Unpacking cross-linguistic similarities and differences in third language Japanese vocabulary acquisition among Chinese college students

ABSTRACT

The study examined the role of Chinese-Japanese cognate awareness in Japanese vocabulary acquisition among college Chinese learners of Japanese. Thirty-seven college-level students participated in this study and they completed a bilingual cognate awareness test which covered both crosslinguistic similarities and differences. In addition, vocabulary learning measurements including vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference ability were also administered to them. The results showed that Chinese-Japanese cognate awareness in general predicted vocabulary knowledge and lexical inference. More critically, the awareness of false cognates was found to systematically predict all the tested vocabulary measurements. The discussion emphasised the cognitive demands and language specificity underlying the cognate facilitation of vocabulary acquisition.

KEYWORDS:

• Cognate awareness
• false cognates
• word-meaning inference
• logographic reading
• Japanese as a foreign language education in China

Acknowledgements

The study was sponsored by the Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities (Grant No.: 2017ECNU-HLYT007).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by Fundamental Research Funds for the Central Universities [grant number 2017ECNU-HLYT007].