Almutairi, Hana Mohammad; (2020) Pushed-output instruction for vocabulary learning: Exploring differences in learning gains and lexical profiling. Doctoral thesis (Ph.D), UCL (University College London).

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Abstract

Previous research has shown that vocabulary can be learned through pushed-output activities. However, the few previous studies on the topic have mainly focused on the acquisition of nouns. Little is known about the acquisition of other parts of speech or about other components of lexical mastery achieved through pushed-output activities. This thesis examines the effectiveness of spoken pushed-output instruction on learning the multiple meaning senses of single-word verbs and phrasal verbs by presenting two classroom intervention studies. Study 1 explored differences between the effectiveness of spoken pushed-output and traditional vocabulary-focused instructions for learning polysemous single-word verbs and phrasal verbs. A between-subjects design was used, which included three conditions: no instruction, traditional vocabulary instruction and spoken pushed-output instruction. Both receptive and productive knowledge were investigated. The data were analysed using two approaches: (1) examining the receptive and productive vocabulary gains after instruction and (2) looking beyond the vocabulary gains by examining the lexical profile of the spoken production after instruction (i.e., overall text length, mean length of utterances, lexical diversity, lexical density and lexical sophistication). The findings indicated that with spoken pushed-output instruction, learners significantly improved not only in learning the multiple meaning senses of the target items but also in producing these meaning senses more fluently in longer, more lexically diverse, lexically denser and lexically sophisticated stretches of language. The results also indicated that single-word verbs could be learned at a similar rate to that of phrasal verbs. The results also showed that, except for the receptive gains of the first meaning sense, which had an advantage over the other meaning senses, no other differences among the three meaning senses emerged. This study demonstrated the advantage of spoken pushed-output instruction, justifying its use in the classroom. However, there are many different types of spoken pushed-output activities that may be implemented, making it logical to ask which are the most effective. Study 2 explored the effects of three different spoken pushed-output activities on learning polysemous single-word verbs and phrasal verbs: sentence reconstruction, listen-and-retell meaning, and picture description. The results indicated that all three activities resulted in similar recall scores but differed in their effectiveness for meaning recognition. The sentence reconstruction activity was found to be the most effective activity at the recognition level (as shown by the scores of the receptive test). The results also indicated that under similar instruction conditions, phrasal verbs are likely to be learned receptively and productively at a similar rate to single-word verbs. The results also showed that the first meaning sense was more easily recognised; however, no differences emerged neither in the recall scores nor in the mean length of utterances scores. Overall, the findings presented in the thesis support the use of spoken pushed-output instruction in the classroom for teaching single words and formulaic sequences. Further, the findings support the idea that, if the type and amount of instruction are controlled to be the same for single-word verbs and phrasal verbs, the learnability of these two types of items may be the same. While the findings cannot be easily generalised to other types of formulaic sequences, they do encourage further research on the teaching of formulaic sequences.

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