L2語彙指導における認知的再調整語彙ネットワーク

抄録

Vocabulary is at the heart of second language learning (Gass,1999; Nation, 2001). However, it is far from easy for Japanese learners to learn English vocabulary. The questions we address in this paper are: Why is it that language learners find it difficult to use even simple words like put or look to the full range of their usage? How do we help learners acquire their lexical competence in English? As for the first question, we suggest two things. First, the difficulty presumably comes from the use of a learning strategy of searching for a translation equivalent to understand the meaning of a new expression. The translation equivalent does not fully represent the meaning of the expression in question. Secondly, it is also common that learners try to learn L2 words as they encounter in a text. They learn new words or expressions in an item-by-item manner. However, a word does not stand alone in isolation. As regards the second question, we suggest two things: (1) what we call “cognitive re-adjustment” can be a pedagogical tool to raise metalinguistic awareness which helps minimize the problem of the search-translation-equivalent strategy, and (2) a lexical network should be the unit of vocabulary learning in order to help learners overcome the problem of item-specific learning.