Integrating New Vocabulary into the Mental Lexicon: Comparing the Effects of Monolingual and Bilingual Flashcard Learning

Japanese English as a foreign language (EFL) learners often rely on their native language to learn English, meaning they learn new English words by associating them with Japanese trans- lations. While this strategy may be effective for beginners, it could be worthwhile for more advanced learners to learn new words by developing English-to-English associations. This research compared the effects of English-to-English (monolingual) and English-to-Japanese (bilingual) flashcard learning. Fifty-three university-aged participants studied 48 target words using multimedia flashcards in these two learning conditions. The quality of the lexical representations they developed was investigated in two priming posttests. A mixed-modality repetition priming posttest investigated whether the targets they learned fostered the development of robust formal (orthographic and phonological) representations. A semantic priming posttest investigated the development of semantic representations. Although neither robust formal nor semantic representations were established, the semantic priming posttest results were informative and valuable. Monolingual flashcard learning resulted in faster recognition for participants with strong explicit knowledge of the learning targets. Results showed that higher-intermediate and advanced learners can benefit from using English definitions to learn new English words instead of relying on Japanese translations.