The comparative effects of presenting new words in semantically related sets vs. semantically unrelated sets on the receptive acquisition of L2 vocabulary items

Abstract

This study investigates the comparative effects of presenting the new vocabulary items to students in semantically related groups vs. semantically unrelated groups on vocabulary receptive acquisition in. Two groups of participants studying at the Iran Language Institute (ILI), a well-known second language school, in Isfahan, Iran, were presented twenty new vocabulary items thorough short reading texts, one group in semantically related sets and the other group in semantically unrelated sets. The results of the study indicate that the group which was taught the semantically unrelated sets of words outperformed the group which receivedsemantically related sets of words in the post-test. The findings of this study provide evidence that presentingnewwords to students insemanticallyrelatedsetsmayhinderreceptivevocabularyacquisition due to interference of similar words with each other. Learners have to discriminate between the properties of the similar words and this can impede their learning and retention.