Tests Pine & Lieven's (1993) suggestion that a lexically-based positional analysis can account for the structure of a considerable proportion of children's early multiword corpora. Results reveal that the positional analysis accounts for 60% of the children's multiword utterances and that most other utterances are defined as frozen. (33…

Examines features of the negotiation of meaning between learners and teachers of English-as-a-Second-Language, and distinguishes between the declarative knowledge that words have particular meanings and the procedures typically employed for realizing this declarative knowledge. Negotiation exercises based on a checklist of the dimensions of…

Investigated overextensions in comprehension and production, using the preferential-looking model, in 99 children (ages 1;9 to 2;3) who were asked to find the referent that matched the label they were given in real and anomalous trials. Results confirm that overextensions in production are not diagnostic of children's underlying semantic…

Shares the results of two studies on the Possible Sentences strategy which indicate that the strategy can be as effective, if not more so, than semantic mapping in teaching vocabulary and fostering recall information. (MG)

This assessment of two computerized vocabulary games addressed three issues: (1) did undergraduate students' scores improve when they reviewed the meanings of words?; (2) did students improve their ability to determine the meaning of new words?; and (3) did students with low verbal skills demonstrate greater improvement than students with high…

Focuses on the errors made in lexical verb choice in speech by a small group of advanced learners of English. Findings indicate that while these learners may have a broad outline of verb meaning, their knowledge is hazy concerning contextual and collocational restrictions. Advanced learners may require detailed classroom vocabulary work on simple…

Proposes an alternative account of the child's learning of nouns and adjectives that relies on properties of the semantic categories to be learned and of the word-learning task itself. In five experiments, a simple connectionist network was trained to label input objects in particular contexts; the network learned categories resembling nouns…

Examined why adults learning second languages make frequent errors in lexical form. More and less fluent bilinguals in English and Spanish performed a translation recognition task in which they had to decide whether the second of two words was the correct translation of the first. Less fluent participants experienced more interference for…

The purpose of this study was to further researchers' understanding of lexical acquisition in the beginning primary schoolchild by investigating word learning in small-group elementary science classes. Two experiments were conducted to examine the role of semantic scaffolding (e.g., use of synonymous terms) and physical scaffolding (e.g., pointing…

This study investigated semantic transfer in second language (L2) learning and provided a replication of the author's study (Jiang, 2002) in a different English as a Second Language (ESL) population. Korean ESL speakers were asked to perform a semantic judgment task in which they decided whether or not 2 English words were related in meaning. Two…

Developed by the ABCs of Construction National Workplace Literacy Project, this fifth-grade level module teaches different kinds of vocabulary words encountered in work-related texts used by pipefitter trainees. The module covers the following topics: differences between general, specialized, and technical words; learning new words; drills for…

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…

The difference between acquiring knowledge of a word's meaning and knowing a word well enough for it to aid in the comprehension of a text is investigated by reviewing the most recent findings in the field of vocabulary acquisition. The assumption that vocabulary items are learned through context when the meaning of unknown words can be gleaned…

Studies of the acquisition of word meaning and the semantic features involved have been mostly confined to noun categories and polar adjectives. Investigation of the semantic categories underlying verb forms has implications not only for theories of child language acquisition but also for theories of semantic structure in general. Experimental…

This study investigated preschool children's understanding of the words "know" and "guess." Subjects for the study were 48 male and female preschool children ranging in age from 3.6 to 6.6 years. The children were divided into three age groups representing one year intervals. The task for the study involved a "guessing" game in which a colored…