Mise à jour du programme le 23 octobre 2000
 

Hélène Conway
DIT, Dublin (Irlande)
 

There was a time when second language acquisition researchers were preoccupied with testing particular teaching methods in order to compare their efficiency with that of other  methods.

The present research intends to bring together the researcher, the teacher and the learner with a view to establishing connections between prescribed lexical input and the process of L2 lexical acquisition in the context of an instructional programme in applied languages. It does not set out to prove the superiority of one method over others. Its more  modest aim is to assess the potential benefits which may accrue in respect of L2 lexical acquisition from allowing learners to work at their own pace and manner on materials available in a multi-media environment.

The first part of the paper to be presented will concentrate on the theoretical background of lexical acquisition. It will then explore the reactions of 1st year Bsc In Hospitality Management students  to encountering new vocabulary in different environments. Two different groups of students were exposed to a limited set of French lexical items, via respectively, two different presentational methods. In the one case exposure was in the context of traditional “frontal” teaching, and in the other the encounters with the words in question occured in the course of activities being engaged in by the students in a relatively independent manner using audio material and CD ROM material in a multi-media room. Subsequent testing of the two groups on the target items yield some indications concerning the relative effectiveness of the two learning approaches at establishing durable traces for novel L2 lexis. The other dimension of such an exploration was to seek the learners’own reactions and insight using questionnaires.

This study seeks  to explore the ways in which L2 lexical acquisition may be optimized through the use of various learning approaches and techniques.