The Effects Of Word+air And Glossed-sentence Tasks On English Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary is one of the central parts of a language and crucially important forEnglish learning. Many researchers have done a lot of studies on vocabulary knowledgelearning. In the field of second language vocabulary acquisition, the efficacy of contextlearning holds many researchers’ attention. It is widely believed that context learning ismore effective than word translation pair task for learners to learn vocabulary. Such faithin context learning has not always received empirical support, nor is it commonlysupported by L2learners. The current study compares two types of tasks–word-pair taskand glossed-sentence task. The efficacy of the two tasks is measured from four aspects–receptive knowledge of grammatical function, productive knowledge of grammaticalfunction, receptive knowledge of meaning and form and productive knowledge of meaningand form.The main instruments used in this empirical study were four tests. The subjectsinvolved were92non-English majors of Grade Two from a college in Suzhou. Thefollowing research questions are addressed in this study:1. What are the effects of word-pair and glossed-sentence tasks on the learning ofEnglish vocabulary?(1) What are the effects of the two tasks on the learning of English vocabulary inmeaning and form?(2) What are the effects of the two tasks on the learning of English vocabulary ingrammatical function?2. What are the effects of word-pair and glossed-sentence tasks on different learners’(different language proficiencies) English vocabulary learning?(1) What are the effects of the two tasks on different learners’(different languageproficiencies) English vocabulary learning in meaning and form?(2) What are the effects of the two tasks on different learners’(different languageproficiencies) English vocabulary learning in grammatical function? The major findings of this study can be summarized as follows:Firstly, both the word-pair task and glossed-sentence task are effective for gainingknowledge of grammatical function, meaning and form. There is no significant differencebetween the effects of the two tasks. However, the learners made larger gains on thereceptive knowledge than the productive knowledge.Secondly, for high proficiency learners, there is no significant difference between theperformances of the two tasks. However, for low proficiency learners, the results aredifferent. In the receptive and productive knowledge of meaning and form test, theperformance of control group is in the similar degree of experimental group. But in thereceptive and productive knowledge of grammatical function tests, the performance ofexperimental group who received glossed-sentence task is significantly better than that ofcontrol group.The findings of the present study shed some light on L2vocabulary teaching, learningand EFL (English as a foreign language) research as well.