Open AccessThe productive vocabulary of multimodal and unimodal English as a Foreign Language learners
Author(s) -
Alejandra Montero-SaizAja
Publication year - 2022
Publication title -
porta linguarum
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.554
H-Index - 13
eISSN - 2695-8244
pISSN - 1697-7467
DOI - 10.30827/portalin.vi.21389
Subject(s) - vocabulary , psychology , preference , perception , learning styles , vocabulary learning , multimodal learning , modalities , multimodality , english vocabulary , english as a foreign language , linguistics , mathematics education , computer science , artificial intelligence , mathematics , statistics , social science , philosophy , neuroscience , sociology
This study investigated the productive vocabulary of EFL learners divided into two groups: multimodal (preference for two or three perceptual learning styles) and unimodal (preference for one perceptual learning style). The objectives of this research were twofold: (1) to identify the productive vocabulary of multimodal and unimodal EFL learners; and (2) to ascertain whether there were statistically significant differences between productive vocabulary and the preferences for learning (multimodality or unimodality). The sample consisted of 60 Spanish EFL learners (24 multimodal and 36 unimodal) in the 12th grade. The data collection instruments were the Learning Style Survey (Cohen et al., 2009) to divide the informants into multimodal and unimodal learners, and the 2,000-word version of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1995, 1999) to measure their productive vocabulary. Then, data were coded and subjected to quantitative analyses. The findings indicated that multimodal learners had more productive vocabulary (1,186 words) than their unimodal peers (948 words). However, there were not statistically significant differences between multimodal and unimodal learners in their productive vocabulary. However, both the effect size and the strength of association were large. Therefore, the results suggested that EFL learners employed different sensory modalities to learn vocabulary.