Dear Students,
In your opinion, how is the development of lexicon, “the vocabulary of a particular language, field, social class, person, etc.’ in L2 impacted or related to learner’s first language and culture? What role do form and meaning play in acquiring new lexicon?
What strategies do you and your students employ to acquire second language lexicon and what factors, in your opinion affect word learnability?
We look forward to your comments.
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9 comments:
Well learning new lexicon, I assume might be difficult. I learned both languages at a very young age, so I dont remember this process. However, the first language vocabulary sure does effect when learning a second language. It might get confusing, and at time make up words. For example I know my family is always trying to make a word in spanish sound in english. And therfore make up their own vocabulary where only the "inner circle" understands. Language interference will occur but it also depends on the students first langauge skills. It is important for the teacher to classify and identify the errors to try to correct them. It is sometimes hard to seperate two languages but one must understand that they are differemt and at times cannot be interrelated. If a person does not have good L1 skills then new lexicon might night be a problem. This is all new to them and wont get confused with the other language. However, it could go the other way around too. If a person has good L1 skills then when learning a new lexicon they might get confused and inter use them, or may not. It all depends. I conclude, that teachers need to be on the look out for this language interference and identify and classify the errors to help the student.
Acquiring and maintaining a sizable vocabulary is one of the hardest things for me in my personal language learning experience. It often seems like an enormous undertaking and can be extremely frustrating. In English, naturally, I can instantly understand thousands of words, while in German, I often hear a word and realize I've heard it somewhere before, and by the time I remember what it means, the rest of the sentence is over--the problem is only worse when trying to produce output!
As far as L1 influence goes, I guess it is a distracting motivational factor, because of what I just described; in German, I struggle to accomplish what I could easily accomplish in English years ago. I am curious about how else L1 might affect L2 lexicon, specifically in how a person might associate foreign vocabulary with counterparts in the NL.
My first language is Japanese. Japanese have a lot of borrowed words from other languages which are written in “katakana” character. However, many Japanese people don’t know the origin of those words. Therefore they have a misconception that those katakana words are English. Why English? It is because English is the most familiar foreign language in Japan. That is why Japanese who do not know any English like my parents think my English speaking husband must understand those words. The interaction can be comical sometimes.
However, I myself went through those days of confusion too. I tried to guess what some of those “katakana” words might be in English. Of course it was not successful. I eventually learned many words by categorizing and connecting the word to word like “motor-cycle, bi-cycle, and uni-cycle”. I have learned many words but I realized how inadequate my vocabulary knowledge is since I came back to college. I mentioned in class that I dropped my Japanese and learned English as English. However, that method changed a little bit since I came back to college. It is weird that I have to use both English-Japanese and Japanese-English dictionary to figure out what I want to say on paper from time to time. I am lacking lexicon in both languages. It is almost like I have two different people in me and I’m supporting both back and forth. That is why I mix my both language a lot especially when I am speaking to other Japanese. My comfort zone in language is in more towards English than Japanese. I can still learn new vocabulary but I think it takes more time than it used to be.
I think the key to acquire vocabulary is to use as often as possible just as any other learning.
I agree with the students’ comments above regarding the difficulty of developing L2 lexicon. Although several Spanish and English words are similar it is still difficult to learn other vocabulary words that are not cognates. Often times beginning Spanish speakers begin inventing their own words based on their knowledge that Spanish vocabulary does contain a lot of cognates. Another issue with the Spanish vocabulary is that it also contains false cognates, these words may sound like a word in English but mean something completely different. L1 does definitely play a role in the acquisition of L2. As I learned Spanish as a second language I often realize that I use English as a reference to form sentences or for certain vocabulary, but often times this will result in incorrect Spanish. It is also very important to have strong L1 skills in order to develop L2 in terms of lexicon, grammar, etc. Overall, L1 can have a positive and negative impact on L2 acquisition.
I believe that the lexicon can be the most important part of learning a language. It is possible to just know certain words and be able to communicate. Spanish and English have many words that both sound similar and have the same meaning, so learning Spanish can seem easy sometimes because of this fact, but there are also many "false friends" out there that will trip up learners of Spanish if they rely too much on their English. As far as meaning in a new lexicon, it can be especially difficult to pick up on idioms and sayings that are popular in another country, especially since there are large differences between Spain, Mexico and all the countries in Central and South America. Once a higher level of Spanish is acquired, it is important for the learner to recognize and respect these differences, which makes it almost worthless to rely on the L1, because the variations of the L2 are what matter. Word learnability, I think, depends on how the person wants to learn it. For me, I try to read books in Spanish that will both expose me to new words and increase my exposure to words that are familiar to me. Of course, it is best to try and only retain the most relevant words. I read the "Harry Potter" series and learned the word "lechuza", which means "barn owl" in English. The word more often used for "owl" in Spanish is "buho", but because of the high exposure of that word in those books, I'll never forget the word "lechuza", even though it probably will never be too usefeul. But I think exposure and use are the most important factors in lexicon learnability.
In my own personal experience, time is the most effective factor in acquiring a new lexicon. Otherwise, it is similar to cramming for a test. We take in too much information at once, and as fast as we remember it, we also forget it rather quickly. The closer the first language is to the second, the easier it is to relate vocabulary to one another. Obviously it is easier to remember words when they sound and look similar. When they have the same roots, many times it is just common sense. I notice that I mix the languages sometimes, because I will remember the word in another language and it's just faster using that one, rather than trying to think of the other. When I taught a German class I tried to just use vocabulary over and over in the exercises they were doing. Even if they were from the beginning of the curriculum and we were already at the end. It is important to repeat and practice them throughout our learning experience.
Maybe it was the author or maybe it was Chomsky, but somewhere in our text was the comment that "language learning is largely lexical learning." I believe this is true, for if it's as the input processing hypothesis that we studied earlier, and second language learners really do listen for meaning first--through content words, buzzwords, something recognizable to the ear--then the range of their second language lexicon is instrumental to comprehension. Of course some languages place emphasis on morphology and word order to establish meaning, but what are these to the language learner if he or she can't link the sounds to a concept in their head? I know from experience that for all my knowledge of grammar rules in Spanish, I'm constantly beginning sentences with "Como se dice..." in order to choose the right word.
Some people suggest listening to the radio in your target language to help expand your lexicon, but for me this is just as challenging. Picking up one of the local newspapers like Hoy or Contratiempo has been useful in letting me see the words laid out, working on the page in relation with one another, so that I can learn unfamiliar words from their context and feel more confident using them.
Lexicon is most definitely influenced by the L1. I say this because in a way, we have "lived" our L1. By that I mean that many words in our NL have been influenced by situations and memories we have experienced, and those meanings affect how we perceive words we learn in the TL. This was seen in the excercise we did in class when we all defined "homeland." Those personal definitions are not just dropped when we attempt to acquire this term in the L2, they are carried over because they are a part of us.
Although the lexicon of a language is huge, I actually find it less daunting of a task than learning a language's grammar, partly because I am a nerd and love learning new words. However I agree with Ben in that it is super frustrating to not be able to express yourself as fully as you can in your L1 because of a lack of vocabulary.
I think the best way to learn a lexicon is to read, read, read as much as possible so one is exposed to as many words in the L2 as possible. I also keep a file of new vocab words in my computer and that helps me keep a sort of external database of my developing L2 lexicon.
I agree with Sarah’s comment on how time is the most effective in learning a new lexicon. One cannot learn new words in a language just by being told them. It takes input of those words, processing, and then the student’s comprehension and use of those new words through output. Also, when words or information are new, I think that continued use of them is crucial to retaining that information. Some languages appear to be easier to learn than others. For example, many Spanish and Italian words are so similar to the same words in English. This makes them much easier to learn and remember. I learned Italian before Spanish and it made learning Spanish that much easier for me. The words are a lot alike in the two languages and both are Latin-based. Repetition and practice of those newly learned words are very important in acquiring a second language. Students need to learn the words and make them a part of their vocabulary from there on in order to remember them and become more proficient in the language.
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