Beginning call vocabulary learning: Translation in context.

Abstract

As the role of software becomes increasingly central to the L2 curriculum, pedagogical models for L2 software are becoming increasingly needed. L2 classroom pedagogies are not necessarily directly applicable to CALL. CALL, for instance, does not assure learners that their guesses are correct as effectively as a teacher can. This limitation in CALL can be overcome by the L1. This study investigated the effect of the L1 in CALL on the receptive learning (short term [ST] and medium term [MT] retention) of French vocabulary. Subjects were 181 University of Arizona first and second semester French students randomly assigned to an experimental or a control group. Both groups attended identical user-controlled lessons comprised of a comic book story in French, an accompanying sound track (i.e., native voices and background audio), a rich color graphic environment supplementing the text, and "pregnant" (Mondria & Wit-de-boer, 1991) French definitional sentences. The experimental group had the option of accessing dialogue-level translations. MT retention was measured in a multiple-choice test two weeks after the lesson. Findings indicate that the addition of the L1 resulted in significantly superior ST (t = 9.38, p<.001) and MT retention (t = 6.98, p<.001); the experimental group scored 16.5 percent higher than the control group on the ST retention test, and 12.3 percent higher on the MT retention test. Though the control group spent more time getting L2 input than the experimental group (970 seconds vs. 773 seconds, respectively), it learned and retained significantly less than the experimental group and had a significantly slower response rate on the ST retention test. There was a positive relationship between time spent on the lesson and performance, suggesting that at least part of the effect of the experimental treatment is due to the additional time which it required subjects to spend on the lesson. Subject characteristics such as gender, learning style, and the number of years of high school French did not impact on ST and MT retention, while grade had an impact on performance: experimental students with a grade of A learned and retained the most.