The Role of Intentional Decontextualised Learning in Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition: Evidence From Primed Lexical Decision Tasks With Advanced Bilinguals

Abstract

This study investigates effects of intentional decontextualised learning (IDL) on vocabulary acquisition in a second language. Three experiments were designed to measure acquisition of a set of studied pseudowords across the representational and processing knowledge domains, using the lexical decision task with visually presented stimuli and three priming procedures. In each of the three experiments, the findings were examined to test whether the expected perceptual effects had occurred, and whether the patterns of results observed with the newly-learned vocabulary items aligned with low-frequency English words or with nonwords, in the same experiments. In Experiment 1, a clear prime lexicality effect (Forster & Veres, 1998) was revealed for the seven- and eight-letter stimuli (but not for the nine-letter stimuli) using an unmasked form-priming procedure. In Experiment 2, a robust masked repetition (identity) priming effect was recorded for the newly-learned pseudowords, irrespective of their length in letters. Taken together the results of these experiments suggest that formal-lexical representations of the pseudowords had been established. Experiment 2 also demonstrated that the participants were able to fluently access representations of the newly-learned vocabulary items under automatic task conditions. In Experiment 3, a reliable semantic priming effect provided evidence that lexical-semantic representations of the pseudowords had been established and that the process of their integration into the participants’ system of lexical-semantic representations had begun. Priming generated by the pseudowords was, however, weaker and less reliable compared to that resulting from real English word primes, suggesting that the acquisition of lexical-semantic representations was in its early stages. Overall, the findings that both formal-lexical and lexical-semantic representations of the newly-learned vocabulary items had been established and integrated into the mental lexicon of the bilingual participants clearly demonstrate that IDL triggered acquisition of representational knowledge of these vocabulary items. Furthermore, using coefficient of variation (Segalowitz & Segalowitz, 1993) calculated for the participants’ response latencies in Experiments 2 and 3, it was shown that high automaticity had been achieved by the participants in processing the newly-learned vocabulary items, indicating that IDL can also facilitate acquisition of the procedural aspects of the L2 vocabulary knowledge. Implications of the findings for the learning-acquisition debate are discussed. Evidence gathered in this study is also used to consider the organisational structure of the L2 mental lexicon of advanced bilinguals and the mechanisms underlying word processing in the second language. Finally, some suggestions for high-stakes vocabulary learning in the second language are offered.