Al-Khawaldeh Nisreen Naji, Olimat Sameer Naser, Mahadin Dana Khalid, Mashaqba Bassil Mohammad, Al Huneety Anas Ibraheem
Department of English Language and Literature, Faculty of Arts, The Hashemite University, P.O. Box 330127, Zarqa, 13133, Jordan.
English Language Department, Salt Faculty of Human Sciences, Al-Balqa Applied University, P. O. Box 206, Al-Salt, 19117, Jordan.
Ampersand (Oxford). 2023;10:100119. doi: 10.1016/j.amper.2023.100119. Epub 2023 Apr 15.
COVID-19 pandemic is an unprecedented crisis worldwide posing many linguistic challenges including understanding and learning new related terminology. This study explores the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic and its terminology learning strategies on EFL learners' vocabulary acquisition, particularly in Jordan. A triangulated approach was employed for collecting data including interviews, tests and a questionnaire distributed to 100 EFL learners at a Jordanian university. The qualitative and quantitative analysis of the data showed a positive influence of the COVID-19 pandemic and its terminology strategies on EFL learners' knowledge of vocabulary. It also revealed that the participants were "medium" users of cognitive, determination, and social strategies and "high" users of metacognitive and memory vocabulary learning strategies for acquiring COVID-19 associated terminology. The analysis of the tests demonstrated that the COVID-19 and its Vocabulary Language Strategies (VLSs) have a significant positive impact on students' vocabulary knowledge size. Thus, it verified the effectiveness of the reported strategies for acquiring COVID-19 terminology. The learners' vocabulary repertoire has been enriched with new COVID-19 related vocabulary such as quarantine, lockdown, incubation, pandemic, contagious, outbreak, epidemic, pathology, infectious, asymptomatic, covidiot, pneumonia, anorexia, etc. The findings highlighted the importance of employing efficient strategies for investing newly emerging contexts to cultivate learners' vocabulary repertoire. This study contributes to the area of language acquisition through extensive illustrations of COVID-19 associated lexicon and the intensified-in use associated vocabulary learning strategies. The study concludes with some pedagogical implications and recommendations for further research.
新冠疫情是一场前所未有的全球危机，带来了诸多语言方面的挑战，包括理解和学习新的相关术语。本研究探讨了新冠疫情及其术语学习策略对英语外语学习者词汇习得的影响，特别是在约旦的情况。采用了一种三角测量法来收集数据，包括访谈、测试以及向约旦一所大学的100名英语外语学习者发放问卷。对数据的定性和定量分析表明，新冠疫情及其术语策略对英语外语学习者的词汇知识有积极影响。研究还发现，参与者在获取新冠相关术语时，认知、决心和社交策略的使用程度为“中等”，元认知和记忆词汇学习策略的使用程度为“高”。对测试的分析表明，新冠疫情及其词汇语言策略（VLSs）对学生的词汇知识量有显著的积极影响。因此，验证了所报告的获取新冠术语策略的有效性。学习者的词汇库因新的新冠相关词汇而得到丰富，如隔离、封锁、潜伏期、大流行、传染性的、爆发、流行病、病理学、传染性的、无症状的、新冠白痴、肺炎、厌食症等。研究结果强调了采用有效策略利用新出现的语境来培养学习者词汇库的重要性。本研究通过对新冠相关词汇的广泛举例以及强化使用相关词汇学习策略，为语言习得领域做出了贡献。研究最后提出了一些教学启示和进一步研究的建议。
