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both in the High and in the Low group. Despite several disadvantages concerning the instruction, all of the interviewees enjoyed the instruction of sound symbolism on the whole. For the interviewees, the instruction was helpful for their English vocabulary memorization, especially for word recognition. In addition, before the instruction of sound symbolism, the interviewees were accustomed to memorizing English
vocabulary through rote learning; however, after the instruction, most (90%) of them reported that they would apply sound symbolism, which was categorized as
meaningful learning (Mo, 2005), to their future vocabulary memorization. There are, however, some negative comments on the instruction of sound symbolism, including the difficulty of exerting imagination to make associations, especially indirect or complicated ones.
Discussion of the Comparison Between the Present Study and the Previous Studies This section compared the findings of the present study with those of the previous ones from two aspects: (1) consistent findings and (2) inconsistent findings and new findings. For the discrepancies between the findings of this study and those of the previous ones and the new findings of this study, possible explanations were provided.
Consistent Findings with the Previous Research
This study was carried out to determine if the instruction of sound symbolism would be effective on junior high school students’ English vocabulary memorization.
As a whole, the results of this study are in substantial agreement with the findings of the previous research in the following aspects. First, students who received the instruction of sound symbolism performed better than those who were taught the traditional translation-based approach on English vocabulary memorization. This
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finding lends support to the conclusion of Chen (2000), Huang (1999) and Mo (2005) that the instruction of sound symbolism would be beneficial to English vocabulary teaching. Furthermore, this empirical study indicated that the instruction of sound symbolism was effective for the participants with different English proficiency. This finding also seems compatible with the contention of the previous research (Imai, Kita, Nagumo & Okada, 2008; Parault, 2006; Parault & Parkinson, 2008; Parault &
Schwanenflugel, 2006) that sound symbolism is a word property which can facilitate word learning, and could therefore be an important factor in word learning.
Second, the results of the interviewees’ vocabulary learning strategies showed that the interviewees memorized English vocabulary through rote learning instead of meaningful learning, as shown in Table 4.8. This finding is congruent with O’Malley’s (1985) argument that Asian students preferred to depend on rote memorization. In addition, O’Malley (1987) later stated that Asian students persisted in using repetition strategies to tackle vocabulary learning, which was confirmed by Chen (1998), Kudo (1999), Schmitt (1997) and Tung (2007). Likewise, the finding of this project is consistent with their conclusion in that the most frequently used strategy was verbal repetition and written repetition in this study (See Table 4.8).
However, as Brown (2001) pointed out, “meaningful learning will lead toward better long-term retention than rote learning” (p.57). It seemed that there was a need to introduce other vocabulary learning strategies which belonged to meaningful learning to the students. According to Mo (2005), under the cognitive theories of learning, vocabulary learning combined with the application of sound symbolism was meaningful learning. Moreover, as shown in Table 4.8, among the nine vocabulary learning strategies mentioned in the interviews, four (44%) were sound-related37. As a result, the instruction of sound symbolism provided learners with a useful vocabulary
37 See 2-(2), 2-(4), 2-(5) and 3-(1) in Table 4.8.
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learning strategy.
Third, Chen (2000) argued that the instruction of sound symbolism, which corresponds with the principles of cognitive theories of learning, turned passive, teacher-centered vocabulary teaching into an active student-centered one. In the present study, the results of the interviews confirmed her finding. According to the interviewees’ responses, they felt the instruction of sound symbolism was interesting and most of them got involved in the teaching process because they needed to pronounce the sounds personally to feel the connections between sound and meaning after the teacher’s demonstration of the pronunciation. In other words, the instruction of sound symbolism made vocabulary teaching more student-centered. In addition, one of the positive comments on the instruction of sound symbolism indicated that the instruction was helpful for raising low achievers’ learning motivation, which is consonant with Chen’ (2000) view that the instruction of sound symbolism was beneficial to beginners and low-achievers by increasing their learning motivation.
Finally, among the negative comments on the instruction of sound symbolism, one interviewee responded, “When applying sound symbolism to guessing the meaning of an unknown word, I can only get an approximate meaning” (HG-S1). This result echoes Parault and Parkinson’s (2008) conclusion. In their research, they acknowledged that sound symbols will not always lead a word learner to the correct definition for an unknown word. However, they defended their proposal of sound symbolism with the contention that sound symbolism is one of many sources of information which a word learner can draw upon to narrow down the possible meanings for an unknown word and this is exactly how sound symbolism can contribute to vocabulary learning.
Inconsistent Findings and New Findings
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Despite a number of the consistent findings, inconsistencies lie in the comparison between the present study and the previous research. From the results of the interviews in this study, the researcher found that there were four types of negative comments on the instruction of sound symbolism, while all of the previous researchers advocating the combination of English vocabulary teaching with the studies of sound symbolism made no mention of the disadvantages of the instruction of sound symbolism at all (Chen, 2000; Huang, 1999; Mo, 2005), resulting in the discrepancies between the findings of the current study and those of the previous ones.
Among the negative comments found in this project, firstly, the process of making associations was criticized most frequently. The interviewees pointed out that in the instruction of sound symbolism, it was difficult for them to exert imagination to make associations, especially indirect or complicated ones. It appears that the application of sound symbolism was not without its problem though the previous researchers who advocated the teaching method of sound symbolism made every endeavor to promote the instruction of sound symbolism. For this negative comment, possible explanations for this inconsistent finding are as follows. Several studies (Tung, 2007; Wang, 2004) have noted that in terms of vocabulary learning strategies, imagery and association were regarded as deep strategies, both of which required deeper mental processing or deep semantic processing, i.e. meaning elaboration. In other words, as a crucial role in the instruction of sound symbolism, imagery and association took more effort for students to employ because they were not only time-consuming but also energy-consuming. Consequently, making associations in vocabulary memorization could be an arduous task for junior high students. In addition, as Wright (2000) noted in her review of modern western perspectives on sound symbolism in medieval Arabic linguistic theory research, one aspect of criticisms with regard to sound symbolism focuses on its vagueness and dependence on individual perception. Kohler (1992) also
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put emphasis on the importance of individual perception in the evaluation of meaning.
He stated, “Meaning depends upon personal biography; it has a highly complicated origin” (p.73). From this point of view, exerting imagination to make associations could be difficulties of different levels for different students because individuals may have diverse life experiences as well as various perceptions on their surroundings. In short, imagination and associations are abstract concepts which remain difficult for teenagers to understand, especially complicated associations; thus the exertion of imagination and associations could be possibly a tough issue for junior high students.
Nonetheless, the researchers of the previous studies on sound symbolism did not seem to take this factor into consideration and therefore claimed that the instruction of sound symbolism would be easy for students to understand, resulting in the discrepancies between the present study and the previous ones.
Secondly, Chen (2000) claimed that the instruction of sound symbolism would help develop students’ phonological awareness, while from the results of the interviews in the present study, more than half of the interviewees felt that the instruction of sound symbolism was not helpful for memorization of sound of a word.
A possible explanation for the inconsistency could be the relationship between phonemic awareness and the ability to make use of sound symbolic information, which needs examining by further research (Parault & Parkinson, 2008). In other words, it is not verified yet whether phonemic awareness will always lead to the ability to utilize sound symbolism to vocabulary memorization. Another possible reason for the inconsistency is the sequence of logical relationship between the phonological awareness and the application of sound symbolism. More specifically, the students should learn phonological knowledge from the instruction of phonics first, and then with the phonological awareness, they can learn to use sound symbolism in the vocabulary instruction. That is, the students need to know how to pronounce a
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letter or a combination of letters first; afterwards, when pronouncing the sound in person, they try to use imagination to associate sound with meaning. Without the phonological awareness, the students lack the knowledge to pronounce a letter or letters, not to mention utilizing the pronunciation to make associations. Therefore, the direction of the process is from phonological awareness to sound symbolism, not vice versa, leading to this inconsistent finding with the previous study.
In addition, there are several new findings in the present study as follows. First of all, the instruction of sound symbolism could be quite beneficial to low-achievers’
English vocabulary learning for the following reason. Among the participants in the Low group, five (See S3, S4, S5, S14 and S19 in Table 4.6) were typical low-achievers without any interest in academic studies at all. According to the daily observation of their homeroom teacher, i.e. the researcher, these five students gave up all of the school subjects, including English, with the result that most of the test questions were not answered in their test sheets in every subject. They lacked learning motivation and therefore did not concentrate in class. However, in the instruction of sound symbolism, three (60%) of them38 accidentally heard some of the examples of sound symbolism given in class and memorized several new words successfully by the use of sound symbolism. With extremely low English proficiency, they were only able to memorize quite a limited number of words. For example, Student 3 in the Low group merely answered two questions in the post-test; however, both of them were correct and were answered based on the use of sound symbolism39. Likewise, Student 4 in the Low group made four responses in the post-test and Student 19 made only one, all of which were correct and were also made based on sound symbolism40. In
38 See S3, S4 and S19 in Table 4.6.
39 The information was obtained from the result of the crosscheck of this participant’s post-test and his think-aloud sheet.
40 The information was obtained from the result of the crosscheck of these participants’ post-test and their think-aloud sheets.
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other words, the instruction of sound symbolism should prove beneficial especially to the Low group for two reasons. In addition to the significant progress the participants made in the whole Low group, the typical low achievers made use of sound symbolism to memorize several new words successfully, while normally they handed in the vocabulary test sheets in blank or made no correct response to the vocabulary test items. A possible explanation for this finding is as follows. As many studies (Ahmed, 1989; Fan, 2003; Kojic-sabo & Lightbown, 1999; Sanaoui, 1995; Wang, 2004) have pointed out that good learners use much more vocabulary learning strategies than poor learners, the effect of sound symbolism may not be so obvious among the high proficiency learners as it is among the low proficiency learners, though a useful alternative it might be, since high proficiency learners utilize other strategies at the same time in their vocabulary memorization. On the contrary, with few or no learning strategies at all, the offer of an interesting, easy to understand41, useful and meaningful alternative, i.e. sound symbolism, would seem to have a great effect on the Low group. Consequently, those who were unable to answer any questions correctly in the vocabulary tests can successfully memorize several new words, which seemed to be a great challenge to low proficiency learners, and this is exactly how the instruction of sound symbolism worked for the Low group.
Second, from the results of the interviews, the researcher found that all of the interviewees thought the instruction of sound symbolism was more helpful than Word Analysis Instruction for junior high students. Most of them reported that Word
Analysis Method was not used frequently in junior high school English teaching. As a result, they felt the instruction of sound symbolism was more beneficial to them.
There are two possible reasons for the absence of Word Analysis Instruction in junior
41 For low proficiency learners, all of the associations they were able to make in the instruction of sound symbolism were simple and direct ones, instead of indirect or complicated ones; therefore, in this way, sound symbolism was a strategy which is easy to understand in the Low group.
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high school. First, word analysis is a commonly-used teaching method for advanced learners (Hsu, 2004) so that it is not applicable for junior high students. In addition, most of the English vocabulary of junior high level, i.e. the 1000-word list, cannot be analyzed by dissecting a word into smaller meaningful units such as affixes and roots because they are basic words in English. In contrast, a lot of the words on the
1000-word list can be explained by sound symbolism42. By comparison, the students felt that the instruction of sound symbolism was more beneficial to them.
Finally, previous studies (Chen, 2000; Chiang, 2008; Huang, 1999; Mo, 2005) suggested that the instruction of sound symbolism was effective on students’
vocabulary memorization; however, those studies did not discuss in detail which aspect of vocabulary memorization could benefit from the instruction of sound symbolism. According to the results of the present study, the researcher proved that the instruction of sound symbolism could be helpful for junior high students’ English vocabulary memorization on the aspect of word recognition. There is a possible explanation for this new finding which is probably due to the distinction between receptive vocabulary knowledge and productive vocabulary knowledge. From the viewpoint of receptive vocabulary knowledge, knowing a word involves being able to recognize the word with its written form and know what the word means. From the viewpoint of productive vocabulary knowledge, knowing a word involves being able to write it with correct spelling and use the word to express the meaning (Nation, 2001). In other words, for word learners, productive knowledge is more difficult than receptive knowledge (Nation, 2001). Since sound symbolism could help students narrow down the possible meanings for an unknown word (Parault & Parkinson, 2008), it would be helpful for students to recognize words, not to spell words. In this
42 In terms of the 1000-word list stipulated by MOE (2003), there are 273 words which can be explained by sound symbolism, and in terms of the 1200-word list stipulated by MOE (2008), up to 347 words can be explained by sound symbolism (See Appendix M and Appendix N).
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present study, a matching test was designed for word recognition and the results of the test provided evidence that sound symbolism could be beneficial to vocabulary
memorization in terms of word recognition.
Pedagogical Implications of the Study
Several pedagogical implications can be drawn from this study.
1. Teachers can impart students with the knowledge of sound-meaning relationships, which could serve as sources to narrow down word meanings, and help students memorize the meanings of the words.
2. When applying sound symbolism to vocabulary teaching, teachers can introduce the direct associations of sound-meaning relationships first. After the students become familiar with the process of making associations, indirect ones are then taught.
3. The instruction of phonics should be implemented thoroughly before junior high school and reviewed before the instruction of sound symbolism so that students could be equipped with enough prior knowledge of phonic rules to learn sound symbolism in vocabulary teaching.
4. Sound symbolism could be a useful vocabulary learning strategy for beginners to learn basic English vocabulary such as the words on the 1000-word list stipulated by MOE.
5. The instruction of sound symbolism may bring about a pleasant classroom atmosphere because the instruction involves students in the process of vocabulary learning and making associations of sound-meaning relationships makes students feel interested. Compared with the traditional translation-based approach, there are more interactions between teachers and students in the instruction of sound symbolism, leading to a delightful and interactive classroom.
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Limitations of the Study
The present study suggested that the instruction of sound symbolism was more effective than the traditional translation-based approach, but several limitations concerning the experiment which require further investigation should also be noted.
First, the results of the present study may not be generalized to the students of other ages as the participants of this study were confined to two classes at a public junior high school only.
The second limitation of the study concerns the design of the research method.
On one hand, the limitation is rooted in the short time allowed for the treatment in the experiment. Because the participants were ninth graders who were under intense pressure of the coming Basic Competence Test for Junior High School Students and the target words in this study were not included in the words on the 1000-word list, the duration of the instruction of sound symbolism lasted for only 16 weeks. Such a short period of time may not be sufficient to fully investigate the effectiveness of a teaching method. On the other hand, the sample size of this study was not big enough.
There were only 36 participants in the experimental group and control group
respectively. When the experimental group was further divided into the High and Low groups according to their EBCT scores to investigate the effectiveness of the
instruction of sound symbolism in different proficiency groups, there were merely 16 participants in the High group and 20 participants in the Low group. The numbers of the participants of these two groups were too small for a statistical research method when the mean score of the pre-test and that of the post-test were compared to determine whether there was significant progress in both groups.
Third, the participants’ background knowledge of phonic rules might interfere with the results of the study, and this factor was not taken into account for the present study. To use sound symbolism in vocabulary memorization, knowing how to
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pronounce a letter or a combination of letters is a prerequisite for this approach.
Without the knowledge, a participant will not be able to utter the sound correctly, not to mention associating sound with meaning through its manner of articulation.
Therefore, it is suggested that participants’ background knowledge of phonic rules
Therefore, it is suggested that participants’ background knowledge of phonic rules