A reform of vocabulary learning is in progress

IntroductionIn language learning, "closed," mechanical exercises restrict information to only "correct" answers that are unlikely to remain in permanent memory (Stevick, 1996). On the contrary, bringing in student-generated materials (Kindt, 1999) could stimulate students or help to focus their attention, thus facilitating the creation of an open learning environment. When learners become contributors, they demonstrate informed participation to explore large problem spaces, learn from their peers and create new understandings (Fischer & Ostwald, 2002). This paper reports on a study of Mobile Assisted Language Learning (MALL) in Nan Chiau Primary School in Singapore. We facilitated a Primary 5 (11-year-old) class to study and apply 29 common Chinese idioms. Apart from in-class idiom lessons with contextualized learning activities, the students were each assigned a smartphone which they were allowed to access 24x7 throughout the nine-week period of the study. They carried out photoblogging-like activities by using their smartphones to take photos in their daily lives, and then made sentences with the idioms, and subsequently posted them onto a wiki space for sharing and peer review.This MALL design emphasizes students' proactive association of the contexts that they encounter in the physical world with the Chinese idioms (considered a special form of vocabulary) that they have learned. In this paper, we focus on investigating the students' individual-to-social learning process throughout the intervention, which could be attributed to the process of multimodal, student artifact-focused, ongoing, open-ended meaning making in the context of vocabulary learning. The students' learning processes that we observed and the artifacts that they have delivered suggest a compelling direction for MALL--seamless language Rosetta Stone Chinese learning.Literature Review Constructivist approach in vocabulary (idiom) learningIn recent decades, we witness a paradigm shift in language learning theories from behaviorism to a communicative approach (Salaberry, 1996). In addition, prior studies in the second language (L2) classroom have suggested the importance of the negotiation of meaning, also known as social meaning making, in L2 development (Long, 1985). However, the social context has been undervalued as an arena for collaborative L2 learning. Where meaning appears fixed, immutable, to be sent and received, what is lost is the collaborative nature of meaning making (Savignon, 1991).As a fundamental component of language learning, vocabulary learning is often delivered in conventional ways, such as providing abstract definitions and sentences taken out of the context of normal use. (Miller & Gildea, 1987). Such pedagogical strategies may pose greater problem for learning of context-dependent vocabularies. The complex nature of context-dependent vocabularies, such as idioms and proverbs, may result in highly context-dependent appropriateness of their usage (Deng, 2001). There are many possible real-life contexts where such vocabulary could suitably (or unsuitably but often mistakenly) be used, which are almost impossible to be prescribed in a simple definition.A reform of vocabulary learning is in progress. In particular, Miller and Gildea's (1987) vocabulary teaching experiment showed that children acquire vocabulary faster with the method used out of the school, by relating words to ordinary conversation, than with the traditional methods based upon abstract definitions and sentences taken from external contexts. Similarly, Nation (2001) proposes three psychological processes for successful vocabulary learning: noticing (a word is highlighted as being salient text input), retrieving (repeat encountering of the word) and creative/generative (a previously encountered word is used in a slightly different context). The three-stage model stresses the importance of the coupling of language input (receptive learning) and output (productive learning), and the learners' creative/generative usage of the learned vocabulary in alternative contexts. Liu (2008) illustrates the application of this model for idiom learning.