Developing Vocabulary Skills With StudyMate Most SLA experts agree that vocabulary is central to language acquisition A lexical knowledge contributes to L2 proficiency Different students learn L2 words in different ways All students will face different “learning burdens” (Nation 2000) for different words

Strategies to Learn Vocabulary Interaction with peers and/or instructor Exposure to comprehensible input Mnemonics such as word associations, word grouping, studying the spelling of words, saying words aloud, etc.. Other memory strategies such as verbal or written word repetition, word lists, word games, miming the words, etc…

Different Strategies for Different Learners Explicit learning may work better at the beginning level Implicit learning will work better with more advanced students All students will benefit from exposure to a greater number and variety of strategies

Explicit Vocabulary Learning with StudyMate: Our Experiment eCollege is TCU’s course management software StudyMate exercises are created in Microsoft Word and embedded within eCollege StudyMate offers a variety of explicit vocabulary learning exercises that foster repetition and audio/ visual attentive tasks to help our visual learners

StudyMate Activities Flashcards with or without audio Crossword puzzles Matching Pick a Letter Fill in the blanks Challenge Others

The Experiment Upon the invitation from our Center for Teaching Excellence, we began to create StudyMate activities in the fall semester 2007 Students accessed StudyMates activities through our eCollege course shells During the last week of the semester, our CTE staff administered a survey through eCollege course shells

The Survey 96 students participated in the survey 9 classes were selected: 3 French, 2 German, 3 Spanish, 1 History Survey was administered through eCollege