Embodied Morphological Training on Chinese ESL Kids' Vocabulary Acquisition

• In Event: 45.060 - Phonological and Morphological Training Evidence Among Children and Adults: Bilingual Approach to and Empirical Evidence From Behavioral, Developmental, and Neurophysiological Studies

Abstract

1.Objectives or Purposes
The study aimed to report on morphological training methodologies of latin roots in English for Chinese ESL kid and to investigate how Chinese ESL kids leverage latin roots and four different morphological training conditions(1=handwriting, 2=dragging, 3=gestures, and reading control), to enhance their vocabulary knowledge and comprehension, meaning memory and morphological problem-solving skills.

2. Perspectives or Theoretical Framework
Theoretically speaking, the embodied cognitive approach to language learning claims that linking word form to meaning engages “mental imagination and manipulation” of the learning objects. The activities in this study are designed to guide students to acquire two representations of word meanings (literary and metaphorical) from word friendly definition to demonstration in various contexts. Hypothetically, the condition(s) in which the “perceptual-motor semantic Network” is highly activated could lead to the best vocabulary acquisition among ESL adults.

3.Methods, Techniques, or Modes of Inquiry
Four learning conditions (1=handwriting, 2=dragging, 3=gestures, and reading control) X Two time-points (pretest vs. post-test) repeated measure design was conducted. All the words taught in four conditions were the same controlled for root-frequency, and bigram frequency, and lexical frequency. Ten measures were collected in both pretest and post-test. They included two word-segmentation tasks (target vs. control), two morphological awareness tasks, lexical decision task, root-matching, word-matching, dictation task, translation task, and generative task.

4. Data sources, Evidence, Objects, or Materials
One hundred Grade-5 students were randomly assigned to each of four learning conditions, with 25 students per group. Four doctoral or Ph.D-level lecturers were conducting exactly the same training procedure, except for the learning activities. The handwriting group (H) wrote down the latin-root of the words, the dragging group (D) dragged the latin-root to the proper locations of the words; the gesture group (G) performed the hand-gesture related to the meaning of the word, the control group (C) only read and view the words silently. Learning time equaled across all four learning conditions.

5. Results and/or Conclusions or Warrants for Arguments/Point of View
Results revealed a significant manipulation effect on establishing semantic representations for roots and a significant positive manipulation effect for embedding root to whole-word representation on the orthography-recognition task, word generation and two meaning memory tasks (translation and meaning matching) for the (H) and (D) embodied manipulatable conditions, i.e., root-writing and root-dragging conditions. Overall results show promise for use of embodied training conditions for morphological problem solving.

6. Scientific or Scholarly Significance of the Study
The current study reveals the scientific and scholarly significance of linking forms to meaning through action. From the perception and action perspective, both strong (i.e., handwriting the written forms) and weak (i.e., manipulating the learning objects by dragging) embodied learning mechanism contributes to strong phonological, orthographic and morphological memory of the vocabulary learning in a meaningful context.

Authors

• Ling HE

• Jianrong Zhao

• kaili Qun, Wuhan University of Technology

• Amy C. Crosson, The Pennsylvania State University

• Margaret G. McKeown, University of Pittsburgh

• Qun Guan, University of Science and Technology Beijing