Proficiency and sentence constraint effects on second language word learning

This paper presents an experiment that investigated the effects of L2 proficiency and sentence constraint on semantic processing of unknown 1.2 words (pseudowords). All participants were Chinese native speakers who learned English as a second language. In the experiment, we used a whole sentence presentation paradigm with a delayed semantic relatedness judgment task Both higher and lower-proficiency L2 learners could make use of the high-constraint sentence context to judge the meaning of novel pseudowords, and higher-proficiency 12 learners outperformed lower-proficiency L2 learners in all conditions. These results demonstrate that both 12 proficiency and sentence constraint affect subsequent word learning among second language learners. We extended 12 word learning into a sentence context, replicated the sentence constraint effects previously found among native speakers, and found proficiency effects in 12 word learning. (C) 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.