| dc.description.abstract | Vocabulary is widely acknowledged as a central component in second language learning. The content of vocabulary instruction, however, is often restricted to conveying form-meaning correspondences of individual items of vocabulary without attention to other crucial aspects such as semantic relations that each word holds with other words in the target language. In addition, how vocabulary is incorporated in pedagogical practice has been largely limited to decontextualized techniques such as memorizing through word lists or flashcards. This directly limits how the learners learn vocabulary in the target language: mainly through memorization. This implies that little attention is paid to the authentic uses of vocabulary. This thesis aims to provide two areas of contribution: concerning content, it focuses on learning the lexical semantic relations among words in English (e.g., anger is a kind of emotion); it approaches this content using a task-based approach through a task that incidentally requires learners to seek, find, and use the semantic relations among English words.
Fifty-nine junior high school students were divided into four groups: one control group, one conventional instruction group, and two task groups (a higher involvement load group and a lower involvement load group). All the participants experienced three-phase sessions: pre-test, intervention, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test. Seven types of instruments were used for investigation of learning gains: two conventional vocabulary assessments solicited the retention involving L2-L1 correspondence and five open-ended alternative instruments for exploring knowledge of lexical semantic relations and the participants’ opinions toward the task. Conventional vocabulary assessments consisted of a translation test and Vocabulary Knowledge Scale whereas open-ended alternative instruments solicited data from the two task groups including a vocabulary semantic maps activity, a questionnaire, task-clarification question, interviews and group recordings.
Contrasting outcomes were yielded from these two types of instruments. The conventional instruction group outperformed the other three groups in the two conventional vocabulary assessments. This outcome reflects that the conventional instruction directly prepared the students for item-based word knowledge, such as L1 translation equivalents. The task-based participants showed that the involvement load made a difference in the lexical semantic relations they could express in their semantic maps. They also showed effects of the task-based learning in the questionnaire, task-clarification question, interviews and group recordings. The results suggest that drawing learners’ attention to lexical semantic relations within the target language in the curriculum might cultivate the learners’ elaboration competence. Moreover, tasks of more involvement load seem to induce deeper elaboration than the tasks of lower involvement load. In short, the findings suggest that more focus might be put on meaning relations among words and that teachers may embed such authentic tasks in the curriculum, especially the tasks of higher involvement load.
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