew the student’s atten- tion to important features of the episode, and the student then practiced the procedure on a neutral task. The interviewer prompted the student during the description to keep her talking and rendering a full report. The student then practiced the think- aloud method with a sample card whose layout was identical to that explained above. Again the interviewer prompted the stu- dent as seemed necessary. Typical prompts included: “Keep talking”; “Tell me all those little details. I’m interested in all your thinking, so don’t leave out any details”; “Don’t leave anything out”. We requested no retrospective reports.

We instructed the students to use the card however they thought best: in whichever way they thought would best help them learn the meaning(s) of the new word. As was the case later with each of the cards containing the 12 Italian words to be learned, the students received the card with the side containing the sentence uppermost. We told them to consider themselves as reading a piece of text and coming across the unfamiliar word. Their task was to learn the meaning of the word for use at a later time. The back of the card, which they were free to consult at any time, was designed to represent an excerpt from a bilingual dictionary entry. Having completed the practice card, each of the students was then taken through the 12 cards featuring the Italian nouns whose meaning was to be learned.

At the completion of each learning and think-aloud session, the interviewer engaged the student in approximately 30 seconds of “small ta lk , to inhibit any recency effect in working memory,

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and then presented her with a test paper. The test consisted ofthe 12 words, each followed by a space in which the student could write in the word's meaningb). The order of the words on the test paper was random and differed from the order in which the words were learned. We set no time limit for the testing session, but all students completed the task within 10 minutes. The students' responses to each of the 12 words were scored either 1 or 0. A score of 1 was awarded where at least one correct English definition was provided for the given Italian word; approximations or closely related definitions were not accepted, and were scored zero. The mean recall of word meanings for the group was 6.94, with a standard deviation of 3.36. At the completion of the interviews, we transcribed all tape recordings for analysis.

Analysis of Tape Transcripts

We coded the tape transcripts for different types of strategic moves made by the students as they attempted to acquire the meanings of the new words. The framework used to develop the codes came from two main sources. The first was the research literature on vocabulary acquisition, examples of which have been noted in the introduction to this article. Probably the most frequently discussed technique involves some form of repetition or rehearsal of either the word-meaning complex or the word itself. The exact form of rehearsal could be just a simple reading or writing of the word, the repetition of the word and the meaning, or repetition involving some form of structuring (Oxford, 1990). The literature also contains frequent references to the importance of context in providing initial clues to word meaning, as noted above (e.g., Sternberg, 1987). This use of context can also range in degree of complexity from simply guessing the meaning of the new word to more detailed speculation on the meaning of the word using what is already known about other constituents of the sentence, perhaps following set routines (Carter, 1987). As previously noted, employing contextual clues as a means of vo- cabulary acquisition differs from using these clues to generate

Table 1 Codes Used in this Anal.ysis by Category

Repetition

Reading of Related Words. The student makes use of the information on words related to the new word by reading them out at least once as an aid to learning the target word. Simple Word Rehearsal. The student repeats the word, with or without re- peating its meaning, a t least once. Writing Word and Mean- ing. The student writes out the word and its meaning. Cumulative Rehearsal. The student not only repeats the word andlor meaning, but also returns to previ- ous words and rehearses

Word Feature Analysis Simple Elaboration Complex Elaboration

Spelling. The student com- ments on the spelling of the word, perhaps actually spelling it out. Word Classification. The student comments on some observed pattern in the word, or makes some ob- servation related to its grammar; for example, “So it can be a noun or an ad- jective . . .” Use of Suffixes. The stu- dent makes some use of knowledge of suffixes.

Sentence Translation. The student translates, or at- tempts to translate, the Italian sentence contain- ing the target word. For ex am p 1 e : “So r d a s t ro . Quell’uomo 6 u n sordastro. I have no idea. That man is a -. Let’s take a look.” (Here the student turns to the back of the card.) Simple Use of Context. The student suggests a possible meaning for the word prior to referring to the back of the card. No specific refer- ence is made to any other word(s) in the sentence. This is interpreted as simple guessing from con-

Complex Use of Context. The student makes a seri- ous attempt to derive word meaning from the sen- tence, as a first step to- ward acquisition, by mak- ing reference to meaning or features of other words in the sentence, perhaps suggesting possible alter- native meanings for the target word. For example: Draga. La draga e stata usata per aumentare la profondita del porto. . . . Is it a crane? A certain ma- chine to dig a bit more of the port?” Paraphrase. The student identifies synonyms for the

these in a sequence; this text. For example: ‘%ascio. new word, or comments on

could be all words up to that point, or only some of them. Testing. The student self- tests by covering the En- glish meaning, or the Ital- ian word, and trying to gen- erate the other part of the pair.

Reminds me of fascismo, some related word (Italian so fascism. Lo metta in u n or English). For example: sol fascio. Oh, I have no “Purtroppo, Carlo B un idea.” (Here student turns furbastro. Something . . it to the back of the card.) would read furbo, which Appearance S imi lar i ty . means cunning. . .” The student links the word Mnemonic Use. The stu- to an English word, or to dent employs a detailed another Italian word based mnemonic procedure, such onits physical appearance. as that involved in form- For example: “Scaltrezzu ing a picture or image of . . . starts with an s, and the word and/or meaning. shrewdness and sharpness For example: “Purtroppo, start with an s. So per- Curlo e u n furbastro. . . . haps it’s a start. Perhaps I My father’s name is Carlo, will remember it from that and he thinks he is a smart . . . aleck also.” Sound Link. The student identifies a basis for link- ing the sound of the word to an English word, or to another known Italian word. For example: “Sordastro. Sounds a bit like disastro, which is di- saster. . .”

9,

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possible word meaning without necessarily following this up in any way. There is also support for the value of using deliberate mnemonic strategies, particularly in the early stages of foreign language learning (e.g., Carter, 1987; Carter & McCarthy, 1988; Nation, 1990; Oxford, 1990). Some strategies use physical fea- tures of the new word, such as its appearance or its sound as a basis for identifying its features. Grammatical features of the word, such as affixes might also be used as a basis for classifica- tion. In other strategies, the transformation of the word and meaning is more elaborate so that the student might develop a paraphrase for the word or the sentence, or might develop images such as in the keyword procedure (Atkinson, 1975).

The codes were developed without knowledge of the study of lexical inferencing procedures carried out by Haastrup (1991). Haastrup’s taxonomy also included strategies for use of context (contextual cues), for reference to word features (intralingual cues), and for reference to other languages (interlingual cues), though it allowed for more differentiation within each these categories. However, the nature of the task Haastrup asked her informants to undertake was different from that used in this study, and her coding taxonomy reflected the different focus of her research questions.

The second source of codes derived from our observations of the students in this study, and other students, as they were involved in deliberate vocabulary acquisition tasks. In a list- learning task, students commonly develop some type of self- testing procedure, perhaps covering up one of the word or meaning pairs and attempting to retrieve the remaining member of the pair. They also commonly attempt a direct translation of the sentence, which may or may not be followed by quite detailed use of the sentence context.

We developed the 15 categories used in this analysis to represent these broad classes of events. We developed prelimi- nary codes and undertook the analysis of trial transcripts to identify the extent to which codes represented the output of the students’ transcripts. We refined the codes until they could

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represent all the think-aloud data. Two independent raters then applied the final coding system to a number of transcripts; the resulting interrater reliability of coding was acceptable ( 94%).

The 15 codes can be grouped into 4 higher-level categories. The first represents strategies based upon the repetition of the word and/or the meaning. The second involves some form of word feature analysis. The final 2 groups represent a more substantial transformation of the features of the word and/or the meaning: simple elaboration and complex elaboration. The 15 codes used in the final analysis are described in Table 1.

Results

Strategy Use

We classified the students’ responses to each of the presented words using the above 15 categories. We obtained responses to the full set of 12 words from 13 of the 15 students involved: 1 other student responded to 11 words and 1 to 10 words. The total number of possible responses was thus 177. Table 2 below provides an overall description of the manner in which the students dealt with the presented words. Column 1 shows the total frequency of use for each strategy category. Column 2 shows the number of students who employed each particular strategy; the figures in this second column provide an indication of the spread of category use. For example, although “writing word and meaning” and “complex use of context” were employed approxi- mately the same amount in total (45 and 42, respectively), only 6 students used the former category whereas 11 used the latter. Column 3 shows the average category use per student. The figures in Column 3 are the total frequencies divided by number of students using the particular strategies. These figures also indicate, therefore, the number of words on which the strategy was used. Each of the Spearman rank order correlation coeffi- cients in Column 4 represents the correlation between the number of word meanings recalled on the recall test and the frequency of

Table 2 Descriptive Statistics on Category Usage

Frequency of Students Words on Which Correlation Strategy Use Using Strategy Strategy Used With Recall

Strategy ~ (max= 177) (max=15) (max=12) Total

Repetition Reading of Related Words Simple Rehearsal Writing of Word and Meaning Cumulative Rehearsal Testing Sub total

Word Feature Analysis Spelling Word Classification Suffix Sub total

Simple Elaboration Sentence Translation Simple Use of Context Appearance Similarity Sound Link Subtotal

156 137 45 15 6

359

16 9 0

25

66 36 18 5

125

15 14 6 3 2

7 4 0

12 13 7 3

10.4 9.8 7.5 5.0 3.0

2.3 2.3

0

5.5 2.8 2.6 1.7

.42

.46*

.35

.17

.42

-.04 .32

0

.27

.52*

.46*

-.03

Complex Elaboration Complex Use of Context 42 Paraphrase 28 Mnemonic 7 Sub tot a1 77

11 11 3

3.8 -.01 2.5 .62* 2.3 .52*

*Spearman rank correlation coefficients between frequency of use of code and recall score significant at p<.05 level

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use of a particular strategy. The categories within the four groupings have been arranged in the table in descending order of total usage for ease of reference.

The most frequently used procedures involved some form of repetition. Not only did students use repetition in almost two thirds of the opportunities, but repetition was used on most of the words by most of the students. These procedures did not involve the students in any significant degree of transformation of the word-meaning complex. When used by themselves, these proce- dures do not require students to identify specific features of the new words; this makes transformation or the generation of links to existing knowledge unlikely. Students infrequently selected specific features of the words for analysis. None of the students made use of the suffixes -ezza and -astro in the words containing them.

Each ofthe codes in the Simple Elaboration category allowed for the specification of a link between features of the word- meaning and existing knowledge. In the case of the translation and simple context codes, the links could be drawn between elements of the sentence. With the appearance and sound codes, the new words could be related to known words using these features. Students did use the first two codes frequently, though on only a minority of the new words. They did not widely use physical appearance and sound as bases for generating meaning.

Almost all students used some form of more complex elabo- ration in an attempt to establish the meanings of new words. Nevertheless, there was a small amount of context use here (36 instances). Only 3 students provided evidence of use of a special mnemonic strategy for acquisition of the meaning of the new word. Compared with their extensive use of repetition, the students did not heavily use context. Most students did occasionally use the sentence context as a means of generating cues for word meaning, but on only a few of the words.

Overall, the great majority of strategic activity in this vo- cabulary acquisition task did not involve extensive transforma- tion of the word/meaning complex in ways that would relate these

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two components in a richly linked framework. Although the students showed that they had a number of different procedures for working on the vocabulary acquisition task, and that they actively employed these strategies, the strategies were concerned more with repeating the new information than with transforming it in a way that would set up relationships of the new material with existing memory structures. Relatively little activity was concerned with detailed analysis of the word and its meaning in ways that would allow for the establishment of powerful associa- tive relationships between the two.

Correlational Analysis

There was a strong positive Spearman rank order correlation coefficient (r=0.83, p<.Ol) between students’ overall frequency of strategy use and their recall test scores. Thus, there was a strong tendency for those students employing many strategies for word learning to recall more word definitions than those students employing fewer strategies. This conclusion is in line with that of Ahmed (1989), who noted: “Good learners not only use more strategies, but they rely more heavily on different strategies than the poor learners use”(p. 9). Two features of the pattern of correlations shown in Column 4 of Table 2 are of note. First, both repetition and elaborative strategies were associated with better recall. The significant relationship between simple rehearsal and recall supports the findings of Wang et al. (19931, who found that on a list-learning task students who used repetition did achieve high levels of recall performance. Second, the strongest relation- ships observed were between various forms of elaborative activi- ties and recall. Although these activities were not used by all students, and were used with relatively few of the words, their use was associated with better recall.

Influence of Supporting Context

The sentences containing the unknown words presented to

122 Language Learning Vol. 46, No. 1

Table 3 Word Meaning Clues and Frequency of Context Use

Context Use Clue Provided No Clue Total

No Use of Context 45 54 99 Simple Use of Context 14 22 36 Complex Use of Context 28 14 42

Totals 87 90 177

the students were constructed so that half of them provided some clue(s) to the meaning of the words and the other half did not. Table 3 sets out the frequencies of context use by the students related to the provision of clues. In most instances, students did not attempt to use contextual information to generate possible elements of meaning for the unknown word. Such action might not be expected in half of the instances, because these sentences provided no salient clue that would indicate a profitable direction for further search prior to turning to the dictionary definition. However, this activity was associated with using other parts of sentences for generating contextual clues. Where the sentences provided salient clues, students used these on less than 50% of the occasions. In most instances, students moved straight to the dictionary-like definition on the back of the card.

The provision of clues did, however, change the students’ behavior to some extent. They employed complex use of context twice as often where the sentences provided some salient clue to word meaning. In contrast, simple use of context appeared more often when the sentence provided no obvious contextual support for generating the meaning of the word.

Student Profiles

As a supplement to the overall results, we performed com- parative analyses on the 4 students who obtained the highest scores on the word meaning recall test and on the 4 students who performed least well. Using the same strategy categories as in

Lawson and Hogben 123

Table 2, Table 4 sets out the overall strategy use by these students. Each student is identified by a single letter. The numbers in brackets-also given at the head of the table-are the scores out of 12 each of the students obtained on the recall test: High scorers: A (121, B (111, C (lo), D (10); Low scorers: W (41, X (31, Y (21, z (1).

In the body of the table, the figures represent the instances of strategy use by the students: A figure of 12 for a particular strategy for a given student means that the student employed that particular strategy in the learning of all words; a figure of 0 means that a strategy was never used.

In Table 4, the single feature most obviously distinguishing the two groups is the total amount of strategy use: The high- scoring group recorded more than twice the number of word-by- strategy instances. As previously noted, Ahmed (1989) reported the use of more strategies by better language learners. The students in the high group not only used many more strategies on average, but they also used these strategies much more fre- quently. Both the top-scoring group and the bottom-scoring group made considerable use of simple rehearsal (word repetition) and both groups attended to the related words that were supplied on the reverse side of the cards. However, the top group used both of these strategies, somewhat more often and more consistently.

Apart from this consistency of use, the students in the top- scoring group did use a variety of procedures. Student A, for example, made only limited use of the sentences provided on the cards; that is, Student A made little use of context, either simple or complex. This limited use of context was also apparent for Students C and D (2 words in the case of Student C, none by Student D). Student B, however, attended to the provided sen- tences in every case, and made complex use of context for 8 of the 12 words. Students A and D wrote out each word and its meaning(s) as an aid to learning. Students B and C, in contrast, made no use at all of this strategy. Student B, however, in addition to making considerable use of context, did engage in some sentence translation on 8 ofthe 12 words, used some paraphrasing

Table 4 Strategy Use by High- and Low-Scoring Students

High-Scoring Group Low-Scoring Group

Word-Learning Strategy

Repetition Reading of Related Words Simple Rehearsal Writing of Word and Meaning Cumulative Rehearsal Testing

Word Feature Analysis Spelling Word Classification Suffix

Sentence Translation Simple Use of Context Appearance Similarity Sound

Simple Elaboration

9 10 12 11 12 9 12 0 0 10 0 0

1 0 0

0 0 2 0 0 6 0 0 0

3 8 1 2 4 2 2 4 4 0 4 1

D W (10) (4)

12 12 12 0 0

4 1 0

6 0 0 0

8 12 0 0 0

3 0 0

9 0 0 0

8 3 4 7 0 0 0 0 0 0

0 1 0 0 0 0

0 1 6 1 0 0 0 0

11 6 1 1 0

0 0 0

6 1 0 0

Elaboration Complex Use of Context Paraphrase Mnemonic

1 8 0 0 0 4 1 1 0 6 4 3 0 1 0 0 0 4 2 0 0 0 0 0

Total Strategies 51 60 43 50 32 23 14 27

Note: The maximum possible total for any cell in the table is 12, which indicates that the student employed the particular strategy on all 12 words learned.

126 Language Learning Vol. 46, No. 1

with 6, commented on appearance similarity and word sound on 4, and employed some form of mnemonic strategy 4 times. Stu- dent C was the only other student from either group to use any form of mnemonics.

Perhaps somewhat surprising was the students’ limited use of self-testing. Only Student A used this technique, and on only one word. No student in the bottom group employed this strategy. Student C attempted some word classification in 6 instances, but Students A and B did not use this procedure at all. Student D, who used it once, also made some use of paraphrasing (3 words) and paid some attention to word spelling (4 words). Student C also used paraphrasing (4 words), but only commented twice on word spelling.

As we have already noted, the bottom-scoring group was most obviously characterized by its limited strategy use. Even where a student used some particular strategy to a considerable extent, she would employ others rather inconsistently. Student X, for example, made considerable use of context (simple use on 6 words, and complex use on 41, but employed simple rehearsal on only 4 words. Apart from one instance of paraphrasing, Student X gave no indication of any other technique use. Student W used simple rehearsal on all words and engaged in sentence translation in 9 instances. However, apart from 3 comments on spelling of words, Student W used no further strategies. Student Z was characterized by inconsistency. She paid attention to related words on 11 occasions, used simple rehearsal on only 6 words, and used cumulative rehearsal once. She attempted some sentence translation on 6 occasions, and wrote out the word and its meaning(s) on one occasion. The profile of Student Y was also characterized by limited and inconsistent strategy use. Student Y used simple word rehearsal, but only on 7 words: There was no cumulative rehearsal. She used context only twice, and at- tempted sentence translation on one occasion. She made one comment on spelling. She revealed no other strategies or proce- dures during the interview.

The above analysis shows that no obvious profile of particu-

Lawson and Hogben 127

lar strategy use clearly characterized either the top- or the bottom-scoring group. Although actual strategy use varied con- siderably within the top-scoring group, these successful students tended to be consistent in whatever strategies they did employ. In contrast, the bottom-scoring group exhibited more limited and inconsistent strategy use, although Student W did consistently use a simple rehearsal strategy. The data presented above tempt one to suggest that one element of success in learning foreign language vocabulary is the consistent and skillful use of individu- ally congenial strategies rather than the employment of some particular fixed set of strategies. However, this leaves aside the possible effect of training in elaborative strategy use, the effects of which can be considerable (cf. Pressley & McCormick, 1995).

Discussion

We observed the students as they attempted to learn the meanings of the new words in the sentences presented to them. Our interest was in the types of procedures, including use of contextual cues, that they would use for this task. The study involved them in a deliberate vocabulary acquisition task in which they knew that their recall for the word meanings would be tested. Such a procedure can provide information on what these students could do in this situation, as distinct from what they might do in other situations. The students’ behavior would, of course, have been influenced by how they were presented with the material to be learned. However, the types of words, and the format of the learning, are typical of many vocabulary learning situations. The results therefore provide a reasonable estimate of the range of procedures that students could access when deliber- ately attempting to acquire the meanings of new words.

As a group, the students had access to a wide variety of acquisition procedures; they typically drew upon more than one procedure when focusing on a new word and its meaning. We can reasonably describe these experienced foreign language learners as being active in their approach to this task.

128 Language Learning Vol. 46, No. 1

With reference to our first research question, clearly the great majority of the procedures observed in this group involved some form of repetition of the new words and their meanings, mostly a simple reading of the dictionary-like entries or repeti- tions of the word-meaning complexes. In this respect, these students behaved in a manner typical of other language students with whom we have worked. Such students see repetition as a procedure of major importance for vocabulary acquisition; this view is supported by research such as that of Wang et al. (1993). The use of a repetition procedure can be seen as relevant to a situation where the retention interval is relatively short, as was the case in our study.

The retention interval was not a trivial feature of the study. All students were required to retain meanings of new words for periods in excess of 15 minutes, and to do this for a list the length of which would be beyond their immediate memory span. The memory load was, therefore, significant; meanings that were not available for recall at the end of the learning phase would not be available at longer retention intervals.

The relationship between use of particular types of strate- gies and recall of word meanings was the second research ques- tion. The students gave relatively little attention to the physical or grammatical features of words, and evidenced much less use of more elaborative acquisition procedures. Although most of the students did use the available contextual cues for generation of word meanings, they typically used this procedure on about one third of the new words. This procedure was not, however, associated with successful recall of the word meanings. In con- trast, the paraphrase and deliberate mnemonic strategies, though infrequently used, were both associated with success in recall. There was no evidence of use of the full keyword procedure, and mnemonic procedures similar to some component of the keyword method were used by only 3 students.

We cannot conclude on the basis of these findings that these students had not acquired the more elaborative procedures. How- ever, the findings suggest that they were more inclined to use

Lawson and Hogben 129

procedures that did not involve the development of specific inter- relationships among features of the word-meaning complex, even though such procedures were less strongly associated with suc- cessful recall than were the complex elaborations. The pattern of correlations set out in Table 2 is compatible with our introductory position: that elaborative procedures are more useful for recall than are those based on repetition. If this is the case, and if students are not aware of the advantages of these procedures for some vocabulary acquisition situations, there is a need to press this point more directly during language teaching.

The use of contextual clues for generation of meaning from context was our final research question. The clear anomaly in the correlational analysis is that relating to complex use of context. In classifying this form of strategic activity as a form of complex elaboration, we reasoned that the act of drawing out relationships between parts of the sentence on the basis of known words would establish strong links between the new word and other known words. These links could then be used to facilitate the retrieval of the meaning later. However, this type of activity was not in fact associated with high levels of recall.

In seeking to understand this anomaly, we note the argu- ment made by Nation and Coady (1988). They suggested that the very richness of a given context may actually militate against its usefulness for acquisition of the meaning of a particular word for long-term use:

Indeed the very redundancy or richness of information in a given context which enables a reader to guess an un- known word successfully could also predict that that same reader is less likely to learn the word because he or she was able to comprehend the text without knowing the word.

(p. 101)

In this view the richness of the context can inhibit the degree of elaboration of the new word. In the short term, the high level of support available from the sentence context can suggest the meaning. What Nation and Coady argued is that this may not be advantageous for long-term retrieval of word meaning.

130 Language Learning Vol. 46, No. 1

The pattern of our results related to this issue is of particular interest. Our study was designed so that half of the sentences contained cues that could be used to generate possible meanings for the new words. The results in Table 3 show that these clue- present sentences did encourage greater use of context of a more complex type. It is also clear from Table 3 that the difference in use of context associated with the two types of sentences was not dramatic. On 46% of the clue-present sentences the students did not use the contextual clues, instead moving straight to the back of the card to read the dictionary-like entries for the new words.

This pattern may have been encouraged by the ready avail- ability of the dictionary-like definitions. However, the lack of association between use of context and recall of meaning is of major interest. Even when students did use the clues provided in the sentences to generate a possible meaning for the new words, this procedure did not appear to help them establish representa- tion for the meanings of the words. Why should this apparently more associative procedure have this effect, and be so different in effect compared with procedures that involved simple repetition and identification of the appearance of the word or its sound?

The observations of Nation & Coady (1988) strengthen the position, discussed in our introduction, that there is a need to reconsider the position of context use for vocabulary acquisition. When the context is rich in cues for the word meaning, the reader need not engage in any detailed examination of the word or its features. The rich context is sufficient for generation of a likely meaning; the reader might pay little attention to the word itself. Having generated a likely meaning for the unknown word from this supportive context, the reader might then comprehend the meaning of that part of the passage and so pass on quickly to the remainder. Mondria and Wit-de Boer (1991) offered a similar explanation for their finding that their “pregnant contexts” did not result in improved word retention by students learning French vocabulary. In their words: “We may submit [as an explanation] that the inherent difficulty of guessing in highly pregnant con- texts is too low to bring about a positive learning effect” (p. 262).

Lawson and Hogben 131

Aless rich context, or an unsupportive one, would require the reader to pay more attention to a detailed analysis of the word. In that case, ifthe reader wished to build a representation ofthe text, it would be necessary to use other deliberate procedures for analysis of the word. In our view, the long-term effect of use of these procedures in an attempt to build this representation will depend on the degree of elaboration of the word-meaning complex.

The pattern of results in Tables 2 and 3 suggests that although most of these experienced language learners knew how to use contextual clues, they were not convinced that this proce- dure should be used on many of the unknown words they were studying. Further, when they did use contextual clues, the observed correlations between context use and recall suggest that the clues were not being used to generate meaning from context.

So there is a need to distinguish between the use of context for generation of meaning of a new word and the use of context for acquisition of the meaning for subsequent recall. The latter use requires some attention to the features of the word-meaning complex. Our results support the view that this attention is best concerned with use of a variety of procedures, including ones involving some complex form of elaboration. Haastrup’s (1991) findings from her study of lexical inferencing support this view. In her study, performance was facilitated when participants drew on several levels of inference. The analysis of the individual profiles of the high- and low-scoring students also supports this position. The more successful students were generally more active in their use of the information made available to them, and showed evidence of being able to access a wider range of acquisition procedures, including the more complex elaboration procedures.

Generating a possible meaning for an unknown word by using contextual cues can lead to development of a suitable representation of the sentence or passage of text. The reader may therefore be able to comprehend the sentence or text. Although this comprehension purpose can be seen as distinct from the case where the reader interrupts the comprehension exercise to em- ploy a deliberate vocabulary acquisition procedure with an un-

132 Language Learning Vol. 46, No. 1

known word, the former case will not necessarily preclude that vocabulary acquisition. As Craik and Lockhart (1972) argued in their major reorientation of research on retention effects, the nature of the processing carried out with new items of informa- tion, rather than the intention to remember, governs the long- term retention outcome. Thus, the reader who is primarily concerned with development of a suitable text representation- one who has a Comprehension purpose-may engage in processing that is effective for long-term retention. Conversely, the reader whose purpose is deliberate vocabulary acquisition could employ procedures that are not effective for long-term retention: The less successful students in our study provide illustrations of this second case. Hence, the distinction sometimes drawn between comprehension and learning purposes is useful as a heuristic device, but is not necessarily predictive of retention outcomes.

That this distinction between learning and comprehension purposes can be justified does not imply that it can be usefully extended toprocesses of learning and comprehension. The distinc- tion based on purpose suggests that the learner makes a decision about the length of time over which the meaning of the new word must be held. For comprehension purposes, this interval may be no more than one minute, thereby allowing the reader to build a representation of the meaning of the sentence without establish- ing a strong representation of the word-meaning complex. How- ever, the processes of both learning and comprehension require that learners establish a representation of meaning in memory: the difference between learning and comprehension processes is more one of degree than of kind.

Revised version accepted 15 September 1995

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