Does Deeper Involvement in Lexical Input Processing during Reading Tasks Lead to Enhanced Incidental Vocabulary Gain?

This paper investigates whether increased learner involvement in search tasks during reading activities results in differential vocabulary acquisition in an incidental setting in line with Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis. We designed and conducted an experiment with two groups of advanced Greek learners of English, an online dictionary-search group (Group 1) and a non-search group (Group 2) with the aim to test whether increased learner involvement in search tasks results in differential vocabulary retention. During a reading activity, participants of Group 1 were asked to find the meanings of 10 target words involved in the reading activity by using the online Google-dictionary and also find and write down a sentence relevant to the meaning of each target word. These two tasks were designed with the aim to activate the involvement factor “search” in line with Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) three-factor Involvement Load construct. During the same reading activity, participants in Group 2 were simply given the meanings of the 10 target items on a separate sheet of paper (glossary). The experiment was conducted in two stages with one week’s distance between them involving an immediate and a delayed vocabulary test aimed to assess short-term and long-term vocabulary retention respectively. The results of our study support the increased learner involvement hypothesis, as the dictionary-search group outperformed the non-search group in both tests

The Effect of Content Retelling on Vocabulary Uptake from a TED Talk

This study investigates the potential benefits for incidental vocabulary acquisition of implementing a particular sequence of input-output-input activities. More specifically, EFL learners (n = 32) were asked to watch a TED Talks video, orally sum up its content in English, and then watch the video once more. A comparison group (n = 32) also watched the TED Talks video twice but were not required to sum it up in between. Immediate and delayed post-tests showed significantly better word-meaning recall in the former condition. An analysis of the oral summaries showed that it was especially words which learners attempted to use that stood a good chance of being recalled later. These findings are interpreted with reference to Swain’s (e.g., 1995) Output Hypothesis, Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, and Nation and Webb’s (2011) Technique Feature Analysis. What makes the text-based output task in this experiment fundamentally different from many previous studies which have investigated the merits of text-based output activities is that it was at no point stipulated for the participants that they should use particular words from the input text. The study also illustrates the potential of TED Talks as a source of authentic audio-visual input in EFL classrooms

Traces to Entrenchment: A Mixed Methods Study Examining the Use of Reading and Writing to Facilitate Lexical Sequence Acquisition Among Bilingual Learners and Factors Influencing Their Language Learning

Informed by entrenchment and usage-based theories, this mixed methods study, modeled after Riazi\u27s mixed methods fully integrated design, examined how reading and writing may be used to facilitate lexical sequence acquisition for high school bilingual learners. The study compared the efficacy of two interventions on increasing the depth of knowledge of lexical sequences: a reading intervention requiring the reading of short informational texts embedded with eight target lexical sequences and a writing intervention requiring participants to follow the readings with the intentional use of target sequences in writing. A repeated measures factorial ANOVA found no impact of gender or first language on results; both groups made statistically significant gains on depth of knowledge during both interventions with large effect sizes, and they retained gains three to four weeks later. However, reading was found to be more impactful for one group, whereas reading and writing was found to be more impactful for the second group. Subsequent analyses of written responses by participants coupled with a repeated measures ANOVA measuring the acquisition of individual sequences demonstrated that participants were more likely to acquire and use some lexical sequences than others. Data from semi-structured interviews from 12 participants were analyzed through the lens of Anthias’ multilevel model of intersectionality to determine factors influencing intervention results as well as English learning generally. Results of this qualitative strand revealed that the requirement to read twice weekly led reading to become a habit for some participants, that text interest impacted some participants’ motivation to comprehend the text, and that interlinear glossing (providing synonyms above target sequences) was helpful for reading comprehension. Gender and L1 were found to influence learning through the long-lasting impact of bullying, which often led females and those with perceived accents to refrain from speaking English even years after bullying occurred. Other salient findings suggest that the employment of high school students may be underreported and that implicit teacher bias may impact the schooling of some bilingual learners. One LGBTQ bilingual learner narrative provided a positive example of empowerment despite the bullying of others. Several recommendations for research, policy, and teaching practices are discussed

Does Adding Pictures to Glosses Enhance Vocabulary Uptake from Reading?

This article reports three trials of a pen-and-paper experiment where adult L2 learners’ recollection of glossed words was tested after they had read a text with or without pictures included in the glosses. Unlike previous studies in which a superiority of multimodal glosses over text-only glosses was claimed, the experiment furnished no evidence that the addition of pictures helped the learners to retain the glossed words’ form-meaning association any better than providing glosses containing only verbal explanations. When learners were prompted to recall of the written form of the words, the gloss condition without pictures in fact led to the better performance. The results suggest that the provision of pictures alongside textual information to elucidate the meaning of novel words may reduce the amount of attention that L2 readers give to the form of these words

Pushed-output instruction for vocabulary learning: Exploring differences in learning gains and lexical profiling

Previous research has shown that vocabulary can be learned through pushed-output activities. However, the few previous studies on the topic have mainly focused on the acquisition of nouns. Little is known about the acquisition of other parts of speech or about other components of lexical mastery achieved through pushed-output activities. This thesis examines the effectiveness of spoken pushed-output instruction on learning the multiple meaning senses of single-word verbs and phrasal verbs by presenting two classroom intervention studies. Study 1 explored differences between the effectiveness of spoken pushed-output and traditional vocabulary-focused instructions for learning polysemous single-word verbs and phrasal verbs. A between-subjects design was used, which included three conditions: no instruction, traditional vocabulary instruction and spoken pushed-output instruction. Both receptive and productive knowledge were investigated. The data were analysed using two approaches: (1) examining the receptive and productive vocabulary gains after instruction and (2) looking beyond the vocabulary gains by examining the lexical profile of the spoken production after instruction (i.e., overall text length, mean length of utterances, lexical diversity, lexical density and lexical sophistication). The findings indicated that with spoken pushed-output instruction, learners significantly improved not only in learning the multiple meaning senses of the target items but also in producing these meaning senses more fluently in longer, more lexically diverse, lexically denser and lexically sophisticated stretches of language. The results also indicated that single-word verbs could be learned at a similar rate to that of phrasal verbs. The results also showed that, except for the receptive gains of the first meaning sense, which had an advantage over the other meaning senses, no other differences among the three meaning senses emerged. This study demonstrated the advantage of spoken pushed-output instruction, justifying its use in the classroom. However, there are many different types of spoken pushed-output activities that may be implemented, making it logical to ask which are the most effective. Study 2 explored the effects of three different spoken pushed-output activities on learning polysemous single-word verbs and phrasal verbs: sentence reconstruction, listen-and-retell meaning, and picture description. The results indicated that all three activities resulted in similar recall scores but differed in their effectiveness for meaning recognition. The sentence reconstruction activity was found to be the most effective activity at the recognition level (as shown by the scores of the receptive test). The results also indicated that under similar instruction conditions, phrasal verbs are likely to be learned receptively and productively at a similar rate to single-word verbs. The results also showed that the first meaning sense was more easily recognised; however, no differences emerged neither in the recall scores nor in the mean length of utterances scores. Overall, the findings presented in the thesis support the use of spoken pushed-output instruction in the classroom for teaching single words and formulaic sequences. Further, the findings support the idea that, if the type and amount of instruction are controlled to be the same for single-word verbs and phrasal verbs, the learnability of these two types of items may be the same. While the findings cannot be easily generalised to other types of formulaic sequences, they do encourage further research on the teaching of formulaic sequences

Vexique: Vocabulary enhancement software for French immersion students

This dissertation developed and tested online writing analytics software, Vexique, designed to improve French immersion (FI) high school students’ lexical richness by promoting use of alternative vocabulary in phrasing an essay. Vexique’s features were grounded in the Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis for second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition, whereby giving more attention to processing lexical information encourages vocabulary acquisition and retention in L2. Forty-five Grade 12 FI students participated. Students wrote two argumentative essays. Vexique provided quantified feedback of vocabulary and usage on the first essay that afforded making lexical improvements prior to submission. To test effects of the software’s analytics, students wrote a second essay without feedback. Lexical richness increased after learners received prompts about their first essay. Results showed statistically detectable benefits to lexical richness indicated by lexical density and diversity. Results also indicated no statistically detectable difference in repetitive content words in the second essay

How well does teacher talk support incidental vocabulary acquisition?

Opportunities for incidental vocabulary acquisition were explored in a 121,000-word corpus of teacher talk addressed to advanced adult learners of English as a second language (ESL) in a communicatively-oriented conversation class. In contrast to previous studies that relied on short excerpts, the corpus contained all of the teacher speech the learners were exposed to during a 9-week session. Lexical frequency profiling indicated that with knowledge of 4,000 frequent words, learners would be able to understand 98% of the tokens in the input. The speech contained hundreds of words likely to have been unfamiliar to the learners, but far fewer were recycled the numbers of times research shows are needed for lasting retention. The study concludes that attending to teacher speech is an inefficient method for acquiring knowledge of the many frequent words learners need to know, especially since many words used frequently in writing are unlikely to be encountered at all