An eye-tracking study on the impact of pictures on English collocation learning in young EFL learners

초록

Despite considerable interest in the role of pictures in learning lexical items, research findingsremain inconclusive. Building on this line of inquiry, the present study employed eye-trackingtechnology to examine the impact of pictures on visual attention and learning novel Englishcollocations. Additionally, the study investigated the relationship between collocation learning andphonological working memory, both in the presence and absence of pictures. The participants were82 Korean sixth graders learning English as a foreign language, divided into two groups: baselineand picture. The baseline group learned target English collocations (N = 12) with their Koreantranslations, while the picture group learned the same collocations using both Korean translationsand corresponding pictures. The two groups then completed two measures of collocationacquisition: recall and translation tests. The results indicated that pictures significantly divertedvisual attention away from target linguistic items but facilitated learning of novel collocations. Correlational analyses showed a significant relationship between memory span and collocationlearning, independent of the presence or absence of pictures. As the first study to employ eye tracking technology to examine both visual attention and collocation learning in relation to pictures,these findings contribute significantly to the current L2 literature.

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