Jeremy Thompson Catholic PhD in Biblical Languages, Programmer, Runner

A while back I posted my dissertation along with an invite to anyone who would like to use the ANKI cards that have developed out of part of my research. I’ve now got a file with those ANKI cards that you can use on your iPad, iPod Touch, or iPhone. If you’re interested in getting the ANKI mobile cards, let me know, and I’ll send you a DropBox link.

It’s a little tricky to add the cards, but easy enough after you’ve done it once. You have to go into iTunes with your device pulgged in and click on the “apps” tab. Then, you scroll all the way down, and there is a place to add files on the apps screen. Add the files, then open ANKI on your mobile device and click “add/export.”  That’s the final step in adding them. It may take a minute for the app to load the flashcards though.

Anyway, let me know if you’re interested.

Thanks to Daniel and Tonya again for mentioning my vocabulary research as well as Rod.  I was going to post this when it hit SUNScholar, but I’m not sure how long that process takes.   So, for those interested in reading my dissertation, you can find it HERE.

Daniel also mentioned that I’m now using a program called ANKI. It’s open source and free … and I LOVE it.

This is part of the self critique that I would offer on my dissertation, which I addressed in my oral defense (in addition to the fact that the testing was necessarily partial).  My computer skills limited the development of new vocabulary learning materials to a significant degree, especially a good number of years back when I started the development phase.  There were no programs available at the time that allowed me to include everything that I felt like I needed to in a flashcard program.  ANKI now allows me to do that.  Much of the development from Chapter 4 has become streamlined in ANKI.  Only I’ve not been able to include listening and association exercises like those I developed for a web-based version.

If you download ANKI and would like to see the flashcards I’ve done, let me know.  I’ll send you a dropbox link.  The ANKI flashcards may not fit your course due to textbook differences, but you can use them as a template for including a variety of vocabulary learning strategies on your own cards.

If you read my dissertation, I’d be glad to dialogue with you concerning anything in the comments here or by email, etc.

I should preface this second post on the limited usefulness of semantic domains for learning Biblical Hebrew vocabulary by stating that I did not always think this was the case.  In my intermediate Hebrew course, I remember having Landes as the vocabulary text and thinking it was great to see someone finally do something other than a strict word list.  And, going into my dissertation research on Biblical Hebrew vocabulary learning, I believed that I would use this approach heavily, but supplement it with more vocabulary learning strategies.

However, I started my vocabulary research by reading vocabulary texts written by researchers who focus specifically on Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (particularly the three at the end of this post plus a couple of others), rather than Second Language Acquisition in general.  And, I am glad I did so because I don’t believe these two groups of researchers are saying the same things (Yes, I have read many more general SLA texts as well).  I began to see the use of semantic domains as an overarching strategy as problematic after reading Nation.  He states the following:

Care should be taken in introducing lexical sets because this goes against the criterion of frequent use… Further arguments against the presentation of lexical sets as a way of introducing vocabulary can be found in the research of Higa (1963), Tinkham (1993 and 1997) and Waring (1997b) which show the difficulty caused by learning similar items together (387).

I, like some of the readers of my first post, was not completely convinced by the principle of frequency as there could be ways of tweaking this.  However, after reading the experimental studies referenced by Nation (as well as about five or six others) on “the difficulty caused by learning related items together,” I became much more strongly convinced that introducing vocabulary by lexical relationships was not a beneficial practice.  That is not to say that I think there is no place for lexical sets in vocabulary learning.  I do not have time to elaborate on this here, but word knowledge is multi-faceted, with semantic associations being one of those facets.  So, this should receive attention; however, in my opinion the focus should come later in the learning process when learners are consolidating their knowledge of a word for which form and meaning has already been paired.

At any rate, what is it that these studies report?  The studies report on a problem that Nation refers to as interference (303).  As in the comments of a previous post, interference in this context basically means that learning items like “mouth” and “nose” together does not make it more likely that these items will be remembered because of their close association, but rather makes it more likely that learners will have problems retrieving the meaning of either of these words because the initial learning was not distinct enough.  More simply, learners may be more likely to confuse the words, whether this results in delay or error.

As a basic summary of the experiments in these articles, researchers present groups with two different ways of learning words.  One group learns a set of unrelated words and another group learns a set of semantically related words (sometimes there are variations like pictures being used, etc.).  Then, the groups are each given a task to perform using the vocabulary.  Across the board, in the 10 studies that I have put into a bibliography, the subjects who learn words in related sets perform worse on the task in which they put the vocabulary to use.  These results have been replicated so often, I think, because they are so unexpected.  Throughout the psychological literature we are told that we learn by association.  These studies seem to violate that principle until one realizes that the idea of learning by association is extremely complex.

Against this background though, these results have been replicated so often that linguists and psychologists have developed a reasonably good explanation for them them.  In the comments section of a previous post, I noted that Finkbeiner and Nicol explain these results in terms of spreading activation, a concept that will be familiar to almost anyone who has reviewed psychological literature on language.  Spreading activation basically means (at least in this context) that when a person sees a lexical item all the other items associated with it are activated as well.  This obviously has a lot of beneficial effects in terms of language processing.  It helps us to read quickly because when we see a particular word we can begin to expect which words might come next.

Yet spreading activation also has an inhibitory effect.   This effect is possibly at work in the results of the studies cited here.  When a person learns words in lexical sets, the learning is not distinct enough.  Thus, in some cases, when a learner sees a particular lexical item all of the associated items are activated too strongly for the learner to make a correct or timely decision about the meaning of the item.  This happens time and time again in the literature.

At this point, I suppose a number of objections might be raised.  But, I think there is enough evidence here to suggest that there is at least something to this and that this is a very important issue for vocabulary learning.  There is enough here to suggest that these studies cannot be dismissed off-hand.  These are studies that I feel must be at least grappled with by those who develop the vocabulary component of a course.  On the other end of the spectrum, I, as Finkbeiner and Nicol, have not seen any empirical research that suggests introducing vocabulary in lexical sets can be beneficial.  Most, if not all, evidence proposed in this line comes from monolingual studies in which subjects learn lists of words.  This is not the same thing as pairing form and meaning in vocabulary learning.

Yesterday I posted a bibliography on the problem of interference when learning semantically related words, which I have updated this morning.  However, I know that not everyone will have access to all of those works and that not everyone will have the time to read them all.  But, I have found one of the articles online for free at the website of one of the authors:

Finkbeiner, M. & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 369-383.

The article can accessed by clicking HERE and scrolling down to the second to last entry.

Here are some notable quotes with emphasis added:

The present study addresses a long-standing assumption in the field of applied linguistics: that presenting new second language (L2) vocabulary in semantically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching (369).

Although many SLA theorists and practitioners endorse (implicitly or explic-
itly) the seemingly sensible position that teaching new L2 vocabulary in seman-
tically grouped sets is an effective method of teaching, there is actually very
little empirical evidence to support this position. The body of literature often
cited in support of presenting learners with semantically grouped words includes
(monolingual) memory studies (370).

In studies that record the number of learning trials needed to reach a predetermined learning criterion, it has been shown that participants take longer to learn new labels for sets of semantically related items than for sets of semantically dissimilar items (Higa, 1963; Kintsch & Kintsch, 1969; Nation, 2000; Tinkham, 1993, 1997; Underwood, Ekstrand, & Keppel, 1965; Waring, 1997) (371).

Overall, then, presenting semantically grouped L2 words to learners has a
deleterious effect on learning (376, from the discussion section after their experiment dealing with interference).

The implications that this study has for vocabulary instruction and curriculum
development are not trivial. As pointed out in the introductory section, several
authors in the teaching methodology literature have argued that vocabulary
should be taught in semantic groups. The results of the present study converge
with those of Tinkham (1993, 1997) and Waring (1997) to suggest that teaching
words in semantic sets creates competition between items, which in turn in-
creases difficulty during learning and during memory retrieval in language pro-
duction.

I will still have another of my own posts on this topic, so I hope that this article and the others in the previous post will be helpful in the meantime.

This morning I wrote a first post stating one of the reasons I believe learning semantically related items is of limited usefulness, at least early on in the learning process.  There was a bit of interest in that post with the first part of my reasoning being  called into question.  But, it may be a couple of days before I can write the follow up post, and I didn’t want to let the discussion sit for that long.

So, I decided to put together a bibliographical post for those interested that would serve two purposes.  One it will keep the issues in the first post alive perhaps until I can write a follow up.  And second, it is needless to say that I lack credentials on this subject to a certain degree.  My dissertation research has been in Applied Linguistics and Biblical Hebrew.  As an interdisciplinary researcher, I run the risk of being an expert in neither area and knowing just enough about each to be dangerous.  So, I thought I would refer readers to the studies by the credentialed applied linguists first.  Then, I’ll weigh in with my two cents in a couple of days (I’ve placed myself under a bit of a personal deadline with regard to my fourth chapter of my thesis).

Against this background, the second reason I believe learning semantically related words together is of limited usefulness is based on research on interference.  When dealing with the concept of interference one must at least deal with the idea that learning semantically related items together may actually be detrimental to learners.  I believe that is what the studies below suggest.  There is some research in the field of Psychology that suggests learning semantically related items together may be beneficial.  However, this research primarily deals with the learning of lists of words in a subject’s native language, which is not the same as pairing form and meaning in vocabulary learning.  These studies may even represent where the practice originated in vocabulary materials; however, the more recent studies focused specifically on vocabulary learning appear to call the practice into question.

I have arranged the bibliographical items by publication date and will almost certainly update the list tomorrow when I arrive in my office (or maybe after a staff meeting).  I’m sure there is a pertinent article by Laufer I am forgetting as well as maybe 1-3 others.

Bibliography

Higa, M. (1963). Interference effects of intralist word relationships in verbal learning. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 2, 170-175.

Underwood, B., Ekstrand, B., & Keppel, G. (1965). An analysis of intralist similarity in verbal learning with experiments on conceptual similarity. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 4, 447 – 462. *

Kintsch, W. & Kintsch, E. (1969). Interlingual interference and memory processes. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 8, 16 – 19. *

Tinkham, T. (1993). The effect of semantic clustering on the learning of second language vocabulary. System, 21(3), 371-380.

Laufer, B. (1997). What’s in a word that makes it hard or easy. In Vocabulary: Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy, N. Schmitt and M. McCarthy (ed.), 140-155. *

Tinkham, T. (1997). The effects of semantic and thematic clustering on the learning of second language vocabulary. Second Language Research, 13(2), 136-183.

Waring, M. (1997). The negative effects of learning words in semantic sets: A replication. System, 25, 261-274.

Nation, P. (2000).  Learning vocabulary in lexical sets: dangers and guidelines.  TESOL Journal, 9(2), 6-10.

Finkbeiner, M. & Nicol, J. (2003). Semantic category effects in second language word learning. Applied Psycholinguistics, 24, 369-383.

Papathanasiou, E. (2009). An investigation of two ways of presenting vocabulary. ELT Journal, 63(4), 313-322. *

* Represents articles added after the original post

Postscript – Here are also a Dissertation and MA thesis that may touch on this topic. I have not read them, but Laufer (see above) cites them:

Balhouq, S. (1976). The place of lexis in foreign language acquisition. University of Sheffield: Unpublished MA thesis. (According to Laufer, in this study learners of Arab learners of English had trouble with semantically related words dealing with family relations.  This may have also had to do with cultural factors).

Stock, R. (1976). Some factors affecting the acquisition of foreign language lexicon in the classroom. University of Illinois: Unpublished PhD thesis. (Part of this study notes that learners have trouble confusing semantically related words like the two different colors of blue, i.e. kachol/tchelet).

New related post: Interference When Learning Semantically Related Words (A Bibliography)

I hope that no one takes this post as too harsh of a critique as I applaud anyone’s effort to make Biblical Hebrew instruction better.  I have noticed in two recent posts materials for learning Biblical Hebrew vocabulary that make use of semantic domains.  The use of semantic domains has been cited by Schmitt in Vocabulary : Description, Acquisition and Pedagogy [Cambridge Language Teaching Library] as a helpful strategy for learning vocabulary in a second or foreign language.  However, further research into the strategy reveals that its use should likely be limited to some degree.  There are two reasons for this limited usefulness, one of which I will mention in this post and another of which I will mention in a future post.

First, the use of semantic domains in vocabulary learning can lead to a violation of the principle of frequency (this forms the basis for most current Biblical Hebrew vocabulary materials, i.e. Zondervan [see 2, 3, and 5], Mitchel, etc.).  Most Many researchers in second language vocabulary acquisition would agree that the most frequent words in a language should be learned first as these words are the most useful.  This seems only logical, though I don’t think the principle has to be applied in an overly rigid manner.  Yet in many resources and materials where semantic domains are used the principle of frequency is violated.

This fact becomes abundantly clear by even a cursory glance at a Biblical Hebrew vocabulary text like Landes.  In the resources mentioned in the two blogs above, one might take the diagram of the body as an example (diagram by Adam Couturier).  This diagram appears as though it would be useful until one realizes that many of the words on it are not among the most frequent in the Hebrew Bible.  The word geviyah (“body”) occurs only 13 times, ‘etsba’ (“finger, toe”) only 31 times, yarech (“thigh”) only 34 times, and tsava’r (“neck”) only 41 times.  There are other less frequent words on the diagram as well; however, the basic problem is that in order to fill out the diagram students must be presented with items that they will not see very often.  Time spent learning the diagram might be better spent studying the more frequent words in the Hebrew Bible, or, using a staggered approach, the more frequent words in a particular book of the Hebrew Bible that are also frequent throughout the rest of the corpus.

In my opinion, I think that diagrams like the one cited in this post are helpful primarily for advanced students who have already mastered many of the most frequent vocabulary items in the language.  This to me indicates that the strategy of using semantic domains is of limited usefulness. However, this is not the only indication that the strategy should be applied carefully.  In a subsequent post, I will discuss the problem of interference, which is cited by Nation as a reason why use of semantic domains in vocabulary learning should be limited, especially early on.

If you’re interested, here are three absolutely indispensable books on second language vocabulary acquisition: