Vocabulary Learning Strategies and the Representation of L2 and L3 Words in the Mental Lexicon

Abstract

The study aims to investigate the representations of second (L2) and third (L3) language words in the multilingual mental lexicon. Even though access to the contents of lexical entries is limited, the spontaneous verbalization of word meanings and, possibly, of their use in context, provides some insight into the participants’ declarative and to some extent procedural knowledge of the target words. As the results indicate, the choice of vocabulary learning strategies does not depend on the language combination, but is rather individual and, in fact, students tend to combine different learning strategies, which is also reflected in their ways of presenting the words. For example, one L2 word may be described by a definition in L2, its Polish equivalent and an example of its use in context. However, the learners’ choices of means to define the L2 and L3 words and the correctness of their definitions do seem to depend on the language combination, as the results of the chi-square tests were statistically significant. Still, it can be supposed that this depends not only on the individual learners’ learning strategies and lexical representations, but also on their programs of studies.