predict understanding of a words’ meaning (when understanding is measured by a multiple
choice task). It is the case that the development of a phonological representation at some level
may be the first step before constructing a more fully developed semantic representation.

C. Children's existing vocabulary tended to play a role in the lexical acquisition process,
however, it was not found to be a crucial factor for all the tasks

Experiment 1 demonstrated that children with high vocabulary knowledge performed better
than the children with low vocabulary knowledge but the differences were not significant.
The role of existing vocabulary knowledge as a significant factor for word learning has been
demonstrated by other studies (Elley, 1989; Robbins and Ehri, 1984). The differences
between the results of the present Experiment and the other studies could be explained in two
ways: (a) Word learning in those studies was assessed using a single measurement, a multiple
choice task, while in the present Experiment a variety of tasks were used; (b) The use of the
BPVS test as a measure for tapping the prerequisite vocabulary for word learning may be
inappropriate. Therefore, the results about the role of the existing vocabulary knowledge for
word learning remain inconclusive and need to be further investigated.

D. Children ^,s performance on the word learning tasks differed by the linguistic condition
they were assigned to

There was a differential impact Oflinguistic condition on the measures of acquisition. For
example, children in the lexical contrast condition performed better on the naming task than
children in the other conditions during the delayed post test. Lexical contrast is characterised
by what is called “clearness of referent”. Previous studies have found that in contexts where
the referent for the new word is obvious, children are easily able to connect the referent and
the new word and therefore respond successfully in recognition tasks (Dockrell and
Campbell, 1986). Furthermore, children in the Inference condition performed better on the
sentence generation task than children in the other conditions for both post tests. Thus, the
provision of the specific information in the Inference condition provided the child with the
necessary prerequisites to generate novel sentences.

Additionally, children were found to perform better in those tasks where input and
assessment were matched. Thus, children in the Contrast condition performed better on the
contrast task across testing; children in the Analogy condition performed better on the

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