Learning word class in a second language through vocabulary learning activities: definition-choosing, gap-filling, and sentence-writing.

ABSTRACT

This article presents the results of a research project investigating how a student’s ability to successfully learn vocabulary of four word classes (nouns, adjectives, verbs and adverbs) is affected by the activity through which it is practised. Two-hundred and ninety-two B1 SL students of Spanish were presented with one of three different activities requiring different involvement loads: (1) choosing the appropriate definition; (2) filling in gaps in sentences; and (3) writing sentences that include target words. The analysis shows that participants recalled and recognised more nouns and fewer adverbs—the only non-inflected word class. Additionally, sentence-writing is the activity through which learning new words is the easiest; and the least effective is the definition-choosing activity.

RESUMEN

Este artículo presenta los resultados de una investigación sobre cómo la habilidad del estudiante para aprender palabras de cuatro categorías gramaticales (nombres, adjetivos, verbos y adverbios) se ve influida por la actividad con la que trabaja. 292 estudiantes de nivel B1 de español como L2 practicaron con una de tres actividades con diferente nivel de participación: (1) elegir la definición correcta; (2) completar oraciones; y (3) escribir oraciones que incluyan las palabras estímulo. El análisis muestra que los participantes aprendieron más nombres y menos adverbios (siendo esta la única categoría gramatical invariable). Por otro lado, la escritura de oraciones es la actividad que más facilita el aprendizaje de palabras de cualquier categoría y la menos efectiva es la selección de definiciones.

KEYWORDS:

• Word class
• vocabulary
• learning activity
• Spanish
• Spanish as Second Language

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Categoría gramatical
• vocabulario
• actividad de aprendizaje
• español
• español como segunda lengua

Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Ministry of Economy, Industry and Competitiveness (Spain) under the Research & Development Project: “Degrees of Effectiveness of Learning Vocabulary Activities in Spanish as a Second Language—INVOLEX” (FFI2013-44117-P). We appreciate the collaboration of María Antonieta Andión Herrero, Cecilia Criado de Diego, and María José Labrador Piquer, members of the INVOLEX Research Group, as well as the Departamento de Letras Estrangeiras Modernas from Universidade Federal, Universidade Estadual and Instituto Federal in Paraíba, and Instituto Cervantes in Sao Paulo. We are also grateful to James Lawley for helping us with the English version of the manuscript and to Craig Neville (University College Cork), Editorial Assistant at the Journal of Spanish Language Teaching, for his excellent and pertinent stylistic suggestions.

ORCID

Alicia San-Mateo-Valdehíta http://orcid.org/0000-0002-8694-1092

Notes

1 This was the same amount of time provided in similar studies (San-Mateo 2016). Timing learning activities and the test was necessary because we did not want to consider time as a variable. As writing a sentence takes longer than selecting a definition from a list or completing a gap, we have included 20 answer options in each item of the definition-choosing activity, and eight options in each item of the gap-filling activity.

2 The analysis of variance (called ANOVA) is used to analyse differences among group means in sample data. A result is statistically significant when it is considered that unlikely differences have occurred by chance. The probability threshold (p value) or significance level is 0.05, so only when this value is equal or less than 0.05 are the differences between means deemed statistically significant. Post hoc comparisons are then conducted to figure out between which groups differences they are significant, and the significance level is also 0.05. Several post hoc tests (i.e., Scheffe, HSD Tukey, Bonferroni, Tamhane, Dunnet or Games-Howell) are available depending on equal or unequal variances.