An Experiment on Supporting Children's English Vocabulary Learning in Multimedia Context

Abstract

Learning in context is an important component of second language (L2) vocabulary teaching and learning. However, young children may encounter some difficulties in dealing with the context. Hence learning support should be included to facilitate learning. The present study examined the effects of two types of learning support on Chinese children's (7 years of age) learning of English words: sentence-level translation (SLT) and target warming-up (TW). The results indicated that learning L2 vocabulary in an animation-based context without any learning support was inefficient for the young beginners. SLT and TW were both effective in facilitating L2 learning in a multimedia context. These findings have important implications for L2 vocabulary teaching and the design of effective multimedia L2 teaching tools.