Short paper
Background
One of the primary goals in L2 learning and teaching is to improve the comprehension of L2
texts and discourse. To achieve successful comprehension, learners are taught various
aspects of the target language. Among them, vocabulary has been consistently reported to
play a key role in achieving L2 proficiency (Ellis 1995; Hatch and Brown 1995; Hu and Nation
2000; Lewis 1993; Schmitt 2008). Therefore, since the 1990s, increasing attention has been
paid to how L2 vocabulary is most effectively learned (e.g. Chen 2009; Laufer and Hulstijn
2001) although the best way has not yet been found (Schmitt 2008).
Amid the alternatives, the use of pictorial aids in a CALL environment could be advantageous
in explaining the meanings of L2 words in dictionaries or learning materials in annotations or
glosses (Lomicka 1998). In particular, the use of pictures as visual glosses has been shown
to facilitate longer retention of target L2 vocabulary (e.g., Chun and Plass 1996; Al-Seghayer
2001; Yoshii and Flaitz 2002; Yeh and Wang 2003). Our study, however, questions the
generalization that visual glosses are always effective in L2 vocabulary learning by
considering the three main concerns: vocabulary items, configurations of the visual glosses
(Sato & Suzuki, 2010, 2011, 2012) and individual factors.
Our Concerns
The first concern is the type of vocabulary item that would be best suited for visual glosses.
Previous studies might generalize the advantage of visual glosses in L2 vocabulary learning
withiout much consideration of kinds of vocabulary items. This might be because they
conducted their research in terms of incidental learning. That is, reading texts were initially
conducted, and then vocabulary tests were employed to examine how much vocabulary was
incidentally retained. Successful vocabulary learning for these studies means how much and
how long the target vocabulary can be memorized incidentally in the reading text. As a
result, studies of this kind might not pay attention to the differences among vocabulary
items, e.g., semantic structure. Some vocabulary items are easier to learn becauase their
semantic structure is relaviely simpler in the sense that each of their forms contains only one
sense. However, if a target word has several sense in one form, learners might encounter
difficulty learning all the senses and selecting the appropriate one according to the context.
Recent studies (Sato & Suzuki 2010, 2011, 2012) confirmed the above observation and even
demonstrated a less positive effect of visual glosses on the learning of L2 English prepositions
in text and discourse comprehension and production. We thus wonder whether pictorial aids
are always effective in any setting and what types of vocabulary items better accomodate the
use of visual glosses.
Our second concern is related to the type of visual glosses, i.e., the configurations. Al-
seghayer (2001) shows that animation is a more effective technique than the use of still
images. Littlemore (2009) also points out that three-dimensional diagrams are useful when
they could be displayed dynamically. Therefore it might be thought that the more
technologically-enhanced visual glosses learners are exposed to, the better learning results
they could get. Sato & Suzuki (2010) examine the relative effects of two types of visual
glosses, still images and animated images, in learning English prepositions. The figures below
are the visual glosses of the preposition ‘over’. The left image is a still picture which
conceptually depicts the prototypical sense
based on Lakoff (1987)’s above
-across schema.
The right image, on the other hand, depicts the same above-across schema but in an
animation format. After showing these glosses, a vocabulary test was conducted to examine
which type of visual aid best develo
ps the understanding of the senses of ‘over’.
-301-
2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
Visual glosses of ‘over’ (Sato and Suzuki 2010)
The findings conclude that no significant difference between the two glosses is found,
although significantly different learning results are found between visual glosses and verbal
glosses (which verbally explains the protopypical sense above). Sato and Suzuki (2010)
indicate that the effectiveness of visual glosses for L2 vocabulary learning may also
correlate with individual facotrs.
The final concern is the individual factors in effective use of visual glosses in L2 vocabulary
learning. We are wondering whether every learner could get a positive effect with
multimodal tools as previous studies stressed. Some learners might easily and quickly
visualize an image of the target word with the help of visual glosses, while others might not.
For example, some learners might quickly visualize “The airplane is flying
over
the
mountain”, “My house is
over
the river”, or “You will get over a problem” with the help
of
the glosses above, whereas others may still find it difficult to connect the the target word in
the sentences with the images. The ease of visualization leads us to focus on the difference
in learners’ cognitive styles. Some learners, for example, might
be better at conceptualizing
knowledge with the help of visual glosses, whereas others might be good at analyzing
knowledge through verbal information.
These inclinations can be captured by grouping the cognitive learning styles as holistic
cognitive st
yle or analytic cognitive style (Littlemore 2001), or the learners as “imagers” or
“verbalizers” (Riding and Rayner 1998). Littlemore (2001) shows that those who have a
holistic cognitive style, or better metaphoric competence, could derive metaphorical senses
faster than those who have an analytic cognitive style. Grounded on the above, we further
investigate the correlation between learners’ cognitive style and the effectiveness of visual
glosses in learning L2 vocaublary.
Besides the cognitve style, t
he differnece in learners’ first language (L1) is another
individual factor to be examined. English prepositions are regarded as difficult to learn
because L2 learners, despite being advanced learners, do not always understand their
meanings (Brala, 2002; Lindstromberg, 2001). This might be especially true for Japanese
learners because translations which are added to each sense of the target word may
prevent learners from understanding the semantic networks of the senses.
-302-
2014 CALL Conference
LINGUAPOLIS
www.antwerpcall.be
For example, a protypical sense of
over like “an airplane is flying
over
the mountain” is
translated into “hikouki ga yama
no ue wo
tondeiru”, but the translation “no ue wo” is also
used in the protypical sense of “above” and “on”. This overlapping might lead to appropriate
use of the senses according to the context. However, we are wondering whether this
difficulty would be applicable to learners whose L1 is not Japanese. For example, Chinese
learners of English, whose L1 linguistic features are very different from that of Japanese but
are rather similar to English, might not experience the same difficulty.
Do'stlaringiz bilan baham: |