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Acquiringmeaningofforeignvocabulary
Encounteringanewwordisthefirststage.Encounterstakeplaceinmany
settings,suchasreading,television,naturalconversation,etc.Teyalsodepend
onindividuallearners’strategies,interests,andmotivation.Somelearners
encounternewvocabularybystudyinglistsofwords,othersthroughreading
andusingdictionaries.Tosewholikenativespeakers’companyandconversa-
tionswiththemencounternewvocabularyinnaturalconversationsituations.
Teintensitywithwhichanitemisencountereddoesnothaveadirectinfluence
ontheacquisition.Tereis“noconnectionbetweenthewordsthatwereacquired
andthenumberofoccurrencesofthosewordsinthesourcetext.Insteadthere
wasasmall(.20)butimportantcorrelationbetweenthewordsacquiredand
theirgeneralfrequency”(Brown,1993).
Aferanewlexicalitemisencountered,itisacceptedbyalearnertobe
acquiredorisrejectedasanitemnotneededandlornotinteresting.Likethe
acquisitionofanylanguagestructure,theprocessstartswithanafectivefilter
whichmeansthattheconditionforacquisitionisthelearner’spositiveattitude,
thatis,hislhereagernessandreadinesstoacquire.Teorderofacquisitionof
diferentgrammaticalcategoriesmaybecausedbypragmaticorfrequencyfac-
tors,butthedecisivefactorismostprobablythefilter(filteringthedatain).Te
bestillustrationofthissituationisthespecialstatusofnounsintheacquisition
process.Nounsarethefirstlexicalitemsthatareacquired.Tewholeprocessof
languagelearningstartswiththeacquisitionofnounsinlargequantitiesbefore
otherlexicalcategories.Firstofall,concretenounsareacquired,andthenmore
andmoreabstractones.Nounsseemtobefilteredinbeforeothercategories.
Tephonologicalstructureofalexicalitemisthefirstelementalearner
isexposedto.Teforeignsoundsandtheirstrangecombinationsarethefirst
difcultiestobeovercome.Tesedifcultiesareverypreciselydescribedin
theresultsofcontrastivestudiesbetweenL1andL2(atleastforEuropeanlan-
guages).Tesedescriptionshavebeengenerallyacceptedsincetheearlydaysof
structuralismandherewecantakethemforgranted.
3.Hierarchyofdifcultyinteachingforeignvocabulary
TecontrastivestudiescriterionandmethodwasappliedbyRobertLado(1957)
toworkoutahierarchyofdifcultyofforeignvocabularyforteachingpurposes.
Tethreelevels—easy,normal,anddifcult—wereselectedbyLadoaccordingto
theprincipleofthesimilaritybetweenthemothertonguelexicalitemsandtheir
counterpartsinthetargetlanguage.Tescaleisasfollows:
1.Similarinformandmeaning—easy.
2.Similarinformbutdiferentinmeaning—easy.
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