Vocabulary learning

doi:10.1016/0361-476X(83)90016-4

Contemporary Educational Psychology

Volume 8, Issue 3, July 1983, Pages 237-260

https://doi.org/10.1016/0361-476X(83)90016-4 Get rights and content

Abstract

This article addresses the question of how to account for the growth in vocabulary knowledge that occurs during the elementary school years. Areas examined include the ways that word meanings are communicated, direct teaching of meanings vocabulary instruction as a part of reading instruction, and deriving and learning word meanings from verbal context. Taken singly, neither direct instruction of meanings nor learning word meanings from context seems to account all that well for the growth in vocabulary that is thought to occur.

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Previous research indicates that word learning from auditory contexts may be more effective than written context at least through fourth grade. However, no study has examined contextual differences in word learning in older school-aged children when reading abilities are more developed. Here we examined developmental differences in children’s ability to deduce the meanings of unknown words from the surrounding linguistic context in the auditory and written modalities and sought to identify the most important predictors of success in each modality. A total of 89 children aged 8–15 years were randomly assigned to either read or listen to a narrative that included eight novel words, with five exposures to each novel word. They then completed three posttests to assess word meaning inferencing. Children across all ages performed better in the written modality. Vocabulary was the only significant predictor of success on the word inferencing task. Results indicate support for written stimuli as the most effective modality for novel word meaning deduction. Our findings suggest that the presence of orthographic information facilitates novel word learning even for early, less proficient readers.
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Citation Excerpt :
Further directions may include a change in the learning paradigm. Incidental learning (with participants being unaware of post-tests) is considered to be more difficult for readers (e.g., Jenkins & Dixon, 1983; Konopak et al., 1987; Nagy et al., 1987). We expect that, in the absence of an explicit motivation for learning, the effects of emotionality on performance in formal and semantic knowledge tasks will be weaker.
The present paper addresses two under-studied dimensions of novel word learning. We ask (a) whether originally meaningless novel words can acquire emotional connotations from their linguistic contexts, and (b) whether these acquired connotations can affect the quality of orthographic and semantic word learning and its retention over time. In five experiments using three stimuli sets, L1 speakers of English learned nine novel words embedded in contexts that were consistently positive, neutral or negative. Reading times were recorded during the learning phase, and vocabulary post-tests were administered immediately after that phase and after one week to assess learning. With two of three stimulus sets, the answer to (a) was positive: readers learned both the forms, definitional meanings and emotional connotations of novel words from their contexts. We confirmed (b) in two of three stimulus sets as well. Items were learned more accurately (by 10% to 20%) in positive rather than negative or neutral contexts. We propose the transfer of affect to a word from its collocations to be a virtually unstudied yet efficient mechanism of learning affective meanings. We further demonstrate that the transfer that occurs over a few exposures to a novel word in context is sufficient to elicit a long-lasting positivity advantage previously shown in existing words only. Null results in one stimulus set suggest that contextual transfer of affect is contingent on other contextual properties, such as text complexity. These findings are pitted against theories of vocabulary acquisition.
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As a result of this ‘strong’ context, when word meanings are inferred, the process is not dependent on random or insufficient textual clues that could lead to incorrect guessing (Frantzen, 2003). Overt clues to word meanings are especially important as the acquisition of specialised vocabulary often involves the most difficult type of lexical learning, i.e. the learning of both a new concept and a label for that concept (Jenkins & Dixon, 1983). Another group of factors affecting vocabulary learning is related to individual characteristics of readers.
This paper investigates the quality of knowledge of technical words that high-school students learned from subject reading. In particular, it focuses on similarities and differences between students who learned new words through their L1 and their L2. In the study, 72 students were divided into two groups and asked to read and listen to two expository texts. One group received the texts in their L1 (Slovak) and the other group in their L2 (English). Afterwards the participants were tested on their knowledge of twelve technical words that appeared in the texts. The responses were examined in terms of the completeness of word meaning and the presence of errors. The results showed that compared to the L1-instructed students, the L2-instructed participants provided word meanings that were less complete and less precise. Word meanings from both groups contained errors involving omission of correct meaning components and inclusion of incorrect meaning components. L2-instructed participants made more errors of both kinds. The differences between the two groups are discussed with respect to vocabulary acquisition and subject learning.
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Vocabulary learning

Abstract

Psychometrika

Vocabulary knowledge

Instructional dimensions that may affect reading comprehension: Examples from two commercial reading programs

Individual differences in working memory and reading

Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior

Research in comprehension in reading

Reading Research Quarterly

The rationale, development and standardization of a basic vocabulary test

What classroom observations reveal about reading comprehension instruction

Reading Research Quarterly

Effects of differing proportions and locations of difficult vocabulary on text comprehension

Investigating techniques for teaching word meanings

Reading Research Quarterly

Mechanics of verbal ability

Psychological Review

Effects of text construction and instructional procedures for teaching word meanings on comprehension and recall

Reading Research Quarterly

Mnemonic versus nonmnemonic vocabulary-learning strategies for children

American Educational Research Journal