Lexical Learning and Reading in L2 at the Beginner Level: The Advantage of Cognates

Adult second language learners at the college or university level possess well-developed cognitive faculties in addition to a first language (Ll) system that is fully integrated in their mental structure. Over the years, second language (L2) teaching, submitting to the dogmas of successive approaches, has not always made good use of these assets, and has sometimes even excluded them. At the present time, when the focus of educators is on individual learners and their pragmatic goals, it appears appropriate to search for ways of facilitating L2 learning and, more specifically, of facilitating genuine language use such as reading, right from the start. With this goal in mind, the early exploitation of the numerous lexical similarities between L1 and L2 in the case of English and French appears to be a key means of facilitating language learning. Cognates, or words common to both languages, represent a point of departure for developing knowledge about the morphology and semantics of words and their syntactic and discursive functions, as well as a practical command of reading vocabulary. Without explicit guidance, it seems that learners do not necessarily recognize and take advantage of cognate relationships between the L1 and L2 (Harley, Hart, Lightbown & Libben, 1984). The classroom experiment described in this chapter examines the merits of an initial focus on French/English cognates as a means of expanding the vocabulary of beginning-level French L2 learners in a university context.