指導教授 : Victor Shen

班級 : 碩研英語一甲 研究生 : M99C0112 Tina

M99C0207 Carrey

How Words Are Learned

What Is A Word?

Word Sets

Classification of Morphemes

Phonemic Awareness

Word Learning Processes in Typically-Development Children

Word Retention

Incidental Vocabulary Learning through Reading

Outline

A word is a single unit of language which has meaning

and can be spoken or written, used with others to form a

sentence and typically shown with a space on either side

when written or printed.

What Is A Word ?

Word Sets

Every word is composed of one or more morphemes.

What Is A Morpheme?

A morpheme is the smallest unit of language that carries an

independent meaning or grammatical function.

Two Kinds of Words －1. Simple Words (a morpheme)

e.g. and, boy, act, man, hunt

2. Complex Words (two or more morphemes)

e.g. boy-s, hunt-er-s, gentle-man-li-ness

Classes of Simple Words

1. Content Words (Open Class Words) －

Making up the major word classes － nouns, verbs, adverbs,

and adjectives in English.

e.g. book, talk, beautiful, lovely

2. Function Words (Closed Class Words) －

Including conjunctions, prepositions, the articles, and

pronouns.

e.g. and, the, in, it

Free Morphemes －

Morphemes that can constitute words by themselves.

e.g. man, sick, tree

Bound Morphemes －

Morphemes that cannot occur unattached

Affix: A morpheme that does not belong to a lexical category

and is always bound.

Prefixes: Morphemes that occur only before other ones.

e.g. preview, unlikely, impossible

Suffixes: Morphemes that occur only after other ones.

e.g. believable, handful, neighborhood

Classification of Morphemes

Phonemic awareness

Definition － “the understanding that a word is made up of a series of

separate sounds” and “the ability to pick out and manipulate

sounds in spoken words” (Blevins, 1998, p. 28).

The main goal of phonemic awareness instruction －Helping children to develop the awareness that spoken words

can be segmented into phonemes and that the letters can represent

these segmented units (Blachman et al., 2000).

Phoneme －A phoneme is the smallest unit of sound in a word.

e.g. “man” (three phonemes): /m/ /a/ /n/

“sleep” (four phonemes): /s/, /l/, /i/, /p/

Teaching children the different words －begin with the same phoneme

e.g. “sun”, “seal”, “sailor” and “sand”

end with the same phoneme

e.g. “bus”, “house”, “octopus”, “dress”

Developing their phonemic awareness

(Bryne & Fielding-Barnsley, 1995).

Adams (1990) －Five levels of phonemic awareness in terms of abilities.

(1) to hear rhymes and alliteration as measured by knowledge

of nursery rhymes

(2) to do oddity tasks

(3) to blend and split syllables

(4) to perform phonemic segmentation

e.g. counting out the number of phonemes in a word

(5) to perform phoneme manipulation tasks

e.g. adding, deleting a particular phoneme and regenerating

a word from the remainder

During the first year of life －

Vocabulary acquisition is initially slow, particularly in terms

of productive vocabulary (Hoff, 2001).

After they begin producing first words －

Children will add 8 to 11 words to their vocabularies each

month (Benedict, 1979).

Word learning processes

in typically-development children

The incremental rate of vocabulary acquisition －

Once children average around 50 to 150 words in their

expressive lexicons (Bates et al., 1994)

By 18 months of age －

Carey (1978) : Children will learn around 9 new words

per day, or about one per waking hour.

Reznick and Goldfield (1992) : The more conservative

estimate of 22 to 37 words per month.

By 30 months of age －

The median lexicon contains 573 words.

Acquired around 50 words －

Children become rapid word learners, capable of

acquiring words even after minimal exposure to the

word and its referent

(Lederberg, 2003).

Three processes of word learning －

First Stage Fast mapping

Second Stage Slow mapping or Word retention

Third Stage Word extension

Fast Mapping (at an early age) －

The ability to map a word to its referent after only a few

exposures (Carey, 1978).

The early connections between words and referents in

memory and is featured by limited semantic knowledge.

(McGregor, Friedman, Reilly, & Newman, 2002).

When does “fast mapping ” occurs?

Heibeck & Markman (1987) － A child uses linguistic and

non-linguistic information to pair a new label with its referent.

e.g. Carey (1978) －showed 3- and 4-year-olds

instructed the child

selected the green plate and cup, without knowing the meaning of

“chromium.”

(fast mapping the first phase in lexical acquisition.)

an blue plate and a green plate (the same shape)

an red cup and a green cup (the same shape)

“the chromium plate, not the blue one, the chromium one”

“the chromium cup, not the red one, the chromium one.”

Slow Mapping or Word Retention － It has received less attention, perhaps because fast mapping

is equal to word learning (Horst & Samuelson, 2008) .

led to an overestimation of toddlers’ word learning abilities

Young children have much more difficulty with the slow mapping

phase of word learning than with the fast mapping process.

focus on fast mapping and not the retention phase

Four experiments with 2-year-olds －presented with a fast mapping example

presentation of a retention/extension example

Participants had no difficulty expressing word-object pairings

in the fast mapping example, but could not retain or extend

new or unusual names.

Fast mapping should not be combined with word learning in

young children.

followed by a 5-minute delay

Horst and Samuelson concluded

Horst and Samuelson’s work －

the importance of memory load and perceptual salience in

retaining a word-object link over time.

Word retention influenced by memory (memory consolidation ) －

Consolidation is the process in the brain by which a memory

strengthens over time, without additional experience with that

memory.

(McGregor, Rohlfing, Bean and Marschner, 2009).

40 two-year-olds received training

Some of the children － received a gesture cue.

Other children － viewed an photograph demonstrating “under”

Remaining children － received no additional support in learning

“under” except verbal training.

Children who received the gestural support performed better

than the other two groups.

McGregor and colleagues － the gesture-enhanced memory

consolidating over time.

the spatial term “under”

Only after a delay of two to three days

Word Extension － the process of inducing a target object to other instances of it.

The ability to extend words

allows us to form category boundaries for different properties

and objects in the environment.

an important step in language learning

By about 12 months of age －

having a basic understanding that words can refer to categories

rather than the original object and can extend to multiple examples

(Hirsh-Pasek, Golinkoff, and Hollich, 1999).

Two-year-olds －

extending new names to new objects that differ from the

original example in size or color

(Behrend, Scofield, and Kleinknecht; 2001).

Word Retention

Words are stored in three types of memory －

Sensory Stores

Working Memory

Permanent Memory

Sensory Stores

The sensory stores take in the variety of colors,

tones, tastes, and smells that people experience each

day and retain them for a very brief time.

Most of the information in the sensory store

disappears very rapidly because it is not processed.

Working Memory (Short-Term Memory)

Functions － Storage and Processing

Sousa (2001) － Once information enters the working memory

about 15 seconds while the brain decides to process the

information or to discard it (about 98% of all incoming

information is discarded at this point).

The brain is making an important decision—

whether to move the information into permanent storage or

to toss it out as unimportance.

Permanent Memory (Long-Term Memory)

“Permanent memory is a repository of our knowledge of

the world” (Carroll, 1999, p.49).

Permanent memory holds all of the information we have

retained from the past that is not currently active.

used to interpret new experiences, and the new events may

later be added to this storehouse of information.

Incidental vocabulary learning －The learners acquire the words without intending to learn.

The meaning of a new word is acquired unconsciously as a result

of repeated exposures in a range of context.

a by-product cognitive activity involving comprehension.

This is similar to the models of L1 vocabulary acquisition, which

places repeated exposure to words in meaningful collocation

(Gass, 2000) .

Incidental Vocabulary Learning

Through Reading

Studies on first language acquisition －

Extensive reading over time had a positive effect on L1 learners’

vocabulary acquisition and expansion

(Krashen, 1989; Paribakht & Wesche,

1997).

Through extensive reading －

L2 advanced learners actually acquired most of their vocabulary

knowledge, except for the first few thousand most common words

(Coady, 1997; Grabe & Stoller, 1997; Huckin & Coady, 1999).

The advantages of incidental vocabulary learning through

extensive reading －1) Giving learners a richer sense of a word by offering various

contexts.

2) Making vocabulary acquisition and reading happen

simultaneously.

3) Be more individualized and learner-based because the

readers’ vocabulary acquisition depends on the learners’ own

choice of reading.

(Hcukin & Coady, 1999)

Studies on incidental vocabulary learning －

Shu, Anderson, and Zhang (1995)

－ supported L1 incidental vocabulary learning

Chinese elementary students in Beijing could incidentally

learn about 8% of the new words in the reading task.

American students could acquire incidentally around 10% of

the unknown words.

Hulstijn, Hollander, and Creidanus (1996) －

L2 advanced students could incidentally learn more

unknown words that appeared three times in a text than

the other words appearing only once.

Chang (2002) － 12th graders in Taiwan could learn 10% of the words

appearing three times and 4% of the words appearing

only once.

Reoccurrence of the same word in a text led to more successful

incidental vocabulary learning.

Luppescu and Day (1993), Knight (1994), and Chang (2002) －L2 learners could learn the meanings of unknown English

words incidentally from reading

The learning rate was quite low.

The rate of L2 incidental vocabulary learning

ranged from 3% to 6% when reading without any aids

ranged from 6% to 18% when reading with the assistance

of bilingual dictionaries, electronic dictionaries, or glosses.

Wantanabe (1997) and Paribakht & Wesche (1999)

－ L2 incidental vocabulary learning through reading was

unpredictable and not always efficient.

Hulstijn, Hollander and Greidanus (1996)

－ Incidental vocabulary learning was not thought to occur often

due to L2 learners’ failure in learning the meanings of unfamiliar

words in texts spontaneously.

Why?

There were several reasons －

1) Learners tended to ignore a large rate of unknown words,

which they thought irrelevant to the main idea for global

comprehension.

2) Learners often considered they knew the unfamiliar words

that they in fact did not know.

3) The long contextual information might direct readers’

attention to the meaning not to the unfamiliar word form.

4) Readers’ guessing might be imprecise and their wrong

inferences caused them to learn the unknown words incorrectly.

5) The non-reoccurrence of newly met words made incidental

vocabulary learning inefficient

(Hulstijn et al., 1996).

ReferencesAdams, M. J. (1990). Beginning to read: Thinking and learning about print.

Cambridge, MA: MIT press.

Bates, E., Marchman, V., Thal, D., Fenson, L., Dale, P., Reznick, J. S., et al.

(1994). Developmental and stylistic variation in the composition of early

vocabulary. Journal of Child Language, 21, 85-123.

Behrend, D. A., Scofield, J., & Kleinknecht, E. E. (2001). Beyond fast

mapping: Young children's extensions of novel words and novel facts.

Developmental Psychology, 37, 698-705.

Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: Comprehension and

production. Journal of Child Language, 6, 183-200.

Blachman, B. A., Ball, E. W., Blacks, R., & Tangel, D. M. (2000). Road to the

code: A phonological awareness program for young Children. Baltimore,

MD: Paul H. Brookes.

Blevins, W. (1998). Phonics from A to Z: A practical guide. New York:

Scholastic.

Bryne, B., & Fielding-Barnsley, R. (1995). Evaluation of a program to teach

phonemic awareness to young children. Journal of Educational Psychology,

87, 488-503. 

Carey, S. (1978). The child as a word learner. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press.

Carroll, D. W. (1999). Psychology of language. Pacific Grove, CA: Brooks &

Cole Publishing.

Chang, S. M. (2002). The roles of marginal glosses and pocket electronic

dictionaries in EFL incidental vocabulary learning (Unpublished Master’s

thesis). National Taiwan Normal University, Taipei.

Gass, S. (1999). Discussion: Incidental vocabulary learning. Studies in Second

Language Acquisition, 21, 319-333.

Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. (1997). Reading and vocabulary development in a second

language: A case study. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language

Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy (pp. 98-122). Cambridge,

UK: University Press.

Hoff, E. (2001) Language Development (2nd ed.). Belmont, CA: Wadsworth &

Thompson Learning.

McGregor, K. K., Friedman, R. M., Reilly, R. M., & Newman, R. M. (2002). Semantic representation and naming in young children. Journal of Speech, Language, and Hearing Research, 45(2), 332-346.

McGregor, K.K., Rohlfing, K.J., Bean, A., & Marschner, E. (2009). Gesture as a support for word learning: The case of under. Journal of Child Language, 36, 807-828.

Paribakht, T. S., & Wesche, M. (1997). Vocabulary enhancement activities and reading for meaning in second language vocabulary acquisition. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: A Rationale for Pedagogy (pp. 174–200). Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press.

Reznick, J., & Goldfield, B. A. (1992). Rapid change in lexical development in

comprehension and production. Developmental Psychology, 28, 406-413.

Horst, J. S., & Samuelson, L. K. (2008). Fast mapping but poor retention by 24-monthold infants. Infancy, 13, 1288-157.

 

Huckin, T., & Coady, J. (1999). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language: A review. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21(2), 181-193.

Sousa, D. (2001). How the brain learns (2nd ed.). Thousand Oaks, CA: Corwin Press.

Hulstijn, J. H., Hollander, M., & Greidanus, T. (1996). Incidental vocabulary learning by advanced foreign language students: The influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and reoccurrence of unknown words. The Modern Language Journal, 80(3), 327-339.

Knight, S. (1994). Dictionary use while reading: The effects on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition for students of different verbal abilities. The Modern Language Journals, 78(3), 285-299.

Shu, H., Anderson, R. C., & Zhang, H. (1995). Incidental learning of word meanings while reading: A Chinese and American cross-cultural study. Reading Research Quarterly, 30(1), 76-95.

The Effect of English Word Exposure Frequency in the Simplified Novel on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition by EFL Senior High School Students in Taiwan

Liu, Yu-fengAugust, 2002

Introduction - Background and Motivation

- Purpose of Study - Research Question

Background and Motivation

In the past, the specific skills of words learning was focusing mainly on test-oriented reading materials which failed to provide students with abundant opportunities of repeated encounters of the unfamiliar words, not to mention broaden their vocabulary and develop the students’ reading interest in a meaningful and pleasant way. however, Various studies shifted the traditional approach to suggest that word exposure frequency plays a conducive factor in incidental acquisition of vocabulary in recent years.

Purpose of Study

The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of the word exposure frequency in novels on incidental vocabulary acquisition

Research Questions

(1)Do EFL senior high school students score better in words at high exposure frequency ranges than in those at low exposure frequency ranges?

(2) Are there any differences among EFL senior high school students with high, mid and low English proficiency in incidental word gains?

(3) Are there any differences among EFL senior high school students with high, mid and low English proficiency at different word exposure frequency ranges?

(4) What is the average optimal word exposure frequency for EFL senior high school students to pick up the word incidentally?

(5) What vocabulary learning strategies may students with high, mid, and low English proficiency apply when reading the simplified novel?

Research Questions

Literature Review-The Nature of Vocabulary Development -Knowing a Word-Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Reading-Vocabulary Building Through Word Exposure-Learning Words in the Context -EFL Students’ Vocabulary Learning Strategies

The Nature of Vocabulary Development

To second language learners, through repeated exposures obtained from reading for comprehension, their mental processing of vocabulary would be developed (Paribakht & Wesche, 1997).

Knowing a Word

According to theories of human memory (Baddeley, 1987), when a word was recalled, the learner evaluated it subconsciously, and decided how it was different from others and continued to change his interpretation until he reached the exact meaning that fitted the context. With the route successfully used several times, the word was reinforced, and the retention of the word was therefore enhanced.

Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Reading

Krashen proposed that incidental learning occurred through his Input Hypothesis with reading offering the comprehensible input that led naturally to acquisition. (1989)

Input Hypothesis (1982): “the more comprehensible input the learners received, the more language acquisition they might acquire.”

Vocabulary Building Through Word Exposure

The results of Rott’s (1999) study indicated that the frequency of exposure the unfamiliar vocabulary that learners encountered had an impact on the amount of vocabulary gained.

Learning Words in the Context

Beheydt (1987) also left no doubt to his view: “the first guideline would be that vocabulary must be

learned in context. The meanings of words are more easily semanticized if they are embedded in a meaningful context” (p. 63).

Oxford and Scarcella (1994) wrote: “By far the most useful vocabulary learning strategy is “guessing” from context” (p. 263).

EFL Students’ Vocabulary Learning Strategies

Nagy and Herman (1984) showed the significance of guessing word meaning from context in the acquisition of new vocabulary in their study. The results revealed that when classroom teachers allowed students the opportunity to use context to elucidate meaning of new words, vocabulary growth was evident.

Guessing Word Meaning From the Context

Clarke and Nation (1980) proposed a very simple strategy that helped the learner look closely at the unknown words.Step (1): Look at the unknown word and decide its

part of speech.Step (2): Look at the clause or sentence containing

the unknown word.

Step (3): Look at the relationship between the clause or sentence containing the unknown word and other sentences or paragraphs. Sometimes this relationship will be signaled by a conjunction like but, because, if, when, or by an adverb like however, as a result.

Step (4): Use the knowledge you have gained from step 1-3 to guess the meaning of the word.

Step (5): Check that your guess is correct. (pp. 162- 163)

Methodology - Participants - Instruments- Procedures

- Treatments - Data Analysis

- Conclusions

Subjects

Instruments

~ Treatments~A Weekly Reading Schedule for “The Ring”

Taking Basic Proficiency Test

Dividing 124 first-year senior high school students into three groups

High proficiency Group (34)

Low Proficiency Group (34)

procedures

Distributing the first simplified novel, The Ring, and a weekly reading scheduleto the subjects

Mid Proficiency Group (56)

Following the weekly reading schedule, then asking subjects to finish the assigned chaptersin class, and collecting the book when the class was over(Totally five weeks)

(1) Giving 3 Vocabulary Multiple-Choice tests

unexpectedly (10 minutes each)Collecting the test sheets and answer sheets

(2) Distributing the questionnaires collecting them ten minutes later

(3) Adding up the scores of the three Vocabulary Multiple-Choice tests

Data Analysis

Results

RQ1: The Subjects’ Vocabulary Gains at the Three Frequency Ranges

RQ2: The Word Gains of Subjects with High, Mid, and Low English Proficiency

RQ3: The Performance of the Subjects with Three English Proficiency at Three Exposure Frequency Ranges

RQ4: Optimal Exposure Frequency Range for Acquiring Words

The Curves for Three Word Exposure Frequency and Word Gains of Subjects with Three Proficiency Groups

RQ5: FFL Subjects’ Opinions and Strategies of Vocabulary Learning

The questionnaire revealed that many EFL senior high students did not like reading the assigned simplified novel.

In dealing with the new words, most students failed to make good use of inferring word meanings from the contexts and analyzing word parts.

Many students considered the assigned simplified novel appropriate; few deemed it difficult.

Conclusions(1) EFL senior high students in this study demonstrated

vocabulary gains through repeated encounters of the new words while reading the assigned simplified English novel.

(2) Word exposure frequency played a remarkable role in the vocabulary acquisition of subjects with different English proficiency.

(3) The optimal pick-up exposure frequency range for EFL senior high students with different English proficiency in this study fell at exposure frequency range F6-F12.

(4) The questionnaire revealed that many EFL senior high students in this study did not prefer reading this assigned simplified novel.

(5) In dealing with the new words, most EFL senior high students in this study would not apply the two strategies of consulting dictionaries and memorizing new words right away.

(6) As to the readability of the assigned simplified novel, many EFL senior high students in this study considered it appropriate as an outside reading material.

Activities

1. What weakness do you think

the study has?

2. Please find out ways to

improve it?

Suggestions for Future Research• The subjects in this study were limited to the first-year students of

Kang-shang Senior High School.• Present findings are derived from the data of three intact classes

reading a simplified novel without the aid of dictionary.• Neither the reading task nor the assigned simplified novel was part of

the subjects’ class syllabi.• In this study, the subjects were asked to read only one simplified

English novel.• The Vocabulary Multiple-Choice Tests applied in this study only

measured the receptive word knowledge.• The new words tested in this study failed to explore the influence of

parts of speech, the length of a word, and the pronunciation of a word on the acquisition of words.

Thanks for Your Attention^^

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Revue Canadienne Des Langues Vivantes, 61(2), 225-250.

Clarke, D. F., & Nation, I. (1980). Guessing the meanings of words from context:

Strategy and techniques* 1. System, 8(3), 211-220.

Hall, W. S., Nagy, W. E., & Linn, R. L. (1984). Spoken words, effects of situation

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Krashen, S. (1989). We acquire vocabulary and spelling by reading: Additional

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Oxford, R. L., & Scarcella, R. C. (1994). Second language vocabulary learning

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Rott, S. (1999). THE EFFECT OF EXPOSURE FREQUENCY ON

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