Abstract:

The contextual learning was the main approach in adults’ native language learning. Researchers have accumulated extensive experimental evidence. Researchers divided lexical meaning learning into two stages: the first stage was the acquisition of corresponding concept for the novel word and the second one was integrating the meaning of novel words into the existed semantic network. According to relevant studies in terms of the two processing stages, this paper sorted out the role of context, vocabulary and subject factors on adult vocabulary meaning learning. Future research needs to pay more attention to new concept learning and metaphorical meaning learning, and so on.

Key words: lexical meaning learning, contextual learning, conceptual semantic network, taxonomic relation, thematic relation, feature relation