Effects Of Presenting New Words In Semantically Related Sets Versus Semantically Unrelated Sets On Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the basic material of a language. The famous linguist Wilkins (1972) once said:"Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed." For manyyears, researchers in the west have devoted much to the study of grammar. It was not until1980that theyturned to the study of vocabulary and achieved some insightful conclusions. In China, more and moreresearchers are now paying attention to English vocabulary acquisition. Of the major issues related tovocabulary acquisition, methods of new word presentation draw great attention from both second languageresearchers and EFL teachers. Some researchers concern the effect of card presentation and multimediapresentation upon vocabulary acquisition. Some other researchers focus upon the effect of semanticrelatedness upon vocabulary acquisition. The present study, therefore, aims to investigate how semanticrelatedness influence learners vocabulary acquisition.More specifically, the present study attempts to address the following question:"Does presentingEnglish words in semantically related sets versus semantically unrelated sets make a significant differencein students’ vocabulary learning?" The theoretical framework upon which the present study is grounded isthe interference theory, which argues that putting words that belong to the same category may hinderstudents to remember them effectively, and students may also spend longer time in learning these words.One hundred Grade One students from a middle school participated in the present study. They weredivided into two groups. The first group (N=50) were taught20carefully selected words that weresemantically related. The other group (N=50) were taught20semantically unrelated words. Eachpresentation began with a pre-test of the target words to be introduced on the first day and then animmediate post-test of the same words to measure the short-term recall of vocabulary on the second day.The results show that learning words in semantically unrelated sets yielded better results than learningvocabulary in semantically related sets. Long-term effect was observed as well. In addition, it was foundthat test completion time was much longer for the semantically related vocabulary items, which indicated aslower recall of vocabulary. These findings suggest that, contrary to frequent practice in many text books,presenting new vocabulary that belongs to the same semantic set together may cause interference and mayeven hinder vocabulary learning. Such practice needs to be questioned and alternative methods that involvepresenting vocabulary in unrelated sets need to be developed to facilitate vocabulary teaching and learning.However, the findings are better interpreted in terms of how learning occurred and how vocabularywas processed afterward. This study can be tentatively concluded that semantically related vocabulary presentation will produce the interference effect, which is not conducive to vocabulary acquisition, andlearners need to invest more time and energy to distinguish these words. Put it another way, wordspresented in semantically unrelated sets can be more helpful for students to remember.