The Impact Of Cross-Linguistic Orthographic Similarity In Different Learning Contexts: Incidental Vs Intentional Learning

Some foreign language words are much easier to learn than others. This can be due to a variety of factors such as concreteness and word type. Cross-linguistic orthographic similarity, whether the combination and position of letters within words conform to native language spelling rules, also plays an important role. Very little is known however, about the effect of cross-linguistic orthographic similarity in different learning contexts. The current research therefore examines this with participants learning Welsh (Study 1) and Polish (Study 2) words through incidental and intentional learning tasks before completing meaning recall and translation recognition tasks. Cross-linguistic orthographic similarity was measured using the comparative judgement approach. Using mixed-effects models, both studies revealed robust effects of both cross-linguistic orthographic similarity and learning contexts. Crucially, the data showed very little learning for cross-linguistically dissimilar items especially in the incidental learning context with implications for teaching and learning.