Teaching German Vocabulary: The Use of English Cognates and Common Loan Words

Increasing native English vocabulary recognition through Spanish immersion: Cognate transfer from foreign to first language.

“…We have no way of knowing from our data whether or not the immersion teachers focused students' attention on the similarities of certain Spanish words to their English cognates, nor what effects such a focus might have had on their recognition of those English words. As mentioned earlier, previous studies by Banta (1981) and Treville (1993) have found a positive effect of direct instruction on cognate recognition from the LI to the L2. Given the great number of cognates and loan words in English from Spanish and other languages, it would seem that the issue of crosslinguistic influence and how it could be enhanced by direct instruction would be an issue of great interest to language educators.…”

“…The ability of learners to benefit from semantic/lexical similarities across languages appears to increase with age through childhood (Hancin-Bhatt & Nagy, 1994). Also, a conscious focusing of learners' attention on the similarities of lexical items and morphology across languages appears to increase learners' benefit from cognate relationships (Banta, 1981; Treville, 1993).…”

Cross-lingual transfer effects between English and Italian cognates and noncognates

“…Instead, the second language learner can master the new term by reference to its cognate, using either a general or a unique rule to form the new word out of its old and familiar first language counterpart. Evidence that mastery of second language terms is easier for cognates than for noncognates is consistent with this hypothesis (Banta, 1981). According to this point of view, then, asymmetric transfer will be the rule rather than the exception, where the direction of asymmetry is determined by the order in which the two languages or, more narrowly, surface forms, are mastered.…”

Bilingualism in the Classroom: Using Latin as an Aid to the Learning of Modern Italian

“…Some learners find it difficult to take advantage of cognates, even if they are obvious; teachers prefer to draw learners' attention to 'false friends' rather than cognates, resulting in an 'innate suspicion of cognates on the part of the learner' (Otwinowska, 2016, p. 91). Studies repeatedly show that learners either ignore cognates, or do not notice them in the first place, including those conducted by Banta (1981), Dressler et al (2011), Kellerman (1983), Lightbown and Libben (1984), Nagy et al (1993), Odlin (1989), Otwinowska-Kasztelanic (2009, 2011a, Schmitt (1997), Singleton (2006) and Swan (1997). Odlin concludes that 'more and more research on contrastive lexical semantics shows that recognition of cognates is often a problem.…”