From oxidation to Paf the Dog: Mental images of student engineers in EFL vocabulary association and retention.

Alex Boulton (1, 2)

1 CRAPEL - Centre de Recherches et d'Applications Pédagogiques en Langues
2 ATILF - Analyse et Traitement Informatique de la Langue Française

Vocabulary is commonly held to be one of the biggest and most daunting obstacles facing second language (L2) learners. This observation is no doubt at least in part due to the prevalence of inadequate techniques. Many applied linguists have therefore directed their efforts towards exploiting the widely-confirmed psychological phenomenon that durability of memory traces is intimately connected with the affective strength of mental images and associations. In this paper, two experiments are described, analysing types of images and associations spontaneously produced by English L2 learners without specific training. In the first experiment, a “random” list of words is presented visually, and recall rates used to demonstrate a variety of psychological phenomena. In the second study, students are tested for production and subsequent recall of lexical associations. Implications are formulated for lexical strategies and for the teaching and learning of L2 vocabulary.

Mots clés: foreign language learning; vocabulary; memory techniques; word association; verbal imagery; keyword

Domaines: Linguistique

Alex Boulton. From oxidation to Paf the Dog: Mental images of student engineers in EFL vocabulary association and retention.. ASp (Anglais de Spécialité), 2000, 27/31, pp.33-47. ⟨10.4000/asp.2033⟩. ⟨hal-00114350⟩