The
Effect of Vocabulary Learning Strategy on Word Translation in Novice
Bilinguals
H. Cheung |
Two
groups of Cantonese-speaking 5th graders were taught English new
words and were later required to translate these English words into
Cantonese (backward translation), and vice-versa (forward translation).
One group learned the English words by associating them with their
Cantonese equivalents (translation strategy) while the other group
learned by associating them with verbal descriptions of their underlying
concepts (concept strategy). It was found that the translation strategy
produced shorter translation latencies and fewer errors than the
concept strategy, and that backward translation was slower than forward
translation when the translation learning strategy was used, thus
questioning the hypothetical L2-to-L1 lexical link prescribed by
the asymmetry model of bilingual memory (Kro11 & Stewart, 1994).
The present findings are discussed in light of a concept mediation
architecture for both lexicons (Chen & Leung, 1989; Chen, 1990;
de Groot, Dannenburg, & van Hell, 1994; La Heij, Hooglander,
Kerling, & van der Velden, in press).
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