Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Listeningd language incidental vocabulary acquisition has focused on how such learning ours during interactions with written texts or discourse, i. e., how such learning ours in reading (e. g., Hirsh & Nation 1992; Laufer 1997). Considerably less work has looked at incidental vocabulary acquisition through listening. Nevertheless, many L2 learners, like L1 learners, rely on aural input as the primary source of information about the target language. Through listening they learn to identify the forms and meanings of new words, which they then remee to use the first briefly reviews studies in incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening to stories in L1, and then reports studies that investigated incidental vocabulary acquisition from L2 listening.
Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition from Listening to Stories in L1
There is so children can pick up their L1 vocabulary as they are being read to (e. g., Elley, 1989; Fondas, 1992; Penno, Wilkinson, & Moore, 2002).
In New Zealand, two studies by Elley (1989) investigated the effects on vocabulary acquisition of reading a storybook to some 7-8-year-old pupils. In the first study, twenty target words were selected from a book thought by the researcher to be unfamiliar to students of this age group. A e pre-test was given to the students prior to the treaten picture vocabulary items where the teacher read aloud the target word and asked the students to select which of the four pictures best wenty words were pre-tested using word synonyreathe story read aloud three times over the course of one week. Results indicated a mean increase of % overall with children scoring higher on test than on the pre-test.
In his second experiment, Elley (1989) sought further confiral learning measured in the first experiment. In addition, this study considered permanence of learning and introduced teacher explanation of vocabulary as a treatment variable. The experiment followed a pre-test/posttest design to pare the effects of reading two stories aloud, with and without explanation of the target words. As in the first experihe stories read three times over the course of one week. Three months after the reading of the stories, a delayed posttest was given without warning to the students. Analysis for the story read without teacher explanation was nearly identical to the findings in the first experiment. The mean gain in vocabulary was %. However, for the group of students who heard an explanation of the vocabulary, the overall gain was %. The results of the delayed posttests of the target words revealed a decline of only 2-3%, which the researcher considered negligible. In an attempt to study word-related variables that affect vocabulary gain, he found the most readily learned words were those with a helpful surrounding context, urrence, and illustrated by pictures. Elley thus concluded that “stories read aloud in this way appear to offer a potential source for ready vocabulary acquisition... [and] repeated exposure and helpful context are significant factors in vocabulary acquisition” ().
Brett, Rothlein & Hurley (1996) exahe effects of 3 listening conditions (story only, story with word explanation, and no story) on 175 fourth-graders and found that the story-with-word-explanation group tly more progress in vocabulary from the pre-tests to the posttests than the story-only group and the no-story control group. Unlike Elley's studies, the students in this study heard the stories only once, but “the findings indicated that repeated readings of the same story are not necessary for vocabulary acquisition if new words are explained as they are encountered in the story” ().
Penno, Wilkinson & Moore (2002) evaluated the effects of repeated exposure to a story and the additive effects of target word meaning explanation on children's vocabulary acquisition. Two stories were read to forty-seven 5-6-year-old children on three oasions, each one week apart. One story was read with explanations of the target words, but the other was read without explanations. Two abulary tests were given to ensure that no children already knew the target words in the study. All the children were asked to individually retell the story to the exaelling was audiotaped for later transcription and coding. The sae test was given to the children at the beginning and the end of the study (week 1 and week 9) as well as the interval of the two stories (week 5). Results showed both of the factors under study (repeated exposure and explanation) contributed significantly to vocabulary growth. The children who received explanations scored significantly higher on the abulary test than those who did not. A single exposure to the story resulted in words being learned, and the second and third readings to them resulted in children being able to use words with increasing auracy in the retelling task, suggesting a anding of the word meaning.
These studies point out some factors that encourage incidental vocabulary acquisition for children listening to stories in L1, namely repetition of the story and explanation of the target words. As noted by Nation (2001), there are several conditions that make learning vocabulary from listening to stories more likely:
1. interest in the content of the story;
2. prehension of the story;
3. understanding of the unknown words and retrieval of the rongly established;
4. decontextualization of the target words;
5. thoughtful generative processing of the target vocabulary. ()
The preceding review suggests that listening to stories being read has the potential to be a tributor to growth in children's L1 word banks because it is a cohe classroom of pris are derived by children when teachers read stories aloud to thes are increased listening skills, reading prehension, and vocabulary gains. However, the research in this area has mainly focused on children, i. e., the beginning stages of first language vocabulary learning. Since vocabulary learning does not necessarily our in similar ways at different stages of proficiency (Meara, 1984), the vocabulary acquisition of t students deserves further exploring.
Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through L2 Listening prehension