Lexical retrieval stages of momentarily inaccessible foreign language words1

Abstract

The acquisition of foreign language (FL) vocabulary involves two aspects: (1) learning to recognize a word’s meaning, and (2) becoming able to retrieve or produce the word’s form in speech production. The second aspect usually takes more time and practice to be developed. While learners may have no problem understanding a FL word’s meaning, they frequently are unable to recall the word when necessary. Probably the most frustrating form of word retrieval failures is the so-called tip-of-the-tongue (TOT) phenomenon: Sometimes we look for a certain word or phrase which we feel we know but at the time cannot find and articulate it.