Discusses the distinction between formal and contextual guessing of vocabulary in second-language learning. It is argued that formal guessing is more helpful and reliable than contextual guessing. (Author/VWL)

The modal system in English is unique among verbs and constitutes a considerable learning burden for ESL learners. Problems may be reduced by careful delineation of semantic functions for individual modals and understanding of semantic coverage of perfect constructions compared to simple forms. Instruction of modal perfects is discussed. (CHK)

Beyond the first several thousand most commonly used words in a language, direct vocabulary instruction is not efficient. Use of inferential skills then becomes the most effective way of learning new vocabulary; it is the way native speakers build their 60,000 word vocabularies. Because the skill is not automatically transferable, it must be…

Discusses the occurrence or nonoccurrence of the contraction of prepositions and determiners in German to emphasize that the communicative function of certain syntactic forms can only be understood, and should therefore only be taught, within the framework of contextual analysis. (CB)

In order to test hypotheses derived from the concept that grammatical, syntactic, semantic, and contextual cues affect the degree of reading comprehension in a visual display, the present investigation was undertaken using the French language. The subjects were approximately 30 college students in a second-semester elementary French course. Five…

Investigated the effects of cue adequacy on second language learners' ability to infer and remember the meaning of new words. Subjects who received cue-adequate sentences reported greater ease in word inference, scored higher in inferring and remembering the contextual meanings of new words, and better retained the contextual meanings of targeted…

In a discussion of second language vocabulary teaching and learning, the premise is that vocabulary development from context should not be used as a teaching strategy exclusive of other methods, such as direct teaching through word pair translation; rather, these approaches should be seen as complementing each other. Several arguments in favor of…

A study examined language learners' ability to integrate information from sentence contexts and semantic decomposition in interpreting novel kanji compounds (i.e., words consisting of two or more Japanese characters). Subjects, 59 English-speaking college students learning Japanese, inferred the meanings of 72 unknown compounds consisting of…

Examples are given of real lexical errors made by learner writers, and consideration is given to the way in which three learners' dictionaries could deal with the lexical items that were misused. The dictionaries were the "Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary," the "Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English," and the "Chambers Universal Learners'…

By dealing with the semantic area of English and Spanish clothing terms, the article shows some of the ways that vocabulary out of context in contrastive systems (viewed as a prerequisite to vocabulary in context) can be used. (SCC)

Instructional strategies targeted for differentiating between German verb synonyms have involved: (1) extended paraphrases or definitions in German and/or English; (2) reference to stylistic and/or contextual differences; and (3) the use of syntactic and/or semantic features. Application of these strategies is shown with the…

Defines the approach of textlinguistics to the study of TV messages' comprehension, starting from the basic criterion that comprehension depends on the global semantic structure of the message and on the situational context of the communicants. On this basis the potential of television as a tool for language instruction is discussed. (MES)

Discusses exercises in foreign language teaching in which the learner can, from experience in his own language, conjecture the meaning of foreign words from the context. Shows, with examples, how such exercises can be created using nonsense words. (IFS/WGA)

Used computers to observe when foreign language (FL) readers look up meaning of unfamiliar words when reading FL text. Experiments with 82 English-speaking Dutch students from grades 10 and 11 show look-up behavior was clearly influenced by perceived word relevance, modestly influenced by reader's vocabulary knowledge, and not influenced by…

What is notably missing in the teaching of foreign language vocabulary is a systematically elaborated strategy for vocabulary acquisition that is based on the findings of linguistics and learning psychology. The practical implications of such a double anchorage in linguistics and psychology are outlined in a proposed model of a semantization…