vocabulary-learning strategies of foreign-language students

8/13/2019 Vocabulary-Learning Strategies of Foreign-Language Students

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

The Vocabulary-Learning Strategies ofForeign-Language StudentsMichael J. Law son and Dona ld H ogbenFl inders Univers i ty

Using a think-aloud procedure, we observed the behav-ior of 15university students in Australia with experiencein Italian as they attempted to learn the meanings of newforeign language (I talian) words. The great majority ofthe procedures they used involved some form of repetitionof the new words and their meanings-mostly a simplereading of the dictionary-like entries provided, or repeti-tions of the word-meaning complexes. They gave rela-tively little attention t o th e physical o r grammatical fea-tures of words, nor did they commonly use elaborativeacquisition procedures. The lack of association betweenuse of context and recall of word meaning is of majorinterest, given the stress placed on context by manyresearchers and commentators. Even when students diduse the cues in the sentences t o generate possible mean-ings for the target words, this did not help them establishrepresentations for the meanings of the words. Consider-ation of the use of context in vocabulary acquisition sug-gests a need t o distinguish between the use of context for

Michael J. Lawson a nd 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 ofthe University of Adelaide, an d the assistance of Roy Meli with the project.

Correspondence should be addressed to Michael Lawson, School ofEducation, Flinders University, General Post Office Box 2100, Adelaide 5001South Austral ia. Telephone: (08)201-2829. Internet: [email protected]

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102 Language Learning Vol. 46 No. 1

generation of meaning of a new word and the use of contextfor acquisi t ion of the meaning for subsequent recall.

During the past decade, researchers and commentators havepointed t o the importance of vocabulary acquisition for secondlanguage (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 fara s linguists and language teachers have been concerned(Maiguashca, 1993). Meara (1982) contrasted the neglect of L2vocabulary acquisition by applied linguists with the importanceafforded it by students:

This neglect is all the more striking in that learnersthemselves readily admit that they experience consider-able difficulty with vocabulary, and once they have gotover the initial stages of acquiring their second language,most learners identify the acquisition of vocabulary astheir 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 theprocess by which vocabulary acquisition occurs, the importance ofcontext use for acquiring vocabulary, and the extent to whichstudents do develop specific strategies for vocabulary learningduring their language studies. To gain fur ther information abouteach of these issues, we observed the behavior of a group ofexperienced foreign language students as they attempted t o learnthe meaning of new words. We presented students with a numberof sentences in the foreign language (Italian), each of whichcontained a word unknown t o them. At the same time, they hadaccess t o dictionary-like definitions in English. Their task was tothink aloud as they attempted to learn the meaning of the newwords by whatever means they chose.

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


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Lawson and Hogben 103

quently encounter unknown words in text material and need t olearn and retain the meanings of some of these words for later use.In this situation, because the reading purpose is not simplycomprehension-which could be satisfied by inferring word mean-ing and leaving it at that, students are likely t o adopt somedeliberate procedure designed to facilitate long-term retention ofword meaning. They probably consult a dictionary t o check on aguess made in the initial reading. In addition, they might writethe words meaning in the margin of the text; o r they might add theword t o a personal word list; o r perhaps they enter the word andits meanings into a card system of the kind recommended byMondria and Mondria-de Vries (1994). In another languagelearning situation, students may be using a textbook that is partof a graded series. Many such textbooks, even for advancedlearners, present learners with new words whose meaning theyshould acquire (e.g., the H e a d w a y series by Soars & Soars, 1986-1993). In this case, the student must again decide on somedeliberate procedure. It may be one of the procedures above, o r itmay simply involve repeating the word and its meaning severaltimes. In each case, students make a decision t o use deliberateprocedures for remembering word meanings. In designing ourstudy, we did not intend t o cover all language-learning situations,nor to enter the debate about the extent t o which vocabularylearning is a conscious activity. We focused on investigating theprocedures students use in situations where they attempt somedeliberate acquisition of vocabulary.Deliberate Vocabulary Acquisition

There seems no reason t o believe that deliberate vocabularyacquisition should proceed in a manner different from any otherdeliberate knowledge acquisition. The learner must undertakesome analysis of the to-be-acquired word-meaning complex andmust then establish a representation of this complex in memory.A considerable body of research from other fields demonstratesthat the quality of this representation is central t o the success o r


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otherwise of subsequent retrieval (Anderson, 1990). The moreeffectively th e 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, constructiveelaboration 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 particularitem; but simple rehearsal alone should not be very effective forlong-term use, because i t does not involve extensive elaboration ofthe word-meaning complex. Carter (19871, having reviewed theelaborative keyword technique for vocabulary learning, arguedthat:

the clear principle which emerges is that the more thatwords are analysed or are enriched by imagistic and otherassociations, he more likely it is that they will be retained.Such a technique, linking as it does form, meaning, andstructure through cues which, in turn, facilitate a combi-nation of productive and receptive senses, does appear t ohave 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 canelaborate the word-meaning complex and establish it within asuitable network of meaning. As noted above, this elaborationprobably increases the chances that the word and its meaning willbe available for use at a later time. In the early stages of languagelearning, when the tasks being undertaken by the student aremore novel, this processing activity is more deliberate thanautomatic (Hasher & Zacks, 1979). The deliberate procedures, orstrategies, developed during this period are probably retained;these strategies should be apparent in the behavior of students asthey undertake a vocabulary learning task. Given this view ofknowledge acquisition, we should expect th at the strategies em-ployed by sophisticated language learners involve significantelaboration as well as rehearsal, and tha t the strategies involvingmore elaboration would be associated with better retention than


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the learners two different sets of intentions and procedures.Carter (19871, for example, detailed a five-step strategy thatlanguage learners might follow in deriving word meaning, notingthat the more advanced learners are the more likely they are tobenefit from learning words in context (p. 169). Carter appar-ently had in mind deliberate learning of word meaning fromcontext, although he actually said in. Nattinger (1988) seems t obe referring to comprehension when he asserted: Guessing vo-cabulary from context is the most frequent way we discover themeaning of new words(p. 63). Oxford and Scarcella (1994) alsoappear to be talking about comprehension when they wrote: Byfar the most useful [vocabulary learning] strategy is guessingfrom context (p. 236). In contrast, Nation and Coady (1988)clearly had learning in mind when they threw doubts on the valueof context: Studies on learning words from context have notshown the large amounts oflearning we might expect, consideringthe rates at which first-language learners seem t o increase theirvocabulary (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 belearned in context. The meanings of words are more easilysemanticized if they are embedded in a meaningful context (p.63). Ahmed (1989) and Schouten-van Parreren (cited in Mondriaand Wit-de Boer, 1991) agreed. Our concern with context in thisstudy is how, and to what extent, s tudents make use of context inlearning meanings of new words.

Students S trategies for Voca bulary LearningGraves (1987) suggested that , because students actually do

most of their learning of new words independently, it makes senseto encourage them to adopt personal plans t o expand theirvocabularies over time (p. 177). In fact, theorists now placeconsiderable stress on the importance of foreign language stu-dents developing autonomous learning strategies (see, e.g., RossiniFavret ti, Silver, Gasser, & Tamburini, 1994), and books aimed a t


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found that experienced high-school Italian students did not reporta high frequency of use of strategies of similar complexity t o thekeyword procedure. Most of the strategies reported by thesestudents focused on some simple form of repetition of the targetword and its meaning. Very few reported strategies tha t involveddetailed elaboration of the word-meaning complex. This evidencesuggests that these students typically did not use complex vocabu-lary-learning strategies. Hogben and Lawson asked students toreport on strategy use; possibly the use of a self-report procedureabout a vocabulary acquisition task leads t o underestimation ofthe strategic resources available t o students for it. So, in contrastto the self-report studies discussed above, we used a think-aloudprocedure in our present study. Using this procedure enabled ust o undertake detailed observation of the strategies studentsspontaneously employed as they engaged in the vocabulary acqui-sition task we se t for them. In exploring the vocabulary-learningstrategies used by advanced foreign language students, the studywas designed t o seek answers to the following questions:1.What types of strategies do experienced learners use whenasked t o undertake a deliberate vocabulary acquisition task, andhow frequently are these different strategies used?

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

To what extent do students attempt t o derive wordmeaning from context as a means toward vocabulary acquisitionbefore resorting to translations/definitions? Does this vary withthe degree of contextual cue existing in sentences containing thewords?

3.

Method

ParticipantsThe students involved in our study were all enrolled in the

advanced section of the first-year Italian course a t a university in


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We provided the information for the word-learning task tothe 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)t o the words' meanings; half provided no such assistance. Theexample below is of a sentence providing clue(s) to the meaning.The layout is that employed on each of the 3 x5 cards:

DRAGALa draga e stata usata per aumentare la profonditadel porto.

Following is an example of a suffix word and a sentence providingno clue:

GRETTEZZASenza dubio quella risposta sa di molto grettezza.Following is an example of the layout employed on the reverse sideof each card:

GRETTEZZA means stinginess meanness miserliness.Can also mean narrow-mindedness.Related words: Grettamente: meanly stingily pettilynarrow-mindedly.Gretto: mean stingy petty.

The Think-Aloud ProcedureIn a self-report procedure, students provide a retrospective

report on cognitive actions already carried out. Such reports arepotentially limited by significant degrees of interpretation by thestudent, o r even by rationalization (Matsumoto, 1993). In con-trast, the present study produced a concurrent report of cognitiveaction, 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 notproduce a complete report of all possible strategies used for thevocabulary learning task. But the products of cognitive activitythat are in the current focus of attention will be reported. The


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individuals are not asked t o describe o r explain what is beingdone-they report on the thoughts that are in the focus of theirattention. This restriction is placed on the interaction betweenparticipant and observer so that the sequence of thoughts is notchanged, a s might occur when an explanation of a past cognitiveevent is called for. Ericsson and Simon (1993) reviewed a widerange of evidence indicating that the concurrent think-aloudprocedure does not lead t o changes in the sequence of thoughts,although it does tend t o increase the time for completion of thetask when compared with silent conditions. This perspective hasreceived broad support (see Crutcher, 1994; Payne, 1994; Wilson,1994), hough there is evidence that some tasks are reactive t o themethod. However, the vocabulary acquisition task examined herewould not be highly reactive t o use of the think-aloud procedurebecause the strategic procedures of interest are high-level pro-cesses (Payne, 1994). Think-aloud procedures have now beenemployed in several language learning studies (e.g., Ahmed, 1989;Haast rup, 1991; Zimmermann & Schneider, 19871, although noneof these studies has engaged students in the type of task employedhere.

The InterviewsWe tape recorded all interviews; these lasted an average of25

minutes (range 17 t o 38 minutes). The interview schedule witheach student proceeded as follows. We first reminded eachstudent of the general purpose of the research and what wasrequired 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 aboutlearning a small group of 1 2 words. I will ask you t o tellme what you are thinking t o yourself, and saying t oyourself, as you try t o learn them. A t the end of thesession I will ask you t o write down the meanings of thewords 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 wassure of. If no words were marked, the interviewer proceeded withthe core set of 12 cards. If any words in the 12-word core wereknown, the cards for those words were replaced with the appropri-ate card from the reserve set. The experimenter then explainedthe think-aloud procedure t o the student.

This explanation was followed by the student listening t o atape-recording of a person from another research project using athink-aloud procedure. The interviewer drew the students atten-tion t o important features of the episode, and the student thenpracticed the procedure on a neutral task. The interviewerprompted the student during the description t o keep her talkingand rendering a full report. The student then practiced the think-aloud method with a sample card whose layout was identical t othat explained above. Again the interviewer prompted the stu-dent as seemed necessary. Typical prompts included: Keeptalking; Tell me all those little details. Im interested in all yourthinking, so dont leave out any details; Dont leave anythingout. We requested no retrospective reports.

We instructed the students t o use the card however theythought best: in whichever way they thought would best helpthem learn the meaning(s)of the new word. As was the case laterwith each of the cards containing the 12 Italian words to belearned, the students received the card with the side containingthe sentence uppermost. We told them t o consider themselves asreading a piece of text and coming across the unfamiliar word.Their task was t o learn the meaning of the word for use at a latertime. The back of the card, which they were free t o consult at anytime, was designed t o represent an excerpt from a bilingualdictionary entry. Having completed the practice card, each of thestudents was then taken through the 12 cards featuring theItalian nouns whose meaning was t o be learned.A t the completion of each learning and think-aloud session,the interviewer engaged the student in approximately 30 secondsof small ta lk , t o inhibit any recency effect in working memory,


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Lawson and Hogben 3

and then presented her with a test paper. The test consisted ofthe12 words, each followed by a space in which the student couldwrite in the word's meaningb). The order of the words on the testpaper was random and differed from the order in which the wordswere learned. We set no time limit for the testing session, but allstudents completed the task within 10 minutes. The students'responses t o each of the 12 words were scored either 1 r 0. A scoreof1was awarded where at least one correct English definition wasprovided for the given Italian word; approximations or closelyrelated definitions were not accepted, and were scored zero. Themean recall of word meanings for the group was 6.94, with astandard deviation of 3.36. At the completion of the interviews, wetranscribed all tape recordings for analysis.

Analys i s of Tape TranscriptsWe coded the tape transcripts for different types of strategic

moves made by the students as they attempted to acquire themeanings of the new words. The framework used t o develop thecodes came from two main sources. The first was the researchliterature on vocabulary acquisition, examples of which have beennoted in the introduction t o this article. Probably the mostfrequently discussed technique involves some form of repet i t ion o rrehearsal of either the word-meaning complex o r the word itself.The exact form of rehearsal could be just a simple reading o rwriting 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 importanceof context in providing initial clues t o word meaning, as notedabove (e.g., Sternberg, 1987). This use of context can also rangein degree of complexity from simply guessing the meaning of thenew word t o more detailed speculation on the meaning of the wordusing what is already known about other constituents of thesentence, perhaps following set routines (Carter, 1987). Aspreviously noted, employing contextual clues as a means of vo-cabulary acquisition differs from using these clues t o generate


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Table 1Codes Used i n thi s Anal.ysis by CategoryRepetition

Rea ding of Related Words.The student makes use ofthe information on wordsrelated t o the new word byreading them out at leastonce as an aid to learningthe target word.S imp le W or d Rehear s a l .The student repeats theword, with or without re-peating its meaning, atleast once.Writ ing Word and Mean-ing .The student writes outthe word and its meaning.Cumulat iveRehearsal. Thestudent not only repeatsthe word andlor meaning,but also returns t o previ-ous words and rehearses

Word Feature Analysis Simple Elaboration Complex ElaborationSpel l ing .The student com-ments on the spelling ofthe word, perhaps actuallyspelling i t out.Word Classification. Thestudent comments on someobserved pattern in theword, or makes some ob-servation related t o i tsgrammar ; for example,Soit can be a noun o r an ad-jective . . .Use of Suffixes . The stu-dent makes some use ofknowledge of suffixes.

Sentence Translation. Thestudent translates, or at-tempts to translate, theItalian sentence contain-ing the target word. Forex am p1e : S o d a s t ro .Quelluomo 6 u n sordastro.I have no idea. That manis a -. Lets take a look.(Here the student turns tothe back of the card.)Simp le Useof Context. Thestudent suggests a possiblemeaning for the word priorto referring to the back ofthe card. No specific refer-ence is made t o any otherword(s) in the sentence.This is interpreted assimple guessing from con-

Complex Use of Context.The student makes a seri-ous attempt to derive wordmeaning from the sen-tence, as a first step to -ward acquisition, by mak-ing reference t o meaningo r features of other wordsin the sentence, perhapssuggesting possible alter-native meanings for thetarget word. For example:Draga. La draga e statau s a t a p e r a u m e n t a r e l aprofondita del porto. . . . Isit a crane? A certain ma-chine t o dig a bit more ofthe port?Paraphrase. The studentidentifies synonyms for the

these in a sequence; this text. For example: ascio. new word, o r comments on


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could be all words up t oth at point, or only some ofthem.Tes t ing . The student self-tests by covering the En-glish meaning, o r the Ital-ian word, and trying to gen-erate th e other par t of thepair.

Reminds me of fasc ismo, some related word (Itali anso fascism. Lo m e tt a i n u n o r English). For example:sol fascio. Oh, I have no Pur t r oppo , C ar lo unidea. (Here student turns furbas tro . Something . . itt o the back of the card.) would read f u r bo , whichA p p e a r a n c e S i m i l a r i t y . means cunning. . .The student links the word Mnemonic Use. The stu-t o an English word, or to dent employs a detailedanother Italian word based mnemonic procedure, suchoni ts physical appearance. as th at involved in form-For example: Scaltrezzu ing a picture o r image of. . . starts with an s, and the word and/or meaning.shrewdness and sharpness For example: Purtroppo,start with an s. S o per- Curlo e un fu r bast r o . . . .haps itsa start. Perhaps I My fathers name is Carlo,will remember it from th at and he thinks heis a smart. . . aleck also.Sound Link.The studentidentifies a basis fo r link-ing th e sound of the wordto a n English word, or toanother known I talianword. For example:Sordas tro . Sounds a bitlike disas tro , which is di-saster . . .

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116 Language Learning Vol . 46 No. 1

possible word meaning without necessarily following this up inany way. There is also support for the value of using deliberatemnemonic strategies, particularly in the early stages of foreignlanguage 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 o r its sound as abasis for identifying its features. Grammatical features of theword, such as affixes might also be used as a basis for classifica-tion. In other strategies, the transformation of the word andmeaning is more elaborate so th at the student might develop aparaphrase for the word or the sentence, or might develop imagessuch as in the keyword procedure (Atkinson, 1975).

The codes were developed without knowledgeof the study oflexical inferencing procedures carried out by Haastrup (1991).Haastrups taxonomy also included strategies for use of context(contextual cues), for reference t o word features (intralingualcues), and fo r reference t o other languages (interlingual cues),though it allowed for more differentiation within each thesecategories. However, the nature of the task Haastrup asked herinformants to undertake was different from that used in thisstudy, and her coding taxonomy reflected the different focus of herresearch questions.

The second source of codes derived from our observations ofthe students in this study, and other students, as they wereinvolved 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 meaningpairs and attempting to retrieve the remaining member of thepair. They also commonly attempt a direct translation of thesentence, which may or may not be followed by quite detailed useof the sentence context.

We developed the 15 categories used in this analysis torepresent these broad classes of events. We developed prelimi-nary codes and undertook the analysis of trial transcripts t oidentify the extent t o which codes represented the output of thestudents transcripts. We refined the codes until they could


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represent all the think-aloud data. Two independent raters thenapplied the final coding system to a number of transcripts; theresulting inte rrater reliability of coding was acceptable ( 94 ).

The 15 codes can be grouped into higher-level categories.The first represents strategies based upon the repetition of theword and/or the meaning. The second involves some form of wordf ea ture ana lys i s . The final 2 groups represent a more substantialtransformation of the features of the word and/or the meaning:sim ple elaboration and complex elaboration. The 15codes used inthe final analysis are described in Table 1.

ResultsStrategy Use

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


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Table 2Descriptive Statis tic s on Category UsageFrequency of Students Words on Which CorrelationStrategy Use Using Strategy Strategy Used With Recall

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

Reading of Related WordsSimple RehearsalWriting of Word and MeaningCumulative RehearsalTestingSub otal

Word Feature AnalysisSpellingWord ClassificationSuffixSub otal

Simple ElaborationSentence TranslationSimple Use of ContextAppearance SimilaritySound LinkSubtotal

15613745156

359

1690

25

6636185125

1514632

740

121373

10.49.87.55.03.0

2.32.3

0

5.52.82.61.7

.42.46*

.35.17

.42

-.04.32

0

.27

.52

.46*-.03


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Complex ElaborationComplex Use of Context 42Paraphrase 28Mnemonic 7Sub ota1 77

111133.8 -.012.5 .622.3 .52

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


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

The most frequently used procedures involved some form ofrepetition. Not only did students use repetition in almost twothirds of the opportunities, but repetition was used on most of thewords by most of the students. These procedures did not involvethe students in any significant degree of transformation of theword-meaning complex. When used by themselves, these proce-dures do not require s tudents to identify specific features of thenew words; this makes transformation o r the generation of linksto existing knowledge unlikely. Students infrequently selectedspecific features of the words for analysis. None of the studentsmade use of the suffixes -ezza and -astro in the words containingthem.

Each ofthe codes in the Simple Elaboration category allowedfor the specification of a link between features of the word-meaning and existing knowledge. In the case of the translationand simple context codes, the links could be drawn betweenelements of the sentence. With the appearance and sound codes,the new words could be related to known words using thesefeatures. Students did use the first t w o codes frequently, thoughon only a minority of the new words. They did not widely usephysical 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 (36instances). Only 3 students provided evidence of use of a specialmnemonic strategy for acquisition of the meaning of the new word.Compared with their extensive use of repetition, the students didnot heavily use context. Most students did occasionally use thesentence 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 thestudents showed t ha t they had a number of different proceduresfor working on the vocabulary acquisition task, and that theyactively employed these strategies, the strategies were concernedmore with repeating the new information th an with transformingit in a way that would set up relationships of the new materialwith existing memory structures. Relatively little activity wasconcerned with detailed analysis of the word and its meaning inways that would allow for the establishment of powerful associa-tive relationships between the two.Correlational Analysis

There was a strong positive Spearman rank order correlationcoefficient (r=0.83,p


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122 Language Learning Vol.46 No. 1

T ab le 3Word Me aning Clues and Frequency of Context UseContext Use Clue Provided No Clue TotalNo Use of Context 45 54 99Simple Use of Context 4 22 36Complex Use of Context 28 14 42Totals 87 90 77

the students were constructed so that half of them provided someclue(s) to the meaning of the words and the other half did not.Table 3 sets out the frequencies of context use by the studentsrelated to the provision of clues. In most instances, students didnot attempt to use contextual information t o generate possibleelements of meaning for the unknown word. Such action mightnot be expected in half of the instances, because these sentencesprovided no salient clue that would indicate a profitable directionfor further search prior to turning t o the dictionary definition.However, this activity was associated with using other parts ofsentences for generating contextual clues. Where the sentencesprovided salient clues, students used these on less than 50 of theoccasions. In most instances, students moved straight t o thedictionary-like definition on the back of the card.

The provision of clues did, however, change the studentsbehavior t o some extent. They employed complex use of contexttwice as often where the sentences provided some salient clue t oword meaning. In contrast, simple use of context appeared moreoften when the sentence provided no obvious contextual supportfor generating the meaning of the word.Stu de nt Prof iles

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


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L a w s o n a n d Hogben 123

Table 2, Table sets out the overall strategy use by thesestudents. Each student is identified by a single letter. Thenumbers in brackets-also given a t the head of the table-are thescores 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,(31, Y (21, z 1).

In the body of the table, the figures represent the instancesof strategy use by the students: A figure of 12 for a particularstrategy for a given student means tha t the student employed thatparticular strategy in the learning of all words;a figure of 0 meansthat a strategy was never used.

In Table 4, he single feature most obviously distinguishingthe 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) reportedthe use of more strategies by better language learners. Thestudents in the high group not only used many more strategies onaverage, but they also used these strategies much more fre-quently. Both the top-scoring group and the bottom-scoring groupmade considerable use of simple rehearsal (word repetition) andboth groups attended to the related words that were supplied onthe reverse side of the cards. However, the top group used both ofthese 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, forexample, made only limited use of the sentences provided on thecards; th at is, Student A made little use of context, either simpleo r complex. This limited use of context was also apparent forStudents C and D (2 words in the case of Student C, none byStudent D . Student B, however, attended t o the provided sen-tences in every case, and made complex use of context for 8 of the12 words. Students A and D wrote out each word and itsmeaning(s)as an aid t o learning. Students B and C , in contrast,made no use at all of this strategy. Student B, however, inaddition t o making considerable use of context, did engage in somesentence translation on8ofthe 12words, used some paraphrasing


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Table 4Strategy Use by High- and Low Scoring tudentsHigh-Scoring Group Low-Scoring Group

Word-Learning Stra tegyRepetitionReading of Related WordsSimple RehearsalWriting of Word and MeaningCumulative RehearsalTestingWord Fea ture AnalysisSpellingWord Classification

Suffix

Sentence TranslationSimple Use of ContextAppearance SimilaritySound

Simple Elaboration

9 10 1211 12 912 0 010 0 0

1 0 0

0 0 20 0 60 0 0

3 8 12 4 22 40 4 1

D W(10) 4)

12121200

10

6000

812000

300

9000

8 34 70 00 00 00 10 00 00 16 10 00 0

116110

006100


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ElaborationComplex Use of ContextParaphraseMnemonic1 8 0 0 0 40 6 4 3 0 0 00 4 2 0 0 0 0 0

Total Strategies 5 1 60 43 50 32 23 14 27Note :The maximum possible total for any cell in the table is 12,which indicates tha t the student employed the particularstrategy on all 12 words learned.


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with 6, commented on appearance similarity and word sound on4, nd employed some form of mnemonic strategy 4 imes. Stu-dent C was the only other student from either group to use anyform of mnemonics.

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

A s we have already noted, the bottom-scoring group wasmost obviously characterized by its limited strategy use. Evenwhere a student used some particular strategy t o a considerableextent, she would employ others rather inconsistently. StudentX,for example, made considerable use of context (simple use on 6words, and complex use on 41 ut employed simple rehearsal ononly 4words. Apart from one instance of paraphrasing, StudentX gave no indication of any other technique use. Student W usedsimple rehearsal on all words and engaged in sentence translationin 9 instances. However, apart from 3 comments on spelling ofwords, Student W used no further strategies. Student Z wascharacterized by inconsistency. She paid attention t o relatedwords on 11occasions, used simple rehearsal on only 6 words, andused cumulative rehearsal once. She attempted some sentencetranslation on 6 occasions, and wrote out the word and itsmeaning(s) on one occasion. The profile of Student Y was alsocharacterized by limited and inconsistent strategy use. StudentY used simple word rehearsal, but only on 7 words: There was nocumulative rehearsal. She used context only twice, and at-tempted sentence translation on one occasion. She made onecomment on spelling. She revealed no other strategies or proce-dures during the interview.

The above analysis shows that no obvious profile of particu-


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lar strategy use clearly characterized either the top- or thebottom-scoring group. Although actual strategy use varied con-siderably within the top-scoring group, these successful studentstended t o be consistent in whatever strategies they did employ. Incontrast, the bottom-scoring group exhibited more limited andinconsistent strategy use, although Student W did consistentlyuse a simple rehearsal strategy. The da ta presented above temptone t o suggest that one element of success in learning foreignlanguage vocabulary is the consistent and skillful use of individu-ally congenial strategies ra ther than the employment of someparticular fixed set of strategies. However, this leaves aside thepossible effect of training in elaborative strategy use, the effectsof which can be considerable (cf. Pressley & McCormick, 1995).

DiscussionWe observed the students as they attempted t o learn the

meanings of the new words in the sentences presented to them.Our interest was in the types of procedures, including use ofcontextual cues, that they would use for this task. The studyinvolved them in a deliberate vocabulary acquisition task inwhich they knew that their recall for the word meanings would betested. Such a procedure can provide information on what thesestudents could do in this situation, as distinct from what theymight do in other situations. The students behavior would, ofcourse, have been influenced by how they were presented with thematerial t o be learned. However, the types of words, and theformat of the learning, are typical of many vocabulary learningsituations. The results therefore provide a reasonable estimate ofthe range of procedures th at students could access when deliber-ately attempting t o acquire the meanings of new words.

As a group, the students had access to a wide variety ofacquisition procedures; they typically drew upon more than oneprocedure when focusing on a new word and its meaning. We canreasonably describe these experienced foreign language learnersas being active in their approach t o this task.


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With reference t o our first research question, clearly thegreat majority of the procedures observed in this group involvedsome form of repetition of the new words and their meanings,mostly a simple reading of the dictionary-like entries o r repeti-tions of the word-meaning complexes. In this respect, thesestudents behaved in a manner typical of other language studentswith whom we have worked. Such students see repetition as aprocedure of major importance for vocabulary acquisition; thisview is supported by research such as that of Wang et al. (1993).The use of a repetition procedure can be seen as relevant t o asituation where the retention interval is relatively short, as wasthe 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 forperiods in excess of 15minutes, and to do this for a list the lengthof which would be beyond their immediate memory span. Thememory load was, therefore, significant; meanings that were notavailable for recall at the end of the learning phase would not beavailable 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 t o the physicalor grammatical features of words, and evidenced much less use ofmore elaborative acquisition procedures. Although most of thestudents did use the available contextual cues for generation ofword meanings, they typically used this procedure on about onethird 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, thoughinfrequently used, were both associated with success in recall.There was no evidence of use of the full keyword procedure, andmnemonic procedures similar t o some component of the keywordmethod were used by only 3 students.

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


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procedures that did not involve the development of specific inter-relationships among features of the word-meaning complex, eventhough such procedures were less strongly associated with suc-cessful recall than were the complex elaborations. The pattern ofcorrelations set out in Table 2 is compatible with our introductoryposition: that elaborative procedures are more useful for recallth an are those based on repetition. If this is the case, and ifstudents are not aware of the advantages of these procedures forsome vocabulary acquisition situations, there is a need t o pressthis point more directly during language teaching.The use of contextual clues for generation of meaning fromcontext was our final research question. The clear anomaly in thecorrelational analysis is that relating to complex use of context. Inclassifying this form of strategic activity as a form of complexelaboration, we reasoned that the act of drawing out relationshipsbetween parts of the sentence on the basis of known words wouldestablish strong links between the new word and other knownwords. These links could then be used t o facilitate the retrieval ofthe meaning later. However, this type of activity was not in factassociated with high levels of recall.

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

Indeed the very redundancy or richness of information ina given context which enables a reader to guess an un-known word successfully could also predict that that samereader is less likely to learn the word because he or she wasable t o comprehend the text without knowing the word.(p. 101

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


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The pattern of our results related t o this issue is of particularinterest. Our study was designed so that half of the sentencescontained cues that could be used to generate possible meaningsfor the new words. The results in Table 3 show that these clue-present sentences did encourage greater use of context of a morecomplex type. It is also clear from Table 3 that the difference inuse of context associated with the two types of sentences was notdramatic. On 46 of the clue-present sentences the students didnot use the contextual clues, instead moving straight to the backof the card t o 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 ofassociation between use of context and recall of meaning is ofmajor interest. Even when students did use the clues provided inthe sentences t o generate a possible meaning for the new words,this procedure did not appear t o help them establish representa-tion for the meanings of the words. Why should this apparentlymore associative procedure have this effect, and be so different ineffect compared with procedures that involved simple repetitionand identification of the appearance of the word or its sound?

The observations of Nation & Coady (1988)strengthen theposition, discussed in our introduction, that there is a need t oreconsider the position of context use for vocabulary acquisition.When the context is rich in cues for the word meaning, the readerneed not engage in any detailed examination of the word o r itsfeatures. The rich context is sufficient for generation of a likelymeaning; the reader might pay little attention t o the word itself.Having generated a likely meaning for the unknown word fromthis supportive context, the reader might then comprehend themeaning of that part of the passage and so pass on quickly to theremainder. Mondria and Wit-de Boer (1991) offered a similarexplanation for their finding th at their pregnant contexts didnot result in improved word retention by students learning Frenchvocabulary. 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).


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Aless rich context, o r an unsupportive one, would require thereader t o pay more attention t o a detailed analysis of the word. Inth at case, ifthe reader wished t o build a representation ofthe text,it would be necessary to use other deliberate procedures foranalysis of the word. In our view, the long-term effect of use ofthese procedures in an attempt to build this representation willdepend on the degree of elaboration of the word-meaning complex.

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

So there is a need t o distinguish between the use of contextfor generation of meaning of a new word and the use of context foracquisition of the meaning for subsequent recall. The latter userequires some attention to the features of the word-meaningcomplex. Our results support the view that this attention is bestconcerned with use of a variety of procedures, including onesinvolving some complex form of elaboration. Haastrups (1991)findings from her study of lexical inferencing support this view. Inher study, performance was facilitated when participants drew onseveral levels of inference. The analysis of the individual profilesof the high- and low-scoring students also supports this position.The more successful students were generally more active in theiruse of the information made available to them, and showedevidence of being able t o access a wider range of acquisitionprocedures, including the more complex elaboration procedures.

Generating a possible meaning for an unknown word byusing contextual cues can lead t o development of a suitablerepresentation of the sentence o r passage of text. The reader maytherefore be able to comprehend the sentence or text. Althoughthis comprehension purpose can be seen as distinct from the casewhere the reader interrupts the comprehension exercise t o em-ploy a deliberate vocabulary acquisition procedure with an un-


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known word, the former case will not necessarily preclude thatvocabulary acquisition. s Craik and Lockhart (1972) argued intheir major reorientation of research on retention effects, thenature 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 primarilyconcerned with development of a suitable text representation-one who has a Comprehension purpose-may engage in processingthat is effective for long-term retention. Conversely, the readerwhose purpose is deliberate vocabulary acquisition could employprocedures th at are not effective for long-term retention: The lesssuccessful students in our study provide illustrations of thissecond case. Hence, the distinction sometimes drawn betweencomprehension and learning purposes is useful as a heuristicdevice, but is not necessarily predictive of retention outcomes.

That this distinction between learning and comprehensionpurposes can be justified does not imply that it can be usefullyextended toprocesses of learning and comprehension. The distinc-tion based on purpose suggests that the learner makes a decisionabout the length of time over which the meaning of the new wordmust be held. For comprehension purposes, this interval may beno more than one minute, thereby allowing the reader to build arepresentation 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 requirethat learners establish a representation of meaning in memory:the difference between learning and comprehension processes ismore one of degree than of kind.

Revised version accepted 15 September 1995

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