Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgments
- I SETTING THE STAGE
- II CASE STUDIES
- III EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
- Chapter 7 Tracking the acquisition of L2 vocabulary: The Keki language experiment
- Chapter 8 Rare words, complex lexical units and the advanced learner
- Chapter 9 Vocabulary enhancement activities and reading for meaning in second language vocabulary acquisition
- IV PEDAGOGY
- V SUMMING UP
- Author index
- Subject index
Chapter 7 - Tracking the acquisition of L2 vocabulary: The Keki language experiment
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 October 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of contributors
- Series editors' preface
- Acknowledgments
- I SETTING THE STAGE
- II CASE STUDIES
- III EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
- Chapter 7 Tracking the acquisition of L2 vocabulary: The Keki language experiment
- Chapter 8 Rare words, complex lexical units and the advanced learner
- Chapter 9 Vocabulary enhancement activities and reading for meaning in second language vocabulary acquisition
- IV PEDAGOGY
- V SUMMING UP
- Author index
- Subject index
Summary
Introduction
Reported here are the first results of an experimental study of the acquisition of a second language in the laboratory under controlled conditions. The overall project aimed at tracking the time-course of the acquisition of a specially-designed artificial language. The acquisition of both lexicon and grammar was tracked through repeated tests over a 5-week instruction period. Some of the tests involved cognitive tasks, while others involved more natural linguistic performance tasks. In this paper I report the results of the acquisition of the lexicon.
Most applied linguistic studies in the area of second language vocabulary focus on instructional method, and test conscious lexical competence in or out of communicative context. While I used one conscious lexical translation task, the bulk of my study involved testing the development of two subconscious – automated – cognitive skills: (1) word recognition; (2) semantic priming. The impetus for my use of these cognitive tasks does not come from studies of second language acquisition, but rather from two lines of cognitive-psychological work on the fluent processing of native vocabulary.
The first line of cognitive research concerns the recognition of word forms. Sieroff and Posner (1988) and Sieroff, Pollatsek and Posner (1988) have shown that the recognition of habituated, native word forms is automatic and does not demand attention. This contrasts with the recognition of nonhabituated nonsense letter strings, which is attentiondemanding. We have reproduced these results previously in a study of second language learners (Givon, Yang & Gernsbacher, 1990).
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- Information
- Second Language Vocabulary AcquisitionA Rationale for Pedagogy, pp. 125 - 156Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 1996