Incidental vs. intentional vocabulary acquisition : an investigation on input enhancement and word-focused tasks

Abstract

Learning vocabulary has been one of the challenging topics in second language acquisition and the best means of achieving good vocabulary learning is still unclear. Reading has been considered an effective way for vocabulary learning. There have been major influential views on the learning of L2 vocabulary through reading. One approach promotes incidental vocabulary acquisition and claims that reading is the best and only way for vocabulary learning. Another approach suggests that input enhancement leads noticing and when learners notice the unknown words, they learn better. The third approach promotes explicit learning through vocabulary activities. The present study was designed to investigate the roles and effectiveness of enhancement and word-focused activities in the vocabulary learning through reading. Specifically the study investigated whether typographical input enhancement and word focused tasks are favorable as compared to input only when reading for comprehension. Theparticipants were 150 first year students studying at Anadolu University Education Faculty English Language Teaching Department. They were given a vocabulary checklist before the treatments to make it sure that all participants were unfamiliar withthe target words. The participants were randomly selected to be WFT, IE and IO groups. All groups read one text each week during eight weeks. Each text contained one target word which appeared six times. IO group read the text and answered comprehension questions, IE group read the texts in which target words were underlined. WFT group read the texts answered the comprehension questions and they completed the vocabulary activities. All groups answered the form-recognition and meaning recognition tests as the last step of the process. On the ninth week, the participants were given the vocabulary checklist, which was given to them at the beginning of the study but this time for the purpose of form-recognition test to investigate whether they are familiar with the target words after treatm ents. Second, on the tenth week they were given the meaning-recognition tests with the purpose of checking whether they can recognize the meaning of the target words. First frequencies and percentages of the participants’ answers to the form–recognition and meaning-recognition tests were calculated for each group. Then means were calculated for each word in order to find whether there are statistically significant differences among the groupsin the form-recognition tests and meaning-recognition tests. The data was then submitted to one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) to analyze the target word scores across the three groups for each target word. Later, a Tukey multiple comparisons test was performed to further analyze the target word form- recognition and meaning-recognition among three groups. The analyses showed that all of the treatments have an effect on learner scores and results when learning an unknown word. One of the aims of the study was to explore which way ? reading only, input enhancement and word-focused tasks ? would promote word learning when learners read an L2 text for comprehension. Participants who carried out word-focused tasks outperformed the other two groups in the number of words recognized both in the form and meaning. Completing vocabulary activities appeared to have contributed to WFT group’s significantly better performance than IE and IO groups on form-recognition and meaning-recognition tests. Completing a variety of vocabulary exercises seemed to have tapped different levels of processing capabilities such as recognition and interpretation. WFT group completed a variety of exercises during the instructional period so; they had more opportunities to consciously go through an elaborated mental processing of these words. The post-test comparisons among groups showed that Word Focused Tasks group can best recall the target words. However, immediate and delayed post-test comparison results showed that Input Enhancement and Word Focused Tasks group scores were similar and no group recalled the target words. This result showed that although the initial learning was largely maintained throughout the study, completing vocabulary tasks did not end with the capacity to develop new, long-term phonological representations. Then for the new information to go from working memory to long-term memory, completing vocabulary exercises after reading for comprehension did not prove to be effective. It was concluded that in order to make it effective and to activate operations of sending information from working memory to long term memory, learning needs to be recycled. Taking the grammatical form of target words intoaccount, the study concluded that there is not a significant difference in the results when the target word is a noun or a verb. This showed that the grammatical form of the target word does not play an important role in the word learning, what is more important than grammatical form of the target word is whether to read just for comprehension or read the texts with input enhancement or complete vocabulary activities after reading.