Abstract
Prior research suggests that viewing still images and iconic gestures depicting concepts facilitates the learning of concrete words in the initial stages of second language (L2) acquisition. To date, however, the effect of viewing iconic gestures and images hasn’t been systematically compared to the effect of glosses in the learning and retrieval of concrete words in early stage L2 acquisition. Therefore, it is unclear whether dual coding theory of embodied theories of cognition provide the most accurate account of these effects. This study demonstrates that concrete L2 words learned via viewing still images are recalled better than L2 words learned via viewing iconic gesture and that L1 glosses fail to facilitate L2 word learning in beginning learners. Together, these findings indicate that images facilitate the learning of concrete L2 words above and beyond glosses in learners unfamiliar with the target language, and that glosses are not always necessary for effective L2 word learning.
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Notes
Because still images and iconic gestures were used to test L2 word recall in the depiction and depiction-plus-translation tests, recall of words presented in the translation condition during the learning phase could not be evaluated in these tests.
These random slopes were justified by a linear regression test. Given that they contributed significantly to the model, excluding them results in an anticonservative test that inflates the rate of Type I error (Barr et al. 2013). In models excluding random slopes, all contrasts reaching or trending towards significance in this and other models remained so.
All model statistics reported in tables reflect log odds, upon which logit mixed effects models are based. For ease of interpretation, these are converted in the text to odds.
Recall of words learned in the translation only condition couldn’t be assessed in the depiction and depiction-plus-translation tests because words assigned to this condition were learned without nonverbal depictions. Thus, the translation only condition was dropped from this comparison due to its absence from these tests.
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Acknowledgements
Portions of this research were presented at the 22nd annual Second Language Research Forum (October 2013). I thank Brian MacWhinney for inspiring the idea for this project and the faculty of the Language and Reading Group at the Learning Research and Development Center at the University of Pittsburgh for providing the space and resources necessary to complete it.
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Morett, L.M. The Power of an Image: Images, Not Glosses, Enhance Learning of Concrete L2 Words in Beginning Learners. J Psycholinguist Res 48, 643–664 (2019). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9623-2
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10936-018-9623-2