It is said L2 learners can incidentally acquire a more considerable amount of vocabulary while reading for meaning than a direct instruction, yet there is a controversy about the effectiveness of reading for vocabulary learning.
The present study attempts to answer the following questions:
1. How does reading affect vocabulary acquisition?
2. What is the effect of participants’ vocabulary size on the acquisition of unknown vocabulary?
3. What is the relationship between word frequency in the text and the rate at which words are acquired?
To collect the data, Thomas used a quantitative approach and before the treatment, Vocabulary Levels Test (VLT) was administered to the 94 university students in the first year of their undergraduate degree in English Language and Literature in the Republic of Macedonia, which participated in the research study.
The result showed that EFL learners could learn the meaning of unknown words from reading; however, this was not the only factor. What we had to take into account was that other than vocabulary size, the learners’ cognitive abilities, along with world knowledge could greatly influence their ability to infer the meaning of unknown words from context. Students may gain more than 1000 new words a year if they read texts at the appropriate level for 30 minutes a day. This implies that, combined with direct instruction, reading can remarkably enhance students’ vocabulary knowledge.
By: Mr. Mohammathnasiet Sales
Reference:
Thomas, T. (July 30th, 2014). Incidental vocabulary learning through reading. Journal of Linguistics and Language Teaching, 5(1), 57-65.