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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 23, No. 0, pp.682-695
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 30 Jan 2023
Received 24 Jul 2023 Revised 27 Aug 2023 Accepted 10 Sep 2023
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.23..202309.682

A Study of Meaning-focused and Form-focused Tasks on L2 Vocabulary Acquisition of Low and Intermediate Levels

Dongho Kang
Professor, Dept. of English Language & Literature, Seoul National Univ. of Science & Technology, Tel: (02) 970-6250 dh14kang@seoultech.ac.kr


© 2023 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

While the literature extensively discusses the benefits of form-focused instructions for grammatical aspects, there has been limited research exploring the impact of form-focused tasks on second language vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, the aim of this study was to investigate the effects of meaning-focused and form-focused (both non-contrastive and contrastive) tasks on the vocabulary learning of low and intermediate-level students in Korean college settings. The results revealed that the meaning-focused group demonstrated vocabulary learning gains only in the posttest, whereas both form-focused tasks resulted in significant improvement in both the posttest and delayed test. This suggests that students derived greater benefits from the form-focused tasks compared to the meaning-focused task in terms of L2 vocabulary learning. Additionally, the low proficiency group benefitted more from the non-contrastive form-focused task, while the intermediate group benefitted more from the contrastive form-focused task. The study will delve into the theoretical implications and discuss the pedagogical implications arising from these findings.

Keywords:

form-focused instruction (FFI), meaning-focused, non-contrastive FFI, contrastive FFI, L1 glosses, L2 glosses, L2 vocabulary, EFL college contexts

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Ministry of Education of the Republic of Korea and the National Research Foundation of Korea (NRF-2022S1A5A2A01038631).

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