Examining the Effect of Semantic Relatedness on the Acquisition of English Collocations

This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with th...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inJournal of psycholinguistic research Vol. 49; no. 2; pp. 199 - 222
Main Authors Jiang, Michael Yi-chao, Jong, Morris Siu-yung, Tse, Chi-shing, Chai, Ching-sing
Format Journal Article
LanguageEnglish
Published New York Springer US 01.04.2020
Springer
Springer Nature B.V
Subjects
Adult
Behavioral Science and Psychology
China
Chinese languages
Cognitive Psychology
Collocations
English (Second Language)
English as a second language learning
Experiments
Foreign Countries
Humans
Item Analysis
Language Tests
Language Tests - statistics & numerical data
Linguistic Input
Morphemes
Multilingualism
Phrase Structure
Psycholinguistics
Psychology
Reading
Reading Tests
Receptive Language
Second Language Instruction
Second Language Learning
Semantics
Semiotics
Test Items
Undergraduate Students
Vocabulary
Young Adult
China
English collocations
Facilitatory effect
Acquisition
Inhibitory effect
Semantic relatedness
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Summary:This study examines whether semantic relatedness facilitates or impedes the acquisition of English collocations by conducting two experiments respectively on Chinese undergraduates. Each experiment was composed of a reading session, a productive test, and a receptive test. Experiment 1 began with the reading session of 28 paired-up words and their collocations (in sentence context). Those words were counterbalanced between two randomly selected groups by cross-matching on semantic relatedness. Results of the productive test revealed that the participants scored significantly higher on test items that were semantically related than the randomly cross-paired counterparts. However, for the receptive test, the participants performed significantly better on semantically unrelated items. Experiment 2 was similar to Experiment 1 except that the word pairs selected were only semantically related and did not have any shared morphemes. Experiment 2 also revealed consistent results. The results of the two experiments consistently illustrate that semantic relatedness may exert a facilitatory effect on language output but an inhibitory effect on the process of language input.
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ISSN:0090-6905
1573-6555
DOI:10.1007/s10936-019-09680-9