Vocabulary plays a crucial role in language use as it is a basic meaning unit of larger structures such as phrases, sentences, and paragraphs. Children naturally begin to develop their vocabulary knowledge by continuously interacting with oral and written texts. Second language (L2) learners, however, should put a considerable amount of time and effort to build up their mental lexicon and continue to extend such process even after reaching an advanced level of proficiency. The sheer size of vocabulary that L2 learners have to reach may necessitate different ways of teaching and learning of vocabulary items other than merely memorizing a list of words. Among a variety of pedagogical options, incidental vocabulary learning has been viewed as an alternative that could expose learners to the vast amount of L2 words (Ellis, 2017). The way of learning is called “incidental” since learners unintentionally acquire vocabulary knowledge through processing aural or written input. Considering the possible benefits of incidental vocabulary learning in EFL context the subject has been extensively investigated for the last few decades. Findings from the line of research indicate that the learners do learn words from reading. There are, however, several issues that are still under debate. One of the central questions in incidental vocabulary learning is how much vocabulary the learners could actually acquire from reading. Furthermore, the experimental features found in this line of research hampers capturing the realistic scene of incidental vocabulary learning that happens in everyday life. Therefore, in an attempt to extend our knowledge about incidental vocabulary learning from reading, the present study examines the learners’vocabulary growth using both explicit and implict measures. The purpose of the this study is to investigate: (1) whether EFL learners with advanced reading proficiency could acquire full or partial vocabulary knowledge from reading an authentic text; (2) the effect of the word-related factors(frequency of word/collocation occurrences and word class) on incidental vocabulary learning, and (3) the effect of working memory capacity on incidental vocabulary learning as a learner-related factor. Twenty-seven advanced college EFL learners were asked to read ‘Outliers: The Story of Success’(Gladwell, 2017) in the same manner as their usual reading habits within the limit of 4 weeks. Upon the completion of reading, six vocabulary tests designed to measure the depth of vocabulary knowledge (a productive and receptive recall and a semantic priming task) were administered. The results indicated that the participants recognized the meanings of an average of 31.7 words(30.8%) and 7.7 collocations(48%), and recalled the meanings of 21.3 words(16.8%) and 2.29 collocations(10%), suggesting that significant amounts of incidental vocabulary learning can occur through reading an authentic text. With regards to implicit vocabulary knowledge, positive semantic priming effects were observed both in word and collocation tasks, which indicates that the participants were able to form lexical representations of target words and collocations. In addition, significant priming effects were observed in some of the vocabulary items that did not show measurable gains in explicit test measures. Meanwhile, the findings showed that there were some statistically significant relationships between the word- and learner-related variables and a certain type of vocabulary knowledge. There was a significant but modest correlation between frequency of encounters and explicit word knowledge. The correlation between frequency and collocation knowledge differed across different types of tests, revealing a strong correlation with productive collocation knowledge but a poor correlation when paired with receptive collocation knowledge. No significant correlation between frequency and implicit vocabulary knowledge was observed. The effect of word class was significant only in the receptive word test, showing that verbs were easier to learn than nouns. Working memory capacity was highly correlated with receptive word knowledge, modestly with productive word and receptive collocation knowledge, but not with the other types of vocabulary knowledge. Overall, the results revealed the positive effect of reading an authentic text on the advanced EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of vocabulary knowledge although the variables included in this study did not clearly explain the learning outcomes. Additionally, some of the target words were acquired in the form of partial vocabulary knowledge. The pedagogical implication of this study is that continuously reading an authentic text outside of the classroom may facilitate sustained vocabulary development for advanced learners. Nevertheless, the learning effect is expected to be enhanced when complemented by intentional vocabulary learning. ，韩语论文题目，韩语论文题目 |
