Proficiency and sentence constraint effects on second language word learning

Ma, Tengfei; Chen, Baoguo; Lu, Chunming; Dunlap, Susan

doi:10.1016/j.actpsy.2015.05.014

Cited by 8 publications

(19 citation statements)

References 76 publications

(84 reference statements)

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“…Rich, often highly constraining contexts, on the one hand, have a high information load, leading to a limited number of possible interpretations of a word and more specific and strong mental lexical representations. Less rich, often low constraining contexts, on the other hand, include less information, leaving more opportunity to infer the meaning of a word, which may lead to less robust word storage (Ma et al, 2015) as the initial interpretation may be erroneous. In proficient and less proficient L2 learners, better performance for vocabulary learning was found when target words were embedded in sentences with highly semantically related words, reflecting a higher degree of semantic contextual support (Elgort et al, 2015).…”

Section: Contextual Support In Vocabulary Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context, word, and student predictors in second language vocabulary learning

Mulder¹,

Ven²,

Segers³

2018

Applied Psycholinguistics

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We examined to what extent the variation in vocabulary learning outcomes (vocabulary knowledge, learning gain, and rate of forgetting) in English as a second language (L2) in context can be predicted from semantic contextual support, word characteristics (cognate status, Levenshtein distance, word frequency, and word length), and student characteristics (prior vocabulary knowledge, reading ability, and exposure to English) in 197 Dutch adolescents. Students were taught cognates, false friends, and control words through judging sentences with varying degrees of semantic contextual support using a pretest/posttest between subjects design. Participants were presented with an English target word and its Dutch translation, followed by an English sentence. They were instructed to judge the plausibility of the sentence. Mixed-efffects models indicated that learning gains were higher for sentences with more semantic contextual support and in students with stronger reading comprehension skills. We were the first to show that Levenshtein distance is an important predictor for L2 vocabulary learning outcomes. Furthermore, more accurate as well as faster learning task performance lead to higher learning outcomes. It can thus be concluded that L2 study materials containing semantically supportive contexts and that focus on words with little L1-L2 overlap are most effective for L2 vocabulary learning.

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Section: Contextual Support In Vocabulary Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Context, word, and student predictors in second language vocabulary learning

Mulder¹,

Ven²,

Segers³

2018

Applied Psycholinguistics

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“…Rarely have studies considered whether L2 learners could take use of the differential sentence constraints to learn new words. In the study of Ma et al ( 2015 ), higher and lower-proficiency L2 learners read high or low-constraint sentences to lean novel word meaning. They found L2 learners could take use of high-constraint sentences to lean the meaning of novel words but not the low-constraint.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The Effect of Number and Presentation Order of High-Constraint Sentences on Second Language Word Learning

Chen

Dunlap

et al. 2016

Front. Psychol.

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This paper presents the results of an experiment that investigated the effects of number and presentation order of high-constraint sentences on semantic processing of unknown second language (L2) words (pseudowords) through reading. All participants were Chinese native speakers who learned English as a foreign language. In the experiment, sentence constraint and order of different constraint sentences were manipulated in English sentences, as well as L2 proficiency level of participants. We found that the number of high-constraint sentences was supportive for L2 word learning except in the condition in which high-constraint exposure was presented first. Moreover, when the number of high-constraint sentences was the same, learning was significantly better when the first exposure was a high-constraint exposure. And no proficiency level effects were found. Our results provided direct evidence that L2 word learning benefited from high quality language input and first presentations of high quality language input.

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“…In the study by Tekmen and Daloglu ( 2006 ), Turkish learners of English at different proficiency levels read text to learn English words, and the results showed that higher proficiency readers acquired more words than lower level readers. In the study by Ma et al ( 2015 ), adults with higher L2 proficiency performed better than lower-proficiency L2 learners in high constraint sentences. These findings demonstrate that higher proficiency levels could facilitate novel word learning.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 92%

“…It has been found that learners learn fast in high constraint sentences. For example, in the study of Ma et al ( 2015 ), Chinese learners of English were asked to read sentences with either high or low contextual constraint. Novel words (i.e., pseudowords) were embedded in these sentences.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“… Previous studies have found quantity of exposure, i.e., frequency of exposure (Horst et al, 1998 ; Webb, 2008 ; Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt, 2010 ), is important for second language (L2) contextual word learning. Besides this factor, context constraint and L2 proficiency level have also been found to affect contextual word learning (Pulido, 2003 ; Tekmen and Daloglu, 2006 ; Elgort et al, 2015 ; Ma et al, 2015 ). In the present study, we adopted the event-related potential (ERP) technique and chose high constraint sentences as reading materials to further explore the effects of quantity of exposure and proficiency on L2 contextual word learning.…”

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Rapid L2 Word Learning through High Constraint Sentence Context: An Event-Related Potential Study

Chen

Liang

et al. 2017

Front. Psychol.

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Previous studies have found quantity of exposure, i.e., frequency of exposure (Horst et al., 1998; Webb, 2008; Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt, 2010), is important for second language (L2) contextual word learning. Besides this factor, context constraint and L2 proficiency level have also been found to affect contextual word learning (Pulido, 2003; Tekmen and Daloglu, 2006; Elgort et al., 2015; Ma et al., 2015). In the present study, we adopted the event-related potential (ERP) technique and chose high constraint sentences as reading materials to further explore the effects of quantity of exposure and proficiency on L2 contextual word learning. Participants were Chinese learners of English with different English proficiency levels. For each novel word, there were four high constraint sentences with the critical word at the end of the sentence. Learners read sentences and made semantic relatedness judgment afterwards, with ERPs recorded. Results showed that in the high constraint condition where each pseudoword was embedded in four sentences with consistent meaning, N400 amplitude upon this pseudoword decreased significantly as learners read the first two sentences. High proficiency learners responded faster in the semantic relatedness judgment task. These results suggest that in high quality sentence contexts, L2 learners could rapidly acquire word meaning without multiple exposures, and L2 proficiency facilitated this learning process.

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Proficiency and sentence constraint effects on second language word learning

Cited by 8 publications

References 76 publications

Context, word, and student predictors in second language vocabulary learning

Context, word, and student predictors in second language vocabulary learning

The Effect of Number and Presentation Order of High-Constraint Sentences on Second Language Word Learning

Rapid L2 Word Learning through High Constraint Sentence Context: An Event-Related Potential Study

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