Software-based personal vocabulary development and organization

The Personalized Vocabulary Organizer (PVO), a link-based learning system, helps L2 learners organize and recall their foreign vocabulary. PVO employs an association mechanism that lets learners build up their own lexical network by linking words semantically. Subsequent vocabulary recalls are achieved via activating and stabilizing a relevant network section based on associative keywords supplied by learners. Three experiments were conducted to justify the development of PVO. In Experiment 1, L2 learners achieved a mean consistency of 82% in word associations, suggesting sufficiently stable performances. In Experiment 2, L2 speakers learned advanced English words over a period of time and relied on PVO to recall them. PVO was found significantly more effective in helping L2 learners recall words than free recalls with conventional dictionaries (mean success rates of recall were 93.4% and 27.2%, respectively). In Experiment 3, investigating learners’ feedback effectiveness, the mean percentage of post-feedback improved cases was 82%.