Learning technical words through L1 and L2: Completeness and accuracy of word meanings

Abstract

a b s t r a c tThis 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.

Studying texts in a non-native language: A further investigation of factors involved in the L2 recall cost

“…The most important finding from the meta-analytic summary is that free recall (Connor, 1984; Lee, 1986; Vander Beken & Brysbaert, 2018; Experiment 1 here) is not the only task in which a clear L2 disadvantage is found. Large effects were also found in Gablasova (2014, 2015) and Roussel et al (2017). These authors investigated language and content learning within the context of CLIL and tested the participants’ content knowledge with questions probing cued recall about specific parts of the text.…”

“…The specifics of Lee (1986) may be important, because the advantage of L2–L1 production over L2–L2 production was not replicated in another study. Gablasova (2014; see also Gablasova, 2015) asked high-school students to learn new, technical words from a text in L2 or in L1. The study happened within the context of Content and Language Integrated Learning (CLIL).…”

“…In addition, the forgetting rate was higher in L2 on a delayed recall test after 1 week. Gablasova (2014, 2015) described how “lexical gaps” seem to lead to the omission of certain meaning components: when a word used in a definition of a to-be-learnt word is unknown, it is not recalled. Importantly, participants did not show an effect of language at testing; at least, no effect was reported by Gablasova, arguably because it was not significant.…”

Longitudinal Effects of Mediums of Word Explanation on L2 Vocabulary Learning Strategies Among Chinese Grade-7 Students

“…This may be a result of clear, short, and familiar definitions of L1 translations (Wang, 2015;Carrol et al, 2016). Thus, L1 translation cues were likely to limit students' L2 meta-cognition strategy development to further evaluate or exercise various strategies in ensuring the occurrence of comprehension (Baumann et al, 1993;Gablasova, 2015).…”

“…Since grade 7, systematically, English course teaching was regular in school academic activities. The School-provided English materials might be cognitively loaded with too much distracting information (Gablasova, 2015;Heidari-Shahreza and Tavakoli, 2016). Due to their limited L2 network, students might process the sentence more slowly.…”