Running Head: INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING

Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention Success Rates as a Result of Incidental versus Intentional Vocabulary Teaching at a University-level Academic English Program

Literature Review In the field of Second Language Acquisition, vocabulary learning and teaching is certainly a highly debated issue. In the 2004 article Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning, Waring and Nation state that, The notion that we could learn a lot, or most, of our vocabulary through reading is now entrenched within second and foreign language teaching (Waring and Nation, 97). While it is widely agreed upon that learners of English must master a significant amount of new vocabulary in order to be successful within the various components of language input and output (namely reading, writing, listening, and speaking), the debate ensues over which method (or methods) are most effective for comprehension, acquisition, and retention. As a teacher of ELLs in a low-intermediate reading class at the university level, I am primarily interested in how extensive reading can lead to successful vocabulary learning, as well as whether more deliberate methods of teaching vocabulary positively or negatively impact acquisition and retention. As Waring and Nation (2004) posits, studies comparing incidental with intentional learning show that intentional learning is more efficient and effective (Waring and Nation, 106). Laufers 2003 article, Vocabulary acquisition in a second language: Do learners really acquire most vocabulary by reading? Some empirical evidence, introduces the idea of extensive reading being a source of vocabulary acquisition in the L1. This claim is based on research showing that the largest vocabulary growth occurs when children

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING reach literacy (Laufer, 567); in addition, acquiring vocabulary from input [e.g. from extensive reading] is justified: the number of words that people acquire in their L1 is too vast to be accounted for by direct teaching of vocabulary (Laufer, 567-8). While the research behind vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading in the L1 is sound, it must be scrutinized as the most effective method for target language vocabulary acquisition. As Waring and Nation (2004) states, The most basic question is whether learners can learn from reading at all (Waring and Nation, 99). Some researchers do, in fact, promote extensive reading as an effective method of vocabulary learning. Most notably, Stephen Krashen is probably the most famous proponent of the need for reading and especially Sustained Silent Reading, Pleasure Reading, and Extensive Reading (Waring and Nation, 106). Even Waring and Nation (2004) concedes this point a bit, going on to say that, Clearly [English Language Learners] can [learn vocabulary from extensive reading], as the millions of learners who have learned English from text books and natural reading can attest (Waring and Nation, 99). The article emphasizes, however, that from a pedagogical point of view an effective reading programme which has included vocabulary learning as one of its goals, must provide for repeated encounters with the same words over reasonably short time periods (Waring and Nation, 105). Presumably, these conditional requirements for extensive reading programs to be most effective are what led Laufer to attempt to debunk the notion that extensive reading as a mode of implicit vocabulary acquisition is preferable to deliberate explicit vocabulary instruction. She details four assumptions that must be accepted in order to presume extensive reading as effective, then presents critiques of each in order to

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING question the basic claim that second language learners acquire vocabulary through reading (Laufer, 569). For example, the first assumption we must accept about extensive reading as teachers of vocabulary is The Noticing Assumption that on encountering a word, the reader notices it as a word s/he does not know (Laufer, 568). To that, she answers, second language learners will not necessarily recognize unfamiliar words as unfamiliar all learners over-estimate their understanding of words (Laufer, 570). The article details many reasons why extensive reading is not as effective a method of teaching vocabulary as a reading plus condition of teaching; which consist[s] of reading a text and doing a range of vocabulary exercises based on the text (Laufer, 574). Laufers conclusion motivated my hypothesis: she states that, experiments on acquiring vocabulary from reading report very small vocabulary gains from short and long texts. By comparison, reading supplemented with a wordfocused task, or word-focused tasks without reading were shown to be more effective for vocabulary gains (Laufer, 583). This conclusion lends itself well to supporting Waring and Nations (2004) claim that research into vocabulary acquisition and retention, particularly as a result of extensive reading, can assist us in comparisons with data from other vocabulary learning methods to find ways of combining effective methods of teaching and learning (Waring and Nation, 101).

Hypothesis For the purposes of the high-intermediate reading class Im teaching, I believe that teaching new vocabulary through intentional methods, such as the use of mnemonic devices including video clips and pictures or the required vocabulary

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING study cards, will be more effective in terms of vocabulary acquisition and long-term retention, than will be the incidental vocabulary acquisition as a result of the assigned extensive reading.

Methods All participants in the study were current graduate or undergraduate students at INTO CSU, studying in the intensive Academic English program, INTO CSU, before entering a university-level degree-seeking program. The total participants were 16 adult students, five female and 11 male students; two native Chinese speakers, two native Japanese speakers, and 12 native Arabic speakers. These students comprise a highintermediate proficiency level intensive academic reading course, in which they are required to read a short novel in its entirety, as well as participate in active and explicit vocabulary instruction. The class was treated as a single homogenous group, i.e. Highintermediate learners of English in Reading 204, and was given two separate treatments to establish vocabulary learning from intentional and incidental methods. The class was given 10 unknown English vocabulary words (unknown based on an initial pre-test using a vocabulary list at the start of the term), taken from the novel Holes (see Appendix A for a list of the words). The first treatment required students to put away their books, watch a clip of the film that coincided with the chapter theyd read previously for homework, then write a page-long summary of the chapter. The 10 vocabulary words were provided on the screen (without page numbers, part of speech labels, or definitions). Students were told to use as many of the 10 vocabulary words as possible in their chapter summary. Summary writings were graded out of 20 possible

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING points 1 point for using the word in the sentence with grammatical accuracy i.e. correct form of the word for the context. An additional point was awarded for using the word correctly based on meaning. Two points were lost for any word which a student did not include at all in the summary. After students were asked to use the words correctly in their writing, based only on the incidental learning strategy of reading them the night before the treatment was given, the students were given class time to complete the required vocabulary cards. Because vocabulary cards are a required assignment every week of the term for all reading classes, the students were already familiar with that type of assignment. They had to write each word on the front side of the vocabulary card, including its part of speech. On the other side of the vocabulary card they had to write a clear definition of the word taken from a learners dictionary as well as an example sentence to clarify the meaning of the word used. They were able to include a translation of the word in their native language if they wanted to, but this was an optional addition. Once students had done some work to determine the meanings and uses of each of the 10 words, they were able to ask the instructor for clarifying questions. The class then engaged in a discussion about text comprehension related to portions of the novel where the vocabulary was found in context. Finally, students were given a multiple choice vocabulary test, designed to assess their acquisition of the 10 words based on the intentional explicit instruction. They were required to choose the correct part of speech for each word (worth 1 point each), then match each word to the appropriate definition (1 point each) for a total of 20 points.

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING Once I had two sets of data, I then used SPSS to run a one-way ANOVA in order to determine if there was a statistical difference between the two treatments in terms of scores on the summary and the quiz. The study was conducted over a two week period of time. The total time of the study, with time allocated both in class and outside of class, was roughly 9 hours. This includes two full 80-minute class periods, as well as time to gather and research relevant literature, and time to review and analyze the test results, then synthesize them.

Results and Discussion The results of the one-way ANOVA showed that there was a statistical difference between the incidental vocabulary teaching treatment and the intentional vocabulary teaching treatment. This supports the hypothesis, and is in keeping with the ideas and results presented in the relevant literature reviewed. While it can be argued that extensive reading is one effective way to acquire vocabulary, evidence shows that used in isolation it is not the most effective way to learn vocabulary. Extensive reading ought to be used in conjunction with other, explicit vocabulary teaching methods, and in order to be successful as a way to promote vocabulary acquisition, extensive reading must ensure that learners have multiple exposures to new words in order to promote overall retention. This study should inform teaching and materials-development alike, in the sense that multiple methods of intentional vocabulary teaching should be a part of every successful language learning curriculum. When developing curriculum and choosing materials, administrators or teachers should know that students will have different preferred methods of learning vocabulary, but research shows that intentionality has a

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING positive effect on overall vocabulary acquisition, as does the utilization of a combination of teaching methods.

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING References Laufer, B. (2003). Vocabulary acquisition in a second language: Do learners really

acquire most vocabulary by reading? Some empirical evidence. The Canadian Modern language Review/ La Revue canadienne des langues vivantes, 59(4), 567-587.

Waring, R. and Nation, P. (2004). Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning. Angles on the English-speaking World, 4, 97-110.

INTENTIONAL AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING Appendix A: Vocabulary Word List

1. Remained 2. Refuge 3. Considered 4. Convince 5. Swollen 6. Disconnect 7. Revved 8. Leap 9. Collapsed 10. Cautious