Hiërarchische Relaties en Woordenschatonderwijs

It is generally acknowledged, that in vocabulary learning and teaching, the main important factors are frequency, meaningful context, and variation in input. Within the last factor, some researchers stress the importance of hierarchical relations between words (paradigmatic relations as in animal - bird - craw), considering these relations essential for network building and vocabulary learning by children. Others believe they are just as important as associative (syntagmatic) relations between words. The findings of the research reported in this article (a curriculum intervention study) show that treatment with explicitly learned hierarchical relations (e.g., by visualisations of relations between words in a tree diagram) have the same effect on vocabulary learning as exercises focussed on associative, syntagmatic relations only.