Abstract

The purpose of this study was to examine how multilinguals incidentally acquire novel words with lexical cues given in their first language (L1) and second language (L2). This study was conducted by obtaining quantitative data from a post-test. The population of this study were 252 Chinese multilingual Malaysian university students whose L1 is Mandarin. The L2 of participants are English in which they have undergone formal English education since primary school. The findings form the post-test results indicates that participants acquire novel words in L2 better when accompanied with lexical cues in their L1 as compared to cues in their L2. The L2 proficiency of participants did not show any significant effect when it comes to incidental acquisition in both L1 and L2 conditions. The use of L1 cues leads to higher incidental vocabulary acquisition despite the differences in L2 proficiency of participants compared to L2 cues. This study makes two contributions to research in language acquisition: Methodologically, this research aims to look into alternative vocabulary acquisition strategies namely the use of L1. Empirically, this study sheds light on how multilinguals incidentally acquire vocabulary when given cues in L1 and L2 with implications for future research and classroom practice.