Task effects on the acquisition of L2 vocabulary

							    IVLOS




 Task effectiveness and the
acquisition of L2 vocabulary
  Rick de Graaff, Machteld Moonen,
           Gerard Westhoff
    IVLOS, Institute of Education
 Utrecht University, The Netherlands
      h.c.j.degraaff@ivlos.uu.nl
      m.l.i.moonen@ivlos.uu.nl
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                Example 1:

Place the words in each row in a logical
   order and explain why:

•   stunning, splendid, gorgeous
•   exciting, breathtaking, interesting
•   embarrassing, outrageous, shocking
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                Example 2:


Which words belong together?
 Form 3 groups and place the words in
 each group in a logical order:

Thrilling, risky, prohibitive, dangerous,
  unsafe, expensive, frightening, pricey,
  bloodcurdling
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                Example 3:

You have participated in a survival trip
  and broke your leg. Write a complaint
  letter to the agency using the following
  words if possible:

Thrilling, risky, prohibitive, dangerous,
  unsafe, expensive, frightening, pricey,
  bloodcurdling
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                Task definition

“A task is an activity which requires
  learners to use language, with
  emphasis on meaning, to attain an
  objective, and which is intended to lead
  to or stimulate acquisition”
           (Bygate, Skehan & Swain, 2001)
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             Task effectiveness

Involvement load? (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001):

     Need
     Search
     Motivation
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  Task effectiveness: task scope?

Willis (1996)     Westhoff (2004)
 Exposure         Exposure

 Use              Focus on meaning

 Motivation       Focus on form

 instruction      Output & interaction

                   Strategy use
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             Task effectiveness:
Cognitive psychology/ connectionism

   Distributed representation
   Connection strengths
   Spreading activation

Learning = Concept formation =
building & strengthening sets of features
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        3 Components of a task



   Assignment
   Content
   Mental actions
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      The Multi-Feature Hypothesis

     Retention and ease of activation are
    enhanced by tasks that elicit mental
             actions involving:

   more features,
   more different categories of features,
   in great frequency,
   in life-like combinations,
   simultaneously.
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         Examples of features

   Semantic
   Syntactic
   Morphologic
   Collocative
   Pragmatic
   Associative
   Affective
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                  The study

   Dutch secondary education
   N=49, age 12
   Quasi-experimental pre-test post-test
    design
   Spanish vocabulary: school subjects
   Two tasks, differing according to MFH
   Tests: cloze and translation
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           Research questions

   Differences in mental actions on content
    features?
    method: think-aloud protocols and
    retrospective interviews

   Differences in retention after task
    performance?
    method: vocabulary tests
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          Preliminary results Q 1

Example think-aloud protocol, control:

Eh, let’s see what’s still left, physics, fi física or
  something like that, on miércoles, I do physics, física,
  and I do physics once more on jueves in any case,
  jueve, what was it like? Jueves then I do it from 14 to
  15 I do once more physics and then I’ve got only one
  left geography, geografía, I put that on jueves the 15th
  and 16th hour.
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          Preliminary results Q 1

Example think-aloud protocol,
  experimental:

Ethics or geography, geography that is more suitable for a
   cab driver mathematics no, a cab driver does have to,
   he’s got a meter, mathematics should be there, because
   they also have to return change they have to be able to
   count, oh no, now I write it down in Dutch, matemáticas
   or something like that. Geography also belongs to cab
  driver, or not, I’m not sure anymore geografía.
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           Preliminary results Q 2

   ANCOVA: over-all effect for condition

       Experimental group ourperforms control
        group
       But:
        effect only significant at immediate post-
        test
                                               cloze and translation test results
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                             10


                              9


                              8


                              7
                                                                             experimental
test scores (range 0 - 10)




                              6                                              control


                              5


                              4


                              3


                              2


                              1


                              0

                                  t0           t1                      t2                   t3
                                                        test moment
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                  Discussion

   Multi-feature hypothesis as key for task
    effectiveness?
   Effects of time-on-task and motivation?
   Task-based testing for research
    purposes?
   Also suitable for acquisition of language
    structure?