TIP-OF-THE-TONGUE STATES WITH FOREIGN LANGUAGE WORDS: RESOLUTION TYPES AND WORD STRATEGIES
Abstract
This article analyzes the resolution types of tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) states with foreign/second language (FL) words. lt attempts to describe some of the search passes, strategies, and cues that are used by learners to overcome temporary word retrieval failures. More than a hundred TOT states were recorded in cognitive diaries by Russian and Mexican learners of English and by English speaking learners of German over periods of four weeks. The subjects reported to have resolved the TOT states through use of references (46% of the time), directed search (22.6% of the time), environmental cues (17.0% of the time), and spontaneous "pop-up" resolutions (12.3% of the time). The diary reports demonstrate that learners frequently recalled and manipulated fragmentary information about the target word and word associates. The latter were mostly intralingual associations (of the FL) that shared sound similarity or meaning similarity with the target word. Differences in the frequency of resolution types and strategy use between the subject groups are suggested to be due to the variation in typological distance between L l and FL and the kind of FL instruction that learners received.
How to Cite
Ecke, P., (1999) “TIP-OF-THE-TONGUE STATES WITH FOREIGN LANGUAGE WORDS: RESOLUTION TYPES AND WORD STRATEGIES”, Journal of Second Language Acquisition and Teaching 7, 55-69.
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