Article extracted from A Practical Guide to the Teaching of French/German/Spanish'' (three separate books), Oxford University Press. (DD)

Examines the CDI-WORDS Short Form vocabulary checklist as an index of language production. The study focuses on the associations between this short form and directly observed measures of lexical production; the associations between short-form checklists administered at different ages; the predictive associations between short form scores and…

Examined the strength of the association between language exposure estimates and vocabulary learning for simultaneous bilingual infants with differing patterns of exposure to the languages being learned. Findings revealed that the correlation was strong, even for children whose language environments changed by more than 20% between observations.…

We tracked the evolvement of naming-related cortical dynamics with magnetoencephalography when five normal adults successfully learned names and/or meanings of unfamiliar objects. In all subjects, the learning of new names was associated with pronounced cortical effects. The learning effect was of long latency and emerged as a change of activation…

A study examined the efficacy of the keyword method of vocabulary instruction by comparing it with five methods designed to increase semantic processing of the definitions of the vocabulary words. Subjects in all five experiments were college students. In the first three experiments, recall of the definitions from the vocabulary words was the…

This study evaluates the effectiveness of a mnemonic procedure, called the keyword method, for teaching a large Russian language vocabulary to college students. The method divides the study of a vocabulary item into two stages. The first stage requires the student to associate the spoken Russian word to an English word (the keyword) that sounds…

Four severely/profoundly hearing-impaired preschool children (ages 4-5) were given six vocabulary tasks (receptive, associative, and expressive) involving auditory and visual sensory modalities. Data confirmed that lipreading (visual modality) could be substituted for speech. However, for novice lipreaders, words with auditory-visual confusions…

Outlines a series of humorous classroom activities and games using novel combinations of words and word parts for vocabulary development. (MSE)

A study explored a potential aptitude-by-treatment interaction associated with the keyword method of vocabulary acquisition. This method is a two-stage mnemonic process whereby an unfamiliar term is first transformed into a familiar concrete stimulus and then a thematic relationship is created between the transformed stimulus and the information…

If Anglophone students are to read French at an adult level, they must not only acquire a selected small vocabulary but also be trained to interpret words creatively within a context in order to use their vocabulary. Instruction should include exercises to foster this creativity. (MSE)

Justifies the teaching of vocabulary recognition strategies from vocabulary development exercises and reviews five such strategies. These strategies are: (1) inferring from context, (2) identifying lexical familiarization, (3) unchaining nominal compounds, (4) synonym search, and (5) word analysis. (Author/SED)

Argues that much of language acquisition is sequence learning and that the resultant long-term knowledge base of language sequences serves as the database for grammar acquisition. The article also proposes mechanisms to analyze sequence information that result in knowledge of underlying grammar. (184 references) (Author/CK)

A university second language program using associative learning and context to enhance retention of words, expressions, and structures is described. Observed results of this situational approach are discussed. (MSE)

"Words and Concepts" is a computer software program that focuses on building oral language skills related to vocabulary, comprehension, word relationships, and other concepts in six units--vocabulary, categorization, word identification by function, word association, concept of same, and concept of different. It can be used by adults and…

Summarizes five theories explaining the relationship between word knowledge and comprehension of text in native language acquisition and explores possible implications for second language researchers and practitioners. (Author/CB)