Characteristics of vocabulary lists as well as study and test translation direction may affect the ease of learning second language (L2) vocabulary. We examined immediate and delayed test performance of first language (L1) English speakers learning a fixed set of L2 vocabulary placed on lists formed by crossing semantic relatedness (unrelated vs. related) with L2 orthographic form similarity (not similar vs. similar). During the study phase, half the participants translated from L2 to L1 and half from L1 to L2; tests were then taken in both directions. Semantic relatedness in the absence of form similarity improved accuracy when the first test taken translated from L2 to L1, and tended to hurt accuracy when the first test taken translated from L1 to L2; it sometimes increased confusion errors. Form similarity usually hurt accuracy and always increased confusion errors. The combination of the L1-to-L2 study direction with the optimal semantic and form conditions yielded the best long-term performance.

中文翻译：

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第二语言词汇习得：语义相关性、形式相似性和翻译方向的影响

词汇表的特征以及学习和测试翻译方向可能会影响学习第二语言（L2）词汇的难易程度。我们检查了第一语言 (L1) 英语使用者的即时和延迟测试性能，他们学习一组固定的 L2 词汇，这些词汇位于通过将语义相关性（不相关与相关）与 L2 拼写形式相似性（不相似与相似）交叉而形成的列表中。在研究阶段，一半的参与者从 L2 翻译到 L1，一半从 L1 翻译到 L2；然后在两个方向上进行了测试。在没有形式相似性的情况下，语义相关性提高了第一次测试从 L2 翻译到 L1 时的准确性，而当第一个测试从 L1 翻译到 L2 时，往往会损害准确性；它有时会增加混淆错误。形式相似性通常会损害准确性并总是增加混淆错误。L1-to-L2 学习方向与最佳语义和形式条件的结合产生了最佳的长期性能。