Context-Based Activation of Deliberately Learned New Words: A Pilot Study

抄録

　　Recently, researchers have become aware that deliberate learning of new words in a foreign language may facilitate implicit as well as explicit lexical knowledge. Previous research has found the existence of mental connections between newly learned words and their meanings through priming studies. In the present study, a small-scale experiment using priming methodology was conducted to explore the possibility that learners construct a mental association between new words and other words they encounter in the same context. Graduate and undergraduate students (n = 10) memorized a word list consisting of 10 English rare words paired with their Japanese translations and example sentences. After that, the participants performed a lexical decision task that required prompt recognition of new-word targets presented on a PC screen; the targets were primed by words that had appeared in the example sentences (i.e., context primes) or by unrelated words (i.e., control primes). The response time of all participants was shortened for context primes,suggesting an implicit connection between new words and contexts in the learner’s mind. Pedagogical implications and suggestions for future research are discussed.