1. Incidental / intentional teaching of vocabulary from reading

2. Schmitt & Sonbul Direct vocabulary teaching after reading: Is it worth the effort?

3. Previous research Various studies; both incidental and intentional needed Studies showing that explicit focus on vocabulary after reading resulted in better learning

4. Looked at: Incidental learning from reading only (read- only) Combination of incidental learning from reading plus explicit instruction (read plus)

5. Kinds of knowledge GivenTested RecallRecognition MeaningForm recall (supply the L2 item) Form recognition (select the L2 item) FormMeaning recall (supply definition, L1 meaning, picture etc.) Meaning recognition (select definition, L1 meaning, picture etc.)

6. Questions 1.Is read-plus more effective than read-only? 2.To what degree do the read-only and read- plus input conditions facilitate learning at the three levels of mastery of the form-meaning link (form-recall, meaning recall and form- meaning recognition)? Population: 40 female medical students

7. Process Input conditions Read-only condition: read the text, comprehension questions Read-plus: words explained, Tests (immediately and after one week) Form recall: definition and first three letters. Meaning recall: full word, students translated Meaning recognition: m/c definitions

8. Results (post-test) Read-only condition: very little recall, 38% recognition Read-plus: higher scores for all 3, 9% for form recall, 19 for meaning recall, 50% for recognition Very little attrition, probably because the ss reread the article. In most cases meaning recognition > meaning recall > form recall

9. Conclusions Intentional vocab teaching is worth the effort. Rereading the text within a week reinforces learning.

10. Batia Laufer: Vocab acquisition in a foreign language: do learners really acquire most vocab by reading: some empirical evidence.

11. Acquisition through reading? Native speakers acquire most of their vocabulary through reading because couldn’t possibly learn all through direct teaching. High school graduates – about 20,000 families maybe more. True of L2? Krashen says yes.

12. Assumptions 1.Noticing: reader notices unfamilar words. Noticing necessary for learning (Schmidt)- 2.Guessing ability assumption: can and will guess right meaning 3.Guessing-retention link: having guessed – learner will retain it. 4.Cumulative gain: even if not remembered the first time, additional encounters will make more likely – eight or twelve. If learn 1/20 and a million words exposure, will learn 1000 words a year.

13. BUT 1.Learners don’t necessarily identify words they don’t know – overestimate what they know 2. Can’t usually guess, or guess wrongly 3.If new words unimportant, will be ignored. If important, may be guessed, but may be guessed wrongly. Words guessed with difficulty remembered better. (But in extensive reading, SS don’t want to hang about working on difficult guessing.) 4.Enormous amount of reading needed: To acquire108 new words, need to read 9 books (assuming at this level about 22.600 words per book). And in the conditions described earlier; and before they’ve forgotten them.

14. Experiment process First experiment First group reading plus glosses plus m/c comprehension questions; Second group list of word with explanations and translations, and had to write sentences. Sentence-writing group had higher scores. Second experiment: same idea, but composition rather than sentences. Same result. Third experiment Reading group plus looking up unknown words in a dictionary; Second group words without text, told to write sentences; Third group: sentence completion: given sentences, asked to look up meanings and complete sentences. Reading group worse than the other two.

15. Conclusion If a word is practised in a productive task, it has a better chance of being remembered than if it is just encountered in a text. Generally, research shows very small gains from reading. Word-focus activities make the reader ‘notice’

16. Waring and Takaki, 2003, At what rate do learners learn and retain new vocab from reading a graded reader?

17. Study process 25 words in The little princess. ‘Substitute’ words used, e.g.. house = windle 15 young adult learners. High percentage of known vocabulary (96%).. Followed by tests of various kinds: word-form recognition, multiple choice, meaning by translation

18. Result Overall: longterm unprompted learning – one word was learnt per one hour’s reading. Learn better if meet several times About half the words were forgotten after 3 months (but weren’t encountered again) Only 42% of the words occurring more than 15 times were translated correctly, back to less than one word after 3 months.

19. Comment Multiple choice is not a good test of if the learner knows the item or not. Translation better. In order to have 50% chance of recognizing a form 3 months later, need at to encounter at least 8 times. But for unprompted meaning knowledge, even 18 times was not enough.

20. Why? The learners were focusing on understanding, may not have noticed words that didn’t need for general gist.. Coverage rate may have been too high. Too few chances to learn the words. May need 20 or 30 encounters: may need to read several thousand words. (the rarer the word, the more text needs to be read in order to encounter it. Substitute words may have been confusing, because the learners already knew the real English word.

21. Further comments Speed of reading didn’t make a difference. Some items were easier to learn than others. Some items were confused because they sounded or looked like words they knew.

22. Conclusions Few new words learnt from reading. Test type makes a big difference. Multiple choice-based research may have overestimated gains. But other types of lexical learning may have taken place: deepening of lexical knoweldge of items already known, familiarization, collocation and chunks, increased ability to guess from context, etc. ER mainly consolidates already- known language- Various implications for graded readers design, e.g. making sure that basic words are recycled within a level, not worrying too much about introducing new words.

23. Questions If there had been more encounters, would learning have improved? If learners were forced to focus on new words, would they have learnt them better?

24. Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: a case study

25. Introductory comments Process of incidental vocab acquisition is not really understood. This study looks particularly at the number of times a word appears in a text, and relates it to the kinds of knowledge of a word that are acquired, other than meaning. Advantages of extensive reading: pedagogically efficient (Huckin and Coady), as enhances both reading fluency and vocabulary acquisition at the same time; facilitates learner autonomy; motivating; increases sight vocab. May be the only out-of-class source of vocabulary acquisition. But there is no direct evidence as to its efficiency. Difference between being able to inference and retaining as a result of that inference. Richness of context can sometimes lead to the learner skipping the word, as they do not need it.

26. Studies on vocabulary growth through reading Incidental: mostly reputed to be small, roughly 1/12. But: measuring instruments didn’t test partial knowledge. Number of words small. Didn’t control text difficulty. No long-term test.

27. The present study A single learner One-month period of extensive reading 133 target words Measurement procedures that are sensitive to partial knowledge, and different types of knowledge other than reading. (orthographic, phonological, morphological, syntactic, collocational and pragmatic). Present study looked also at form (spelling), meaning (form- meaning relationship) and use (grammatical functions). So even if can’t guess meaning, other aspects of the word learnt e.g. spelling. Importance of consolidation of previously learnt words – other research has focused on new words. Importance of frequency (e.g. Waring and Takaki study).

28. Questions Does extensive reading lead to increased word knowledge in terms of spelling, meaning and grammatical behaviour of words? Are all these three equally affected by extensive reading? Are words that occur more frequently in the texts more affected in these three aspects of word knowledge?

29. Method Simplified easy readers (at least 95% coverage) Learner read one reader per week, for a month. 228 pages in total. Pre-test and post test. Based on interview and very detailed and exhaustive. Spelling: dictation, had to write down. Meaning and grammar: the learner was given a list of the words, asked to say anything he knew about the meaning. Grammar: asked to say le/la for nouns, and which preposition followed the verb. 4 days after pre-test, started reading. Guesses not accepted.

30. Results 66/133 enhanced in one way, 13 in two ways, 8 in all three 87 /133 (about 2/3) were enhanced in at least one way- Spelling most, then articles (grammar). Frequency: overall, only when 20+ was there a definite increase in uptake rates. But also depended on the word. Many misinterpretations because of L1 interference or similarity to other words,and confused with other French words with similar meanings. The learner commented that sometimes guessed,but forgot later.

31. Overall conclusions Learning new vocabulary incidentally through extensive reading is very slow. Extensive reading has value for reading fluency, motivation, re-encounter with previously-learnt words. We need a lot of focused, intentional work on introducing and reviewing new vocabulary. BUT…

32. No way can we possibly teach in lessons the 5,000 – 8,000 word families that we would like our students to learn by 12 th grade. So…?

33. My conclusions Teach and review as much as we can Make students aware of the importance of learning new vocabulary. Teach them strategies for learning on their own.

34. Autonomous strategies Vocabulary notebooks Look out for, and note down, useful words or chunks you encounter Review regularly (5 minutes a day?)