A Comparative Study of Two Methods of Vocabulary Instruction

Although educational materials often present new vocabulary in semantically clustered fashions, empirical investigations indicate that presenting words in semantically related groups seems not to facilitate but even to hinder the process of vocabulary learning. The present study was conducted to compare the relative effects of two methods of vocabulary presentation: semantically related words versus semantically unrelated words. The study was conducted as part of regular instruction, in a language institute on 68 elementary language learners, and lasted for eight sessions. A “presentation – practice – test” procedure was followed within a quasi-experimental research framework. Throughout the study the participants were taught four semanticallyrelated and four semantically un-related sets of words. The results of eight series of vocabulary tests revealed that students’ performance in the semantically unrelated condition was significantly better. The findings suggest that presenting semantically related vocabulary items may cause interference in the process of word learning, at least at the proficiency level tested in this experiment.