RETRACTED ARTICLE: Semantic Priming in the Process of Learning English: Peculiarities of Bilinguals and Monolinguals
Abstract
This paper examines the role of semantic priming in foreign language acquisition (English) among bilinguals and monolinguals. The study aimed to determine how bilinguals acquire English vocabulary when they are proficient in Ukrainian and a language with the Latin alphabet, and how semantic priming influences this process. The bilingual model of interactive activation was tested through an experimental study involving Group 1 (15 monolingual Ukrainian speakers learning English) and Group 2 (15 bilinguals, native speakers of a Latin-alphabet language, also learning English). Participants completed lexical decision and priming tasks to assess the interaction between L1 and L2 in vocabulary acquisition. The results indicate that semantic priming occurs when words from both the target and non-target languages compete for selection and acquisition. Among Ukrainian-speaking participants, L1 influenced semantic association selection, while in bilinguals, typological similarity played a role in English vocabulary acquisition. Overall, the study demonstrates that language-switching effectiveness can be explained by semantic priming, which creates associative links in the mind. Additionally, the findings suggest that interference between L1 and L2 is minimized when the received language input is partially predictable (e.g., when both languages share the same alphabet), allowing direct access to target language representations and easier assimilation.
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Copyright (c) 2025 Svitlana Romanchuk, Nataliia Yuhan, Alina Chernyakova, Mykhailo Torchynskyi, Anatolii Vysotskyi
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