Yuhan Zhao

Yuhan Zhao

Exploring the “Word-Making Factory”: Native Speakers vs. Second Language Learners’ “Production Lines”

This study takes you into a “word-making factory” to explore derivations—the process of attaching affixes to a baseword, like adding “modules” to transform it into some related new words. By “producing” multiple words from a single baseword, derivation can expand vocabulary size massively. Past research has mainly examined L2 learners’ ability to recognize derivations in receptive ways, few studies have explored them in writing and speaking. I focus on existing corpora of essays and spoken recording texts from native speakers and L2 learners and analyze each group’s frequency of use, preference of part of speech, and choice of affixes. I consider in future instruction whether teachers should teach vocabulary one word at a time or teach a baseword together with its common derivatives as a unit. The findings will help teachers to improve course design and make learners’ productive knowledge of derivations better.

Yuhan Zhao
MA candidate, Education
Faculty of Education - Western University

Supervisor
Dr. Stuart Webb

Yuhan Zhao is an MA in Education student at Western University, specializing in Applied Linguistics. She has taught both English and German in China, an experience that ignited her passion for second language acquisition. Her current research focuses on corpus-based vocabulary studies, particularly examining how learners from diverse linguistic backgrounds employ derivational morphology. Yuhan aims to translate her corpus-based insights into practical pedagogical materials that empower multilingual learners.

Yuhan's research is highlighted in episode 545 of GradCast, the official podcast of the Society of Graduate Students at Western University.

You can connect with Yuhan on LinkedIn.

View Yuhan's work as it appears in the Inspiring Minds Digital Collection.