ESL Vocabulary Acquisition: Contextualization and Decontextualization

This study explores conflicting views concerning the relative superiority of two approaches to learning a second language (L2) vocabulary: i.e., learning words in context and learning words out of context. The present study endeavoured to explore these two apparently related issues at the same time. It would have been ideal if the present study could have followed the framework of Seibert' s (1930) study, which also explored the two issues. However, Seibert' s paper does not provide sufficient information as to what kind of target words were used in the experiment ( e.g., whether they were associative words or non-associative words). Meanwhile, Anderson and Jordan's (1928) study provided much more detail, which is helpful in designing follow-up studies. The time frame of the Anderson and Jordan (1928) study, therefore, was used as a basis for designing the present study.