Contextual L2 word learning may be facilitated by increasing readers' engagement with form and meaning of novel words. In the present study, two adult L2 populations, Chinese and Dutch speakers, read English sentences that contained novel vocabulary.These contextual exposures were accompanied either by form-focused elaboration (i.e., word-writing) or by meaning-focused elaboration (i.e., actively deriving word meaning from context). Immediate and delayed offline and online measures of word knowledge showed superior learning outcomes for the word-writing treatment. This finding is aligned with the predictions of the lexical quality hypothesis (Perfetti & Hart, 2002), highlighting the added value of more precise encoding of a word's form, in addition to learning its meaning. The key pedagogical implication of this study is that a simple act of copying novel words, while processing meaningful L2 input, may significantly boost quality of lexical knowledge. effects (Bogaards, 2001; Thomas & Dieter, 1987).Contextual word learning (i.e., mapping a novel word form to meaning, as a result of encountering it in a meaningful context) is particularly challenging when the L2 writing system or orthography is markedly different from those of the learner's native language (L1). This is because visual word recognition and processing in an orthographically distant L2 is very challenging (Hamada & Koda, 2008; Koda, 1997). For this reason, deliberate learning procedures may be particularly beneficial for English language learners whose L1 is not alphabetic. The present study investigates the effects of meaning-focused and form-focused elaboration on contextual word learning with two learner groups: speakers of Chinese (an orthographically distant, non-alphabetic L1) and speakers of Dutch (an orthographically close, alphabetic L1). Contextual word learningAccording to the instance-based framework of word learning (Bolger, Balass, Landen, & Perfetti, 2008; Reichle & Perfetti, 2003), initial encounters with a new word in meaningful sentence contexts leave episodic traces of the learning event as a whole (i.e., word + context). After multiple contextual encounters with the same word, aspects of knowledge that are common to all encounters are reinforced (e.g., correctly inferred meaning senses, co-occurring words), while all other aspects are discarded, eventually leading to the development of a robust lexical-semantic representation of the new word (i.e., a stable form-meaning mapping). Form-focused and meaning-focused elaboration in L2 studiesIn an overview of L2 vocabulary learning studies, Schmitt (2008: 329) reports that "the overriding principle for maximising vocabulary learning is to increase the amount of engagement learners have with lexical items". At minimum, inferring meanings from context is described as a prerequisite for contextual word learning through reading (Nation & Webb, 2011). Other meaning-focused treatments advocated in conjunction with contextual word learning include the use of glosses and dictionaries, whic...

The majority of L2 vocabulary studies concentrate on learning word meaning and provide learners with opportunities for semantic elaboration (i.e., focus on word meaning). However, in initial vocabulary learning, engaging in structural elaboration (i.e., focus on word form) with a view to acquiring L2 word form is equally important. The present contextual word-learning study aims to compare the effects of an increased attention to form condition and an increased attention to meaning condition. Native speakers of Dutch (N = 50) learned new English vocabulary in a meaning-inferencing condition, which focused their attention on word meaning, and a word-writing condition, which prompted the learners to focus on word form. The results demonstrate that the word-writing condition advanced both form recall and meaning recall to a greater extent than the meaning-inferencing condition. We conclude that word writing benefits initial word learning more than meaning inferencing in a contextual word-learning situation.

Research has shown that prompting learners to elaborate on the appropriateness of form-meaning links can be an efficient vocabulary learning exercise (Deconinck, Boers & Eyckmans, 2017). In this paper we wish to shed more light on the mental processes that occur during this specific elaborative task by investigating the influence of individual learner variables pertaining to prior linguistic knowledge and a number of word-specific features. To this end fifty Dutch-speaking EFL learners rated the congruency they perceived between the form and meaning of 24 English words on a 6-point Likert scale. The motivation of their scores was elicited by means of a think-aloud protocol, the transcriptions of which were analysed with regard to the type of elaborations made. Vocabulary size tests and a language background questionnaire provided us with additional information about the learners. We identified five types of elaborations: cross-lexical associations, sound-symbolic associations, word-form comparisons, morphological associations, and idiosyncratic associations. The data also reveal that the individual learner variables and word-specific features examined in the present study have an influence on the number of elaborations made by the learners. Saussure (1959) claimed, the relationship between form and meaning in language is not entirely arbitrary. In this light, they strive to find motivation in language, which entails that a retrospective explanation can be found as to why a certain word has a particular meaning for example (Radden & Panther, 2004). From a vocabulary learning perspective, once an L2 learner finds a word to be linguistically motivated, it should be easier for said learner to remember this word. This is explained by the fact that considering the connection between a particular word form and its meaning creates a memory trace which facilitates recall of this word (Deconinck, Boers, & Eyckmans, 2010, 2017. The notion of linguistic motivation thus provides learners with an opportunity to develop a new strategy of thinking about why word form and word meaning fit, and consequently employ this technique as a mnemonic method for remembering new L2 words generally (Beréndi, Csábi, & Kövecses, 2008;Boers & Lindstromberg, 2008a;Deconinck et al., 2017).The present paper investigates a form-meaning-fit motivation task, which is a task that encourages L2 learners to consider 'the form-meaning fit' of a new word, i.e. to consider how well the form of the word matches its meaning (Deconinck et al., 2010;Deconinck, Boers, & Eyckmans, 2014;Deconinck et al., 2017). This type of activity stimulates learners to produce associations, or rather elaborations between form and meaning. Deconinck et al. (2014) demonstrated that learners made four different types of form-meaning associations during the form-meaning-fit motivation task. We aim to determine whether the same associations can be discerned when employing the same method, but working with a different set of words and a different group of L2 learners. Analysis ...

Structural elaboration, i.e. increased attention to word-form, can aid an L2 learner in retrieving the form of a newly learned word (Barcroft, 2002), which is crucial for language production. However, the possibilities for developing meaningful interactions with the form of new words are rather limited. Previous research has proposed word writing as a structural elaboration technique (e.g. Candry, Elgort, Deconinck, & Eyckmans, 2017; Eyckmans, Stengers, & Deconinck, 2017) and has demonstrated that word writing promotes L2 word-form retrieval as compared to a semantically elaborative condition (Candry et al., 2017; Elgort, Candry, Boutorwick, Eyckmans, & Brysbaert, 2016). The advantage of word writing with reference to other structurally elaborative conditions has not been investigated yet. Therefore, the present study compared a written repetition condition with a condition in which learners said the new L2 vocabulary out loud repeatedly. 67 Dutch-speaking learners of German learned 24 unknown German words in one of these two conditions or a control condition. Both immediate and delayed measures of word knowledge were administered. The results showed that immediate form recall is marginally better when words are learned through written repetition than through oral repetition, though this advantage disappeared after one week. When it comes to meaning recall and implicit word knowledge, no differences between the two conditions were observed.

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