Facilitation effects in English and Spanish vocabulary learning by early school-age children: A study of novice and bilingual L2 learners

This study investigated the word learning skills of 6- to 9-year-old bilingual and novice L2 learners under conditions that varied by language (English/Spanish) and by order of instruction (L1–L2 or L2–L1) to test for order-based facilitation effects in vocabulary learning. Participants included 52 children: 22 English speakers enrolled in Spanish foreign language classes and 30 Spanish-English bilinguals of varying proficiency (all active users of both languages) enrolled in dual language immersion. The instructional paradigm involved a scripted group lesson, with 4 exposures to 16 animal names in spoken sentences emphasizing semantic information about the targets. Children were assigned to a day 1 training condition (English or Spanish lesson) semi-randomly, matching for age across groups. On day 2 of the training, children heard the same lesson in the alternate language. ANOVAs comparing word comprehension and production between groups, languages, order of instruction and cognate status of the words revealed facilitation effects for the novice L2 learners but not for the more proficient bilinguals. Both groups of children showed significant comprehension gains over pretest in both languages following the brief training, averaging 3 or more new words learned per condition. Bilinguals learned equally well in English and Spanish regardless of order of instruction, whereas novice Spanish learners performed significantly better in English than Spanish overall, but showed greater Spanish learning in the L1–L2 condition versus the L2–L1 condition. Comprehension did not differ between cognates and noncognate translation pairs. Production rates were low but showed patterns of performance similar to the comprehension results. Factors contributing to successful word learning in English included age, receptive vocabulary, and sentence comprehension. Age predicted Spanish word learning. These results are consistent with the revised hierarchical model of bilingual lexical-conceptual memory (Knoll & Stewart, 1994) and have implications for teaching vocabulary to novice and more proficient L2 learners.