Summary -Academic Article -Peter J. M. Groot

During early stages of instructed L2 acquisition, students learn high frequency words. Functional language requires much number of words mastery. It is necessary in later stages to learn larger vocabulary number in short time; there is no time to copy the natural L1 word acquisition process. Incidental word acquisition is possible in some measures because their low frequency number. They rarely appear in the L2 learning material. Acquisition of words from L2 reading texts by means like contextual deduction is not a solution. There is no alternative to intentional learning of many words instantly; the words to be learned may be presented in isolation or in context. Presentation in bilingual word lists seems attractive; it yields excellent results and takes less time than contextual (advisable for long term retention). Suggestions to implement this in pedagogic contexts should be based on an analysis of two L2 words learning problem aspects by selecting the vocabulary and creating conditions for process. This article describes a computer assisted word acquisition programme which tries to operationalize theoretical thinking about word acquisition based on relevant vocabulary. It was contrasted in experimental settings with paired association methods. The results suggest that combining the two methods is advisable.

Total number of Words: 200