Apart from positive findings with L1 children, research with L2 learners has also provided evidence of incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening (e. g., Vidal, 2003; Brown, Waring, & Donkaewbua, 2008).
Vidal's (2003) study involved 122 Spanish first-year university students to explore the effects of EFL proficiency and lecture prehension on vocabulary acquisition. The participants were pre-tested on their knowledge of the target words, and were presented with a series of three 15-minute videotaped acadetures with sos. The participants were tested on their knowledge of the target words immediately after the lectures and were tested again one month later for their retention of the same vocabulary items. Each target word was measured on a modified version of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) originally designed by Paribakht & Wesche (1997). The of time (i. e., before listening, immediately after listening, and one month after listening) was found to be statistically significant, and the interaction effect between lecture listening and proficiency was also found to be statistically significant. Vidal thus concluded that listening to acadetures can be a source of EFL vocabulary acquisition. The findings of her study also indicated that the students with a higher level of English proficiency acquired more vocabulary knowledge. Moreover, the study showed that some words were retained over a period of one month.
Smidt & Hegelheiigated the effects of online lectures on vocabulary acquisition of 24 university ESL learners in USA. The participants pleted a pre-test, a post-test and a delayed post-test on vocabulary, and a puter-assisted language learning (CALL) activity including an acadeture. The three vocabulary tests were constructed using 20 of the most difficult vocabulary iteture. The CALL task consisted of three cos, an authentic acadeture, ten oions, and aess to an online dictionary. The CALL activity was adhe day after the vocabulary pre-test, and the vocabulary post-test and delayed post-test were separately conducted two weeks and four weeks after the pre-test. Results showed a statistically significant difference between the pre-test and the post-test, and between the pre-test and the delay post-test, while the decrease of the mean vocabulary retention from the post-test to the delayed post-test was not statistically significant. The research suggested that incidental vocabulary acquisition ourred through the use of authentic online videos of acadetures in the CALL activity.
Brown, Waring & Donkaewbua (2008) examined vocabulary acquisition of 35 pre-intere-level students of English in a private Japanese university, who were divided by various conditions into a reading-only group, a reading-while-listening group, and a listening-only group. Three 5, 500-word-long graded groups of readers were employed with a total of 28 substitute words embedded within each reading text. Full texts of all the three stories were printed with short written story introductions and delivered to the participants in the reading-only and reading-while-listening groups. However, only the story introductions were given to the listening-only group, with full stories read and recorded at a mean speech rate of 93 words per he reading and listening activities took place during three regular classes at intervals of two weeks. Two tests, a and a e test, were given to assess various levels of word knowledge. These tests were administered immediately after the story reading or listening, and, to exaion of word knowledge, the same tests with a different item order were delivered again one week after and three months after the treatments.
Results of the ie test indicated some impressive vocabulary gains of 48%and 45%from the pre-test for the reading-while-listening group and reading-only group, and for the listening-only group, there was a 29% vocabulary gain. Nevertheless, the revealed fewer word gains, only 16%, 15%and 2%for the three groups in the above order. Brown and his colleagues attributed the paratively minimal vocabulary acquisition rates of the listening-only group to the fact that Japanese language has a different syllable structure to English and the learners were “incapable of processing the phonological information as fast as the stream of speech, ”and thus “failed to recognize many of the spoken forms of words that they already knew in their written for this stage that the “inaurate perception of the pronunciation of words and phrases is potentially a greater barrier in listening than in reading” (). Another reason they gave was that the coverage rate of already known words, i. e., 95% was too low for the listening-only group, which made the task of inferring the meaning of the 28 target words too challenging.
Kazuya (2009) investigated the effects of explanation from listening on vocabulary acquisition of 116 second-year Japanese high school students. Nine listening passages were used, with 45 vocabulary items embedded. In the first group, the students were provided with a spoken Japanese translation for each target word; in the second group, the students were provided with a spoken English definition of each target word; and in the control group, no vocabulary explanation was given. Approxier each listening session, an iition posttest and a e posttest were given. Two weeks after the instruction, the same tests were administered again as the delayed posttests. Results showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the three groups in both the iition posttests. The L1 translation condition was more effective than the L2 definition condition, and the control condition was the least effective one. However, as for the immediate and delayed e posttests, no statistically significant difference between the L1 and L2 conditions was found.
The reviewed studies demonstrate that learners acquire meaning of new words through listening in L2. Van Patten (1990) administered a study in 202 university students of Spanish to deterher learners of different petence levels were ableto consciously attend to both vocabulary forg input from listening. The students were asked to perform various tasks while listening to a passage for meaning to test the following research hypotheses: ①If learners have difficulty in directing attention toward both content and form, then a task involving conscious attention to non-municative grammatical-morphological forively affect co. ②If these same learners are basically going for meaning first, a task involving conscious attention to important lexical iteore advanced learners will not exhibit the sahe tasks as the early stage learners, i. e., more advanced learners will be more able to direct attention to forhey are better equipped to attend to content.
The participants were put in three different classes aording to their language levels. Each class listened to two passages. The first passage served as a ward passage, a 3-minute long recorded segment on inflation in Latin America, was used as the real source of data. The classes were randoo plete one of four listening tasks. Task 1, the control task, consisted of listening to the passage for content only. Task 2 consisted of listening to the passage for content and simultaneously noting a key lexical itesisted of listening to the passage for content and simultaneously noting a definite article (la). Task 4 consisted of listening to the passage for content and simultaneously noting a verb morpheurred 11 or 12 times in the passage. The participants were asked to place a check mark anywhere on their paper each time they heard the item. For all tasks, the participants were instructed to listen for old that their prehension of the passage would be assessed afterward. The participants were told about the topic of the passage and some related information before listening to the passage, so that they might activate relevant background knowledge to assist in their coprehension assesssisted of free written recalls in English. Immediately after the participants heard the passage, they were required to write down anything and everything that they could remember from the passage. These recall protocols were considered as a general indication of prehension and would reflect the relative degree of attention that the participants could pay to the content. The recall protocols were subsequently scored independently and the interrater reliability was .
Concerning the first two research hypotheses, the results revealed a significant drop in recall scores when the participants were asked to simultaneously listen for content and note a grae of little referential here was no evidence that the siasks of listening for content and noting a lexical itet drop in recall scores. In other words, conscious attention to important lexical iteo, while conscious attention to non-municative grammatical-morphological forively affected co. With empirical support for research hypotheses 1 and 2 from the study, the researcher thus suggested that “the municatively loaded iteious attention from early stage learners and becohe developing language systees of little meaning may be left unattended since they‘escape' attention directed toward meaning or infor” ().
Regarding the third hypothesis, mixed results were received from the study. While Level III students had significantly different recall scores from Level I and Level II students on the content only task (i. e., Level III could recall much more), they performed about the saion task. This finding showed that for lower level students, there ween bound and free morphemes, but that for higher level students there is. The results do not suggest that early stage learners are pletely incapable of focusing on form in the input, but the results do suggest that a focus on foruous in the real world of input processing where there is a prieaning. As Van Patten noted, “siious attention to infor and‘meaningless' form in the input is difficult for the early stage and the intermediate stage learner” ().
The findings that learners had difficulty in attending to fortribute substantially to the meaning of the input regardless of type of input led Van Patten to conclude that conscious attention to forpetes with conscious attention to meaning, and only when the input is easily understood can learners attend to form of important lexical items as part of the intake process. In other words, students cannot concentrate on both form and meaning simultaneously.
Viewed retrospectively, it can be concluded from the studies reviewed so far that:
(a) incidental vocabulary acquisition ours through listening in L2;
(b) meaning of the lexical items that are i is more likely to be acquired than non-municative iteorphely when the input is easy enough for learners to understand can they also attend to the form of the important words.