The productive vocabulary of multimodal and unimodal English as a Foreign Language learners

Este estudio investigó el vocabulario productivo de aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera multimodales y unimodales, de acuerdo a sus estilos de aprendizaje. Los objetivos fueron: (1) identificar el vocabulario productivo de los estudiantes multimodales y unimodales; (2) determinar si se encontraron diferencias estadísticamente significativas entre el vocabulario productivo y las preferencias en el aprendizaje (multimodalidad o unimodalidad). La muestra la formaron 24 alumnos multimodales y 46 unimodales, aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera de 2º de Bachillerato. Los instrumentos utilizados fueron el Learning Style Survey (Cohen et al., 2009), para dividir a los alumnos en multimodales y unimodales, y el Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1995, 1999) para medir el vocabulario productivo. A continuación, los datos fueron codificados y sometidos a análisis cuantitativos. Los resultados indicaron que los alumnos multimodales presentaron un mayor vocabulario productivo (1.186 palabras) que los unimodales (948 palabras). La prueba de Wilcoxon mostró que no había diferencias estadísticamente significativas en el vocabulario productivo de los alumnos multimodales y unimodales. Sin embargo, el tamaño del efecto y la fuerza de asociación fueron grandes. Estos resultados sugieren que los aprendices de inglés como lengua extranjera utilizan diferentes modalidades sensoriales para aprender vocabulario.This study investigated the productive vocabulary of EFL learners divided into two groups: multimodal (preference for two or three perceptual learning styles) and unimodal (preference for one perceptual learning style). The objectives of this research were twofold: (1) to identify the productive vocabulary of multimodal and unimodal EFL learners; and (2) to ascertain whether there were statistically significant differences between productive vocabulary and the preferences for learning (multimodality or unimodality). The sample consisted of 60 Spanish EFL learners (24 multimodal and 36 unimodal) in the 12th grade. The data collection instruments were the Learning Style Survey (Cohen et al., 2009) to divide the informants into multimodal and unimodal learners, and the 2,000-word version of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (Laufer & Nation, 1995, 1999) to measure their productive vocabulary. Then, data were coded and subjected to quantitative analyses. The findings indicated that multimodal learners had more productive vocabulary (1,186 words) than their unimodal peers (948 words). However, there were not statistically significant differences between multimodal and unimodal learners in their productive vocabulary. However, both the effect size and the strength of association were large. Therefore, the results suggested that EFL learners employed different sensory modalities to learn vocabulary