Lexical Semantic Mind Maps Based on Collocations as a Tool for Teaching Vocabulary: A Case Study

• Published in: Computational and Corpus-Based Phraseology Vol. 13528; pp. 16 - 30
• Main Author: Barrios Rodríguez, María Auxiliadora
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: Switzerland Springer International Publishing AG 2022; Springer International Publishing
• Series: Lecture Notes in Computer Science
• Subjects: Acquisition of vocabulary; Collocations; Lexical functions; Lexical-semantic mind maps; Meaning-Text Theory; Second Language Teaching
• ISBN: 9783031159244; 3031159241
• ISSN: 0302-9743; 1611-3349
• DOI: 10.1007/978-3-031-15925-1_2

The objective of this study is to propose and evaluate an innovative tool, which we call lexical-semantic mind maps, designed to improve learning of vocabulary and collocations. These maps are based on the glosses of the Lexical Function, which forms part of Meaning-Text Theory, and enables a better knowledge of the semantic patterns hidden in the vocabulary. A case study was carried out with a group of seven students. Five different learning strategies were tested: (1) a textbook; (2) a lexical-semantic mind map containing concrete nouns; (3) a lexical-semantic mind map containing abstract nouns; (4) a text created ad hoc to learn the semantic patterns that underlie the collocations; (5) a lexical-semantic mind map created ad hoc. The core of the analysis consisted of four lexical-semantic relations: type of, useful for, hyponym and the nuclear semantic features relation, a relation that emerged during the research analysis. The findings of this study suggest that students’ progress in learning collocations is not necessarily related to an improvement in the semantic knowledge of the words composing these collocations. The textbook based on collocations and two of the lexical-semantic mind maps produced a minimal improvement in the knowledge of the meaning of the words involved in the collocations, whilst the lexical-semantic mind map created ad hoc resulted in significant improvements. Thus, lexical-semantic mind maps, the tool proposed in this study, could serve as a model to be further implemented in other research studies under true experimental conditions.