Abstract:
This study explores the relationship between metacognitive awareness and 2
aspects of vocabulary knowledge (i.e., declarative versus skill) in “more explicit”
and “less explicit” language learning groups. Also, it investigates whether
declarative aspect, operationalized in vocabulary size, and skill aspect,
operationalized in the productive use of vocabulary, differ in the more explicit and
less explicit language learning groups. To these ends, 80 Iranian EFL learners,
majoring in English Translation at Shahrekord and Esfahan Payam-e-Noor
Universities were selected through Oxford Placement Test. Schraw’s (1994)
Metacognitive Awareness Test was used to measure the participants’ degree of the
explicit knowledge; Nation’s (1990) Vocabulary Levels Test and Laufer and
Nation’s (1999) Productive Vocabulary Levels Test were also used to measure
their skill and declarative knowledge, respectively. Correlational statistics indicated
a significant and positive correlation between metacognitive awareness and
declarative knowledge, but a significant and negative correlation between
metacognitive awareness and skill aspect of vocabulary. Moreover, t tests
indicated that the more explicit group was better in the declarative aspect whereas
the less explicit one was better in the skill aspect of vocabulary knowledge. The
findings shed light on the cognitive dimension of vocabulary learning.
Machine summary:
"But the gap in L2 research studies concerns with the reflection of explicit/implicit language learning processes on declarative and skill knowledge (Ellis, 1994).
The Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) has been widely used to assess the size of vocabulary knowledge, that is, "the number of words for which the person knows at least some of the significant aspects of meaning" (Anderson & Freebody, 1981, p.
Table 1 shows descriptive statistics of metacognitive awareness, declarative vocabulary size and skill aspect tests in both ME and LE language learning groups.
To compare the participants’ performance on the declarative and skill aspects of vocabulary knowledge between the ME and LE groups, which was the concern of the second research question, the mean scores on the VLT and PVLT tests were compared through independent t tests.
Furthermore, the results of the present study showed a negative relationship between the EFL learners’ metacognitive awareness and their capability in the skill aspect of vocabulary in the language learning groups: Higher scores on the metacognitive awareness test were associated with the lower scores on the skill aspect of vocabulary.
The most important area of contention in this study was related to the nature of the mental lexicon, particularly the debate on the relationship between the degree of metacognitive awareness and the performance of EFL learners on the declarative and skill aspects of vocabulary knowledge.
Using a cued sentence-based production test and a self-report metacognitive awareness questionnaire used in this study might not entirely reflect the processes and analyses involved in learning the two aspects of vocabulary."