The Effects of Semantic Mapping on Vocabulary Memorizing

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Feature 5 <strong>Semantic</strong> mapping for the word “Sumo” Nation (2001) pointed out in his study that there could be several starting points for semantic mapping. It can involve the recall <strong>of</strong> a previously read story, a recent or current event, a film, a unit <strong>of</strong> study or simply learners’ general knowledge <strong>of</strong> a topic. He also cited Stahl and Vancil’s opinions that the discussion occurring during the building up <strong>of</strong> the semantic map that makes the activity contribute to vocabulary learning and the skill is important in the way that the teacher enters into a dialogue with learners, encourages them and supports their participation in the dialogue. In the present study, vocabulary will be introduced by using semantic mapping. <strong>The</strong> results <strong>of</strong> constructing a semantic map can be seen as the map from the topic Olympics as followed: Feature 6 <strong>Semantic</strong> mapping for the word “Olympics” (from Johnson, Pittelman and Heimlich, 1986) In four semantic elaboration techniques (ordering, semantic feature analysis and pictorial schemata), semantic mapping is commented to be suitable for not only beginning learners but also advanced ones. <strong>The</strong> effectiveness <strong>of</strong> semantic mapping recognized in the previous related study will be discussed in the following section. 5. <strong>The</strong> previous related studies Research on semantic mapping has been extensively conducted. Most <strong>of</strong> the studies focus on using semantic mapping as pre-activities for reading, speaking or writing lessons. <strong>The</strong> subjects <strong>of</strong> these studies are <strong>of</strong>ten intermediate learners. <strong>The</strong> results have shown the significant difference in vocabulary learning. Learners using semantic mapping could organize words systematically and recall word meanings easily. Amer (2002) realized that adult learners are better at remembering words from lists that contain semantically related subsets than words from lists <strong>of</strong> unrelated words. In addition, he found out 637
that if the semantically related words are separated in the lists, adults tend to cluster them in output. Ward and Annita’s study (1998) showed that semantic mapping increased cognitive processing and developed the cognitive structure. <strong>The</strong>y suggested using semantic mapping as a pre-reading or pre-writing stimulus, or as a post-reading check <strong>of</strong> comprehension. <strong>The</strong>y concluded the ultimate goal <strong>of</strong> semantic mapping is to introduce the students to a technique that they could use regularly to organize what they had read, relate this content to what they already know, and expand their store <strong>of</strong> knowledge through reading. Some researchers compared the effectiveness <strong>of</strong> semantic mapping with <strong>of</strong> other techniques. Pikula (1987) compared the effectiveness <strong>of</strong> the two techniques (semantic mapping and dictionary) for 38 students <strong>of</strong> experimental and control groups. In his study, the experiment group developed the network <strong>of</strong> semantic categories using their existing knowledge <strong>of</strong> vocabulary whereas the control group used a dictionary to learn vocabulary. Posttest results at the end <strong>of</strong> the six-week period indicated statistically significant difference between the two groups. <strong>The</strong> experimental group exhibited a great enough gain over the control sample. DeCarrico (2001) also conducted a research on semantic mapping. She made a decision that semantic mapping is an activity that helps bring into consciousness relationships among words in a text and helps deepen understanding by creating associative networks for words. A text is chosen based in the words to be learnt and students are asked to draw a diagram <strong>of</strong> the relationship between particular words found in the text. A variation on this technique, a “vocabulary network” could be designed to help even beginning students learn to make semantic associations within a particular superordinate heading. She concluded that “especially at the beginning levels the teaching <strong>of</strong> words lists through words association techniques has proven to be successful way to learn a large number <strong>of</strong> words in a short period and retain them over time” (p.288-289). In their case studies, Margosein, Pascarella and Pflaum (1982) and Vogt (1983) confirmed that semantic mapping has a greater impact on vocabulary acquisition than does the context clue approach or the traditional dictionary-definition-plus-example approach, because semantic mapping motivates the students to connect their prior knowledge to new words and to see the lexical or conceptual relationships among words. Some other researchers; however, took caution against the danger <strong>of</strong> presenting closely related new words. <strong>The</strong>y suggested that learners should start by learning semantically unrelated words (Tinkham, 1993; Waring, 1997) and also avoid learning words with similar forms (Laufer, 1997). Nevertheless, after examining the research <strong>of</strong> Tinkham and Waring, Liu (?) believed that the research methodology itself quite puzzling. In their research, Tinkham and Waring had their participants learn new words paired with artificial nonsense words (e.g., pear—okess, mouse— kunop) simply by oral repetition. <strong>The</strong>n, they contrasted the trials in which their participants learned semantically related words to the trials in which their participants learned unrelated words. Liu (?) also pointed out that Tinkham and Waring both made an incorrect conclusion that the participants learned more slowly when they were shown words in semantic clusters paired with artificial words. 638
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The Effects of Semantic Mapping on Vocabulary Memorizing

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