ESL Learners’ Semantic Awareness of English Words,Semantic Transfer and Its Implications for Vocabulary Teaching in a Second Language

■王茗涵/江西中医药大学人文学院

Abstract:This paper investigated semantic transfer in second language learning and provided studies involving two groups of English as a second language population,Chinese and Korean ESL learners.They were asked to perform a semantic judgment task in which they decided whether or not two English words were related in meaning. Two types of related word pairs were used in studies. One type of word pairs shared same L1 translation and the other type did not share same L1 translation. Both groups of ESL speakers responded to the same-translation pairs significantly faster than to the different-translation pairs. However, no such same-translation effect was found among native speakers of English. The same-translation effect found in L2 speakers have showed that first language semantic structures have significant impacts on L2 lexical representations and L2 processing. Pedagogical implications for L2 vocabulary teaching are discussed.

Keywords: semantic awareness semantic structure vocabulary acquisition same-translation effect

一、Introduction

As a Chinese ESL learner and a graduate student who is attending a school in the US, I know that reading journal articles in English makes me exhausted especially when there is time limitation. For example, taking GRE verbal part drives me crazy every time I take it. I conclude that vocabulary is the prominent factor leading my low reading comprehension level and slow reading speed with regard to the GRE verbal test. Questions such as how to improve reading speed and reading comprehension and what are some good strategies and efficient ways to learn vocabulary will be the leading questions among this paper.Then an important questions question arises: Is there anything we as language teachers can do to facilitate the process of semantic restructuring and how?There seems to be a preference for using linguistic means of the target language such as synonyms, definitions or linguistic contexts to learn new words over utilizing the L1 in the form of a bilingual dictionary or L1 translation equivalent among many teachers since the language input can increase a lot. However, it takes too much time to use intralingual strategies to learn new words when the reading burden is already heavy. For realistic reason, in most cases I have used Chinese translations to learn new English vocabulary.

二、Literature Review

L2 learners may experience interference from their L1 during the process of acquiring the L2, while L1 learners experience no interference from a previously acquired language (Ringbom,1987). This profound influence of the L1 manifests itself as transfer of L1 features to L2 learning. Jiang (2000) proposed a three-stage model of L2 vocabulary acquisition to account for the mental process of adult L2 vocabulary learning.During the stage 1 (the lexical association stage) L2 learners’ attention is only focused on the formal features of the word such as spelling and pronunciation. During the stage 2 (the L1 mediation stage), the semantic and syntactic information of L1 words is copied into the L2 words.During the Stage 3 (the L2 integration stage), L2 words can be used with greater automaticity and idiomaticity. Jiang(2000)also claimed that the shift from stage 2 to stage 3 is a gradual process and stage 3 is not easy to reach for most L2 learners because of lexical fossilization occurs in the stage 2.

Chiu (2009), mentioned that Swan(1997) claimed that L2 learners have an equivalence hypothesis which briefly stated as, ‘Foreign words look different from mother-tongue words, but work in the same way (semantically and grammatically)’. If an ESL learner does not develop a good sense of the limits of their equivalence hypothesis, he or she is likely to use the same L1 translation words interchangeably, thus using words incorrectly. In Chiu (2009), a special type of English word pairing called same L1 translation English word pairs were used to exam ESL learners’ development of semantic awareness. Same L1 translation English word pairs are English word pairs that are perceived semantically different by native speakers of English but represented in Chinese as the same word (e.g. ‘hat’ and ‘cap’ share the same Chinese translation ‘maozi’). The focus of the examination was ESL learners’ability to differentiate the meaning of the two paired words. The research( Jiang,2004) has also shown that this type of same L1 translation word pairing tends to be problematic for L2 learners not only for Chinese ESL learners but also for Korean ESL learners.

Chiu (2009) somewhat confirmed Jiang’s hypothesis that stage 2 is difficult to pass through because even the highlevel ESL learners failed to achieve a native like level of semantic knowledge.However, the result also implied that as long as an L2 learner continues to increase the size of his or her vocabulary,the reliance on the L1 translation in understanding the meanings reduced. The understanding of L2 words has become more accurate and precise. Vocabulary is central to language. Qian (1999) has shown that for ESL learners with a minimum vocabulary size of 3,000 word families, their dimensions of breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge are strongly associated. Vocabulary knowledge can no longer be regarded as a simple matter of recognition of superficial word meaning. In other words, ESL learners’ depth of vocabulary knowledge is an important factor when doing the academic reading comprehension.

三、Pedagogical Implication

ESL teachers can combine explicit explanation and contextualize input together helping students to initiate the semantic restructuring process. As L2 language teachers, we should encourage students to read as much as they can outside their English class and help them become active readers. In addition, ESL teachers can use an English-English dictionary to help learners discover the minute differences of the paired words through many example used in different contexts.