Understanding Cognate Words in a First Contact With English

Bibliographic Data

ID21430752
AuthorsPâmela Freitas Pereira Toassi (0000-0003-3273-639X, Universidade Federal do Ceará), Silvia Hedine de Albuquerque Pereira (Universidade Federal do Ceará)
Year2020
Issue35
Pages27
Publication date2020-01-19
Open AccessYes
TypeARTICLE
VenueCaderno de Letras (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0102-9576 • E-ISSN: 2358-1409
PublisherUniversidade Federal de Pelotas (PUBLISHER)
DOI10.15210/cdl.v0i35.17604
OpenAlexW3009996856
LanguageEN
Citations received2
References cited13

In the present study the cognate facilitation effect was investigated by means of a translation task applied to ten participants (mean age of 44 years old) who had never taken an English course and who were skeptical about being able to learn the language. The task consisted of the translation of 40 non identical cognate words from English to Portuguese. By means of this task, we could infer if the cognate words could be understood in a first contact with English. The results were positive: more than 50% of the words presented to these participants were correctly translated into Portuguese. In addition, the present study showed that cognate words work as a motivational factor to make people inspired to learn a second language, in this case English, as reported by all of the participants of who took part in the present study. Furthermore, the findings of the present study are aligned with the literature, favoring the view that cognate words are easily recognized. This data has implications for the teaching and learning of English in the Brazilian context.Keywords: Cognates; L2 vocabulary; bilingualism

Cognate · Context (archaeology) · Facilitation · Linguistics · Portuguese · Second language · Task (project management) · Vocabulary · History · Psychology · Second Language Acquisition and Learning

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