Volume 20, Number 2, October 2008

Volume 20, Number 2, October 2008

Advisory and Editorial Boards Advisory Board University of Hawai‘i, USA Richard Day, Co-Editor Thom Hudson, Co-Editor Richard Schmidt, Director Jean Toyama, Associate Dean

Reading in a Foreign Language Reading in a Foreign Language National Foreign Language Resource Center College of Languages, Linguistics, and Literature

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Editorial Board Charles Alderson Neil J. Anderson Cindy Brantmeier Andrew D. Cohen Averil Coxhead Julian Edge William Grabe Yukie Horiba Batia Laufer Sandra McKay Setsuko Mori Paul Nation David Qian Françoise Salager-Meyer Sandra Silberstein Fredricka Stoller Cyril Weir Eddie Williams

University of Lancaster, UK Brigham Young University, USA Washington University, USA University of Minnesota, USA Massey University, New Zealand University of Manchester, UK Northern Arizona University, USA Kanda University of International Studies, Japan University of Haifa, Israel San Francisco State University, USA Kinki University, Japan Victoria University, NZ Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong Universidad de Los Andes, Venezuela University of Washington, USA Northern Arizona University, USA University of Surrey Roehampton, UK University of Reading, UK

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Editorial Staff Editors: Richard Day and Thom Hudson, University of Hawai’i, [email protected] Reviews Editor: Anne Burns, Macquarie University, [email protected] Readings on L2 Reading Editor: Cindy Brantmeier, Washington University, [email protected] Assistant Editor: Zhijun (David) Wen, University of Hawai’i, [email protected] Web Production Editor: Jun Nomura, University of Hawai’i, [email protected]

Copyright © RFL 2008

About Reading in a Foreign Language The online journal Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) is a scholarly international refereed journal originally founded as a print journal in 1983 at the University of Aston, Birmingham, England. The journal moved to the University of Hawai‘i in 2002 under the co-editorship of Richard R. Day and Thom Hudson, and Reviews Editor Anne Burns, Macquarie University, Australia. It is supported by the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), the University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. Reading in a Foreign Language has established itself as an excellent source for the latest developments in the field, both theoretical and pedagogic, including improving standards for foreign language reading. This fully-refereed journal is published twice a year, in April and October. The editors seek manuscripts concerning both the practice and theory of learning to read and the teaching of reading in any foreign or second language. Reviews of scholarly books and teaching materials, conference reports, and discussions are also solicited. The language of the journal is English, but lexical citations of languages other than English are acceptable. Additionally, the journal encourages research submissions about reading in languages other than English. From time to time, special issues are published on themes of relevance to our readers. Please see our submission guidelines for more information. Although RFL is a free online journal, we would appreciate your support as a subscriber. This will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it free of charge. Please take a few minutes to visit our subscription page.

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Information for Contributors Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL) seeks submissions of previously unpublished manuscripts on any topic related to the area of foreign or second language reading. Articles should be written so that they are accessible to a broad audience of language educators, including those individuals who may not be familiar with the particular subject matter addressed in the article. Manuscripts are being solicited in these three major categories: articles, discussion forum, and reviews. Submission guidelines, general publication policies, general guidelines for reporting on both quantitative and qualitative research are provided below. Articles Discussion Forum Reviews Features Submission Guidelines General Publication Policies Guidelines for Reporting on Research

Articles Articles should report original research or present an original framework that links previous research, educational theory, and teaching practices. Full-length articles should be no more than 8,500 words in length, excluding appendices. Additionally, each submission should include an abstract of no more than 150 words, and a list of five to seven keywords for index and search purposes. We encourage articles that take advantage of the electronic format by including hypermedia links to multimedia material both within and outside the article. All article manuscripts submitted to RFL go through a two-step review process. Step 1: Internal review. The editors of the journal first review each manuscript to see if it meets the basic requirements for articles published in the journal (i.e., that it reports on original research or presents an original framework linking previous research, educational theory, and teaching practices), and that it is of sufficient quality to merit external review. Note that RFL follows the guidelines of the fifth edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association published by the American Psychological Association (APA) in 2001. Manuscripts submitted to RFL must conform to APA format. Manuscripts that do not meet these requirements are not sent out for further review. This internal review takes about 1–2 weeks.

Copyright © RFL 2008

Step 2: External review. Submissions that meet the requirements above are then sent out for blind peer review from two to three experts in the field, either from the journal’s editorial board or from a larger list of reviewers. This second review process takes 2–3 months. Following the external review, the authors are sent copies of the external reviewers’ comments and are notified as to the decision (accept as it is, accept pending changes, revise and resubmit, or reject).

Discussion Forum Short articles, usually no more than 2,000 words, in the Discussion Forum generally discuss material previously published in RFL and may also present replies by the authors to the issues raised in those comments. The Discussion Forum contents are meant to be constructive and professional exchanges about an area of foreign language reading. Discussions go through the same review process as that for full length articles.

Reviews The journal welcomes reviews of recent publications and resources focusing on a variety of aspects of reading, including research, professional development, classroom approaches, teaching texts, and computer mediated materials. Reviewers should give a clear and succinct description and provide the reader with the means of evaluating the relevance of the material to the targeted field of theory and practice. Reviews should normally include references to published theory and relevant research, and reviews providing a critical/evaluative overview of several publications that have made a distinct contribution to the field of reading research and practice are particularly welcome. Reviews of individual books or reading instructional software are generally 1,200–1,600 words in length. Reviews of multiple texts can be longer. Reviews should include the name, institutional affiliation, e-mail address, URL (if applicable), and a short biographical statement (maximum 50 words) of the reviewer(s). The following information should be included in a table at the beginning of the review: Author(s) Title Publication date Publisher Publisher City and Country Number of pages ISBN Price

Contact Anne Burns if you are interested in having material reviewed or in serving as a reviewer. Anne Burns Department of Linguistics Macquarie University Sydney Australia [email protected] Copyright © RFL 2008

Features RFL has two features, Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues, which first appeared in the October 2005 issue, and RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today, which started in the October 2006 issue. Both features appear once a year in the October issue. Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues offers an archive of articles published in other venues during the previous year and will serve as a valuable tool to readers of RFL. Articles may treat any topic within the scope of RFL and second language reading. Articles are organized by topic. This feature includes titles of the articles as well as brief summaries. Two additional sections include a list of books, volumes, and dissertations that treat second language reading. For more information, please contact the editor for this feature, Cindy Brantmeier, an Assistant Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish, Washington University in St. Louis. RFL readers are requested to send to Dr. Brantmeier titles of appropriate articles. Please include all relevant information such as author(s), journal, date of publication, and, if possible, a brief summary. Please send to [email protected] RFL Revisited: Past Articles Today brings past RFL articles and reprises them in current issues. In order to find articles that still attract attention, we look at the number of hits that previous articles receive. When we have identified an article, we ask the original author to comment on the article as well as to have others comment on it.

Submission Guidelines Please list the names, institutions, e-mail addresses, and if applicable, World Wide Web addresses (URLs), of all authors. Also include a brief biographical statement (maximum 50 words, in sentence format) for each author. (This information will be removed when the articles are distributed for blind review.) All submissions may be submitted in the following formats: (a) HTML files, (b) Microsoft Word documents, (c) RTF documents, (d) ASCII text. If a different format is required in order to better handle foreign language fonts, please consult with the editors. Submissions can be transmitted in either of the following ways: 1. By electronic mail: Send the main document and any accompanying files (images, etc.) to [email protected] 2. By mail: Send the material on a disk to the following address: RFL NFLRC University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa 1859 East-West Road, #106 Honolulu, HI 96822 USA

Please check the General Publication Policies below for additional guidelines. Copyright © RFL 2008

General Publication Policies The following policies apply to all articles, reviews, and commentaries: 1. All submissions must conform to the requirements of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (5th edition). Authors are responsible for the accuracy of references and citations, which must be in APA format. Manuscripts may be rejected if they do not meet APA requirements. 2. Manuscripts that have already been published elsewhere or are being considered for publication elsewhere are not eligible to be considered for publication in RFL. It is the responsibility of the author to inform the editor of the existence of any similar work that is already published or under consideration for publication elsewhere. 3. Authors of accepted manuscripts will assign to RFL the permanent right to electronically distribute the article. 4. The editors of RFL reserve the right to make editorial changes in any manuscript accepted for publication for the sake of style or clarity. Authors will be consulted only if the changes are substantial. 5. Articles are copyrighted by their respective authors, but if published after electronic appearance, RFL will be acknowledged as the initial locus of publication. 6. The views expressed in RFL do not necessarily represent the views of the National Foreign Language Resource Center, the University of Hawai‘i College of Language, Linguistics, and Literature, or the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies. 7. RFL expects authors to adhere to ethical standards for research involving human subjects. All manuscripts submitted for consideration must meet the human subjects review established by your institution.

RFL Guidelines for Reporting on Research Research should generally include the following sections: An Abstract Five to seven keywords for index and search purposes An Introduction: 1. stating the research issue to be investigated 2. presenting the underlying theoretical framework discussing how the research fits with previous research Copyright © RFL 2008

3. presenting a description of the methodological tradition in which the study was conducted for qualitative research 4. defining the variables 5. stating the research hypotheses

A Method section: 1. 2. 3. 4.

describing the participants or subjects and research site presenting a detailed description of data collection and analysis procedures describing the apparatus or materials used explaining the procedures and summarizing the steps employed in the research

A Results section: 1. presenting graphs and tables that help to explain the results 2. for quantitative research, presenting descriptive and inferential statistics used to analyze the data, including the following: (a) the reliability of the instruments used, (b) the statistic used, (c) statistical significance and effect size indicators of the results obtained, (d) how all statistical assumptions were met 3. for qualitative research, data should reflect prolonged engagement, persistent observation, and triangulation, with “thick description” A Discussion section: 1. presenting an evaluation and interpretation of the results 2. discussing alternative explanations when appropriate 3. causal inferences should be cautiously made, and not based solely on correlational approaches 4. results of the study should not be overly interpreted or generalized 5. linking the results obtained in the study to original hypotheses 6. presenting the implications and any limitations of the study A Conclusion: 1. including a summary and general implications of the study 2. proposing suggestions for further research References in APA format Appendices of instrument(s) used

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Contact RFL Reading in a Foreign Language National Foreign Language Resource Center 1859 East-West Road #106 University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa Honolulu, HI 96822 USA [email protected]

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Volume 20, Number 2, October 2008

Special Issue on Reading and Vocabulary Edited by Rob Waring Editorial Board, About RFL, and Information for Contributors From the Editors pp. i–ii

From the Guest Editor Rob Waring pp. iii–iv

Articles Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading, reading-while-listening, and listening to stories Ronan Brown, Rob Waring, and Sangrawee Donkaewbua pp. 136–163

The virtuous circle: Modeling individual differences in L2 reading and vocabulary development Diana Pulido and David Z. Hambrick pp. 164–190

Beyond raw frequency: Incidental vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading Soo-Ok Kweon and Hae-Ri Kim pp. 191–215

Evaluating L2 readers’ vocabulary strategies and dictionary use Caleb Prichard pp. 216–231

The effects of context on incidental vocabulary learning Stuart Webb pp. 232–245

Vocabulary assistance before and during reading Stephen Alessi and Angelique Dwyer pp. 246–263

Reviews Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (Series Ed.) reviewed by Averil Coxhead, Margaret Gari, and Matella Urakowi pp. 264–268

Academic Reading (5th ed.) Kathleen T. McWhorter reviewed by Kyae-Sung Park pp. 269–272

Teaching Second Language Reading Thom Hudson reviewed by Sue Ollerhead pp. 273–277

Feature Readings on L2 reading: Publications in other venues 2007-2008 pp. 278–286

External Reviewers Charles Browne, Tess Fitzpatrick, Marlise Horst, Angela Joe, Tadamitsu Kamimoto, John Paul Loucky, Paul Meara, Scott Miles, Jim Milton, Jayakaran Mukundan, Hilary Nesi, Johnathon Newton, Joanne Park, John Read, Jim Ronald, Rory Rosszell, Norbert Schmitt, Stuart Webb, Brent Wolter, Junko Yamashita

Copy Editors Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, Nathan Johnson, Ann Johnstun, Myeong-hyeon Kim, Jake Kletzien, Elizabeth Lavolette, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Leslie Reynolds, Bal Krishna Sharma, Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, Choongil Yoon, Jae Rim Yoon, Soo Jung Youn, Ying Zhou

Copyright © RFL 2008

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. i–ii

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

From the Editors We are very pleased with this special issue of Reading in a Foreign Language that deals with reading and vocabulary. We would like to extend our thanks and appreciation to Rob Waring for editing this special issue. We are confident that this issue will be particularly useful to readers of the journal. We had originally planned for this issue to deal with a second important theme, Reading in Languages Other Than English. For a variety of reasons, this theme will appear in Volume 21, Number 1, April 2009; as previously announced, the theme is edited by Cindy Brantmeier and Keiko Koda. In addition to articles on Reading in Languages Other Than English, there will also be articles that focus on other topics. We would like to have your feedback to the articles in this special issue; please feel free to contact us with your reactions, comments, and suggestions. Once again, we request that readers of Reading in a Foreign Language who have not yet subscribed to become subscribers―at no cost. All subscribers have the option of being notified through e-mail as soon as each new issue is released. We ask you to subscribe because it will assist us in continuing to obtain institutional support for the journal, keeping it free of charge. We keep all subscriber information confidential. So, please fill out the brief subscription form for Reading in a Foreign Language. I would also like to thank the National Foreign Language Resource Center (NFLRC), the University of Hawai‘i College of Languages, Linguistics and Literature, and the University of Hawai‘i Department of Second Language Studies for their continued support of Reading in a Foreign Language.

In this issue Articles Ronan Brown, Rob Waring, and Sangrawee Donkaewbua present the results of their study on incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading, reading-while-listening, and listening to stories. Diana Pulido and David Z. Hambrick report on their study that models individual differences in second language reading and vocabulary development via structural equation modeling. Soo-Ok Kweon and Hae-Ri Kim examine incidental vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading by looking at the relationship among amount of incidental vocabulary acquisition, proportion of http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

From the Editors

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vocabulary retention, and effect of occurrence frequency and word classes. Caleb Prichard evaluates the dictionary use of Japanese university students to determine how selective they are when reading nonfiction English texts for general comprehension. Stuart Webb presents his study that addresses the effects of context on incidental vocabulary learning. Stephen Alessi and Angelique Dwyer contrasts vocabulary assistance before and during reading. Feature The feature, “Readings on L2 Reading: Publications in Other Venues,” presents references through 2007-2008. Reviews Averil Coxhead, Margaret Gari, and Matella Urakowi review Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context, by Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (Series Editor.). Kyae-Sung Park reviews Academic Reading (5th ed.), edited by Kathleen T. McWhorter. Sue Ollerhead reviews Teaching Second Language Reading, by Thom Hudson.

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. iii–iv

From the Guest Editor Rob Waring Notre Dame Seishin University Japan

It has been a great honor to be Guest Editor on this special issue of Reading in a Foreign Language on reading and vocabulary. This special issue was conceived almost two years ago to highlight the growing importance of studying the relationship between vocabulary and reading. In that regards the special issue is a success. The papers here provide new insights to this relationship in different ways. Soo-Ok Kweon and Hae-Ri Kim studied the rate of incidental vocabulary acquisition from the reading of authentic literary texts. Ronan Brown, Rob Waring, and Sangrawee Donkaewbua also reported on incidental vocabulary acquisition, but by comparing reading, reading-while-listening, and only listening. Stephen Alessi and Angelique Dyer investigated whether learners benefit more from being assisted prior to reading or during reading. Stuart Webb looked at whether words are better remembered in reading due to the frequency of repetition or the quality of the context. Caleb Prichard evaluated L2 readers’ vocabulary strategies and dictionary use. Diana Pudilo and David Hambrick investigated the relative contributions of experiential and ability factors to second language passage comprehension and L2 vocabulary retention. All these papers have contributed to our understanding of the relationship between vocabulary and reading in different and varied ways. These papers also raise as many questions as they answer, which we hope will lead to more research and more quality papers for Reading in a Foreign Language. In closing I would like to thank the almost three dozen external reviewers for their time and knowledge which has contributed greatly to improving the quality of the papers. The reviews are Charles Browne, Tess Fitzpatrick, Marlise Horst, Angela Joe, Tadamitsu Kamimoto, John Paul Loucky, Paul Meara, Scott Miles, Jim Milton, Jayakaran Mukundan, Hilary Nesi, Johnathon Newton, Joanne Park, John Read, Jim Ronald, Rory Rosszell, Norbert Schmitt, Stuart Webb, Brent Wolter, and Junko Yamashita. I would also like to thank the following copy editors: Amy Goodman-Bide, Yue Guo, Nathan Johnson, Ann Johnstun, Myeong-hyeon Kim, Jake Kletzien, Treela McKamey, Mar Galindo Merino, Samantha NG, Elizabeth Pfaff, Leslie Reynolds, Bal Krishna Sharma, Bong-Gi Sohn, Sakol Suethanapornkul, Aya Takeda, Choongil Yoon, Jae Rim Yoon, Soo Jung Youn, and Ying Zhou.

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

From the Guest Editor

But most of all I want to express my sincerest thanks to Assistant Editor, Zhijun (David) Wen, for him keeping me up to date and on track.

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 136–163

Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading, reading-while-listening, and listening to stories Ronan Brown Seinan Gakuin University Japan Rob Waring Notre Dame Seishin University Japan Sangrawee Donkaewbua Rajabhat Mahasarakham University Thailand Abstract This study examined the rate at which English vocabulary was acquired from the 3 input modes of reading, reading-while-listening, and listening to stories. It selected 3 sets of 28 words within 4 frequency bands and administered 2 test types immediately after the reading and listening treatments, 1 week later and 3 months later. The results showed that new words could be learned incidentally in all 3 modes, but that most words were not learned. Items occurring more frequently in the text were more likely to be learned and were more resistant to decay. The data demonstrated that, on average, when subjects were tested by unprompted recall, the meaning of only 1 of the 28 items met in either of the reading modes and the meaning of none of the items met in the listening-only mode, would be retained after 3 months. Keywords: incidental vocabulary acquisition, graded readers, recurrence rate, vocabulary decay, extensive reading, reading-while-listening, extensive listening

Incidental learning is the process of learning something without the intention of doing so. It is also learning one thing while intending to learn another (Richards & Schmidt, 2002). In terms of language acquisition, incidental learning is said to be an effective way of learning vocabulary from context (Day, Omura, & Hiramatsu, 1991; Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985; Saragi, Nation, & Meister, 1978). Among the early studies of vocabulary acquisition in first languages (e.g., Boettcher, 1980; Carey, 1982; Clark, 1973; Dale, O’Rourke, & Bamman, 1971; Deighton, 1959; Eichholz & Barbe, 1961; Gentner, 1975), the study by Nagy et al. (1985) is particularly significant. In the http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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course of their research they developed a methodology for measuring small gains in vocabulary knowledge. They detected that a single incidental encounter of a word would seldom lead to full knowledge or understanding of a word’s meaning. Moreover, if learning the meaning of vocabulary from context does occur, Carey (1978) suggested that it must be on the basis of encounters perceived in an incidental way. Because of this, learning vocabulary is understood to be a gradual process (Deighton, 1959). Nagy et al. (1985) declared that when this gradual learning process is encouraged by the help of contact with a sufficient amount of written language exposure, incidental vocabulary learning in the first language can be substantial. Studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition in the foreign language typically involve subjects in extensive reading. One goal of extensive reading is to read for pleasure, which will hopefully translate into general language improvement and a boost in reading motivation (Krashen, 1994). The general language-learning process from extensive reading is incidental, with few specific learning demands from the teacher (Widdowson, 1979). Some researchers suggest that extensive reading is mainly for the purpose of reinforcing partially known words so that they may move up to known words, rather than focus on building new vocabulary (Nation & Wang, 1999; Waring & Takaki, 2003). Nevertheless, this does not exclude the learning and the acquisition of new vocabulary entirely. Extensive Reading There is a strong connection between incidental vocabulary learning and extensive reading, perhaps because of the definition of extensive reading. According to Bright and McGregor (1970), Day and Bamford (1998), Harmer (2003), Krashen (1993), Nation (2001), and Waring (1997), extensive reading is a pleasurable reading situation where a teacher encourages students to choose what they want to read for themselves from reading materials at a level they can understand. Krashen’s (2003) comprehension hypothesis claimed that comprehensible input is a necessary and sufficient condition for language development and extensive reading provides this condition. Through the provision of engaging language-learner literature, extensive reading programs aim to develop reading fluency, and reading skills in general, while at the same time consolidate knowledge of previously met grammatical structures and vocabulary. There has been a reasonable amount of research on incidental vocabulary learning from extensive reading (e.g., Day et al., 1991; Dupuy & Krashen, 1993; Grabe & Stoller, 1997; Hayashi, 1999; Mason & Krashen, 1997; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989; Waring & Takaki, 2003). Several studies of such extensive reading programs have cited gains in overall language development (e.g., Cho & Krashen, 1994; Elley, 1991; Hafiz & Tudor, 1990). Other studies have emphasized benefits such as increased motivation to learn the new language and renewed confidence in reading (e.g., Brown, 2000; Hayashi, 1999; Mason & Krashen, 1997). In addition, research has indicated that the productive skills of writing and speaking have similarly been enhanced (Cho & Krashen, 1994; Janopoulos, 1986; Robb & Susser, 1989). Horst, Cobb and Meara (1998) claimed that through extensive reading learners can “enrich their knowledge of the words they already know, increase lexical access speeds, build network linkages between words, and…a few words will be acquired” (p. 221). In their vocabulary study, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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a multiple-choice, immediate posttest measure indicated that of 23 new words available for learning in the graded reader The Mayor of Casterbridge, 5 words were learned, which is a gain of 22%. In a similar study conducted by Waring and Takaki (2003), a multiple-choice, immediate posttest measure indicated that of 25 new words available for learning in the graded reader A Little Princess, 11 words were learned (as measured by success on these tests), a gain of 42%. In a further study conducted by Horst (2005), a modified vocabulary knowledge scale, immediate posttest measure indicated that of 35 new words available for learning in self-selected graded reading materials, 18 words were learned: a gain of 51%. These gains are comparable to those achieved in the A Clockwork Orange investigation conducted by Saragi et al. (1978). In their study, subjects were able to correctly identify the meanings of 75% of the target words, especially the frequently recurring ones, in an unannounced multiple-choice test given immediately after the reading treatment. Since Saragi et al., approximately 10 other investigations have been undertaken to determine how much vocabulary is learned from reading in a foreign language. For a meta-analysis of these oft-cited, learning-from-context studies of vocabulary growth, see Horst or Waring and Nation (2004). The study of Waring and Takaki (2003) is particularly significant. Like Nagy et al. (1985), they too developed a methodology for measuring small gains by having several test formats. Where other studies had used only one measurement, this study used three different kinds of measurements. The measurements were a simple yes or no sight-recognition test, a standard multiple-choice test, and a translation test into the first language. Their results showed that incidental vocabulary learning from reading occurred at several levels and the gain scores depended on the test type, but not much new vocabulary was learned. Reading-While-Listening A form of extensive reading that has recently been receiving more attention from language teachers and researchers is reading while simultaneously listening to an audio recording, or to the teacher reading a narrative aloud. The benefits cited have included increases in overall language proficiency, particularly listening comprehension, as well as the ability to acquire a greater sense of the rhythm of the language, which in turn can help learners to read and listen in meaningful sense groups rather than adopt a word-for-word strategy (Day & Bamford, 1998). Moreover, used as a strategy for promoting extensive reading, reading-while-listening can also pay dividends, provided that learners understand “it might take [time] for concentration to develop…eventually the moment will come when students are actually reading ahead of the teacher and at the end of the lesson students carry on reading and ask to take the books home” (Smith, 1997, p. 34). Studies investigating the effectiveness of reading-while-listening for comprehension have claimed that because low-proficiency English as a foreign language (EFL) readers tend to break sentences into small incoherent parts while they read (thereby spoiling the sentences’ integrity and rendering them meaningless), the teacher reading aloud early on in a program helps retain that integrity by presenting larger semantic units, which in turn leads to better comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Thus, by adopting a more holistic approach, learners may realize that a higher level of comprehension is possible when engaged in reading while listening to larger chunks of texts rather than attempting to understand single words or unintelligible bits of sentences (Amer, 1997; Dhaif, 1990). In terms of vocabulary growth, the teacher reading aloud while the learners follow the written text created the conditions necessary for the incidental vocabulary acquisition gains of 22% in the Horst et al. (1998) study cited earlier. In this study, reading aloud focused the subjects’ attention on the events in the story, and allowed the text itself and a few pictures to function as support for learning new words. Extensive Listening Research undertaken to determine the benefits of extensive listening (i.e., listening to long, easy texts for fluency and enjoyment) has largely been concerned with native-speaker populations, particularly early readers in elementary school. Reading stories to children is almost universally acknowledged as good pedagogy, and when it is done in an environment of shared reading or recreational reading, it also produces considerable gains in reading and listening skills (Elley, 1989; Senechal & Cornell, 1993). A further benefit of listening to stories is the potential for acquiring new vocabulary incidentally. In a set of studies conducted by Elley, it was found that oral story reading constituted a considerable source of vocabulary acquisition, whether or not the reading was accompanied by teacher explanation of word meanings. Subjects in one group showed gains of 15% from one story, without teacher explanation; while subjects in a second group, who did receive teacher explanations, showed gains of 40%. It was further found that these incidental vocabulary gains were relatively permanent, and that a key predictor of the successful acquisition of a word was its frequency of recurrence in the story. Although the number of research studies on extensive listening in a foreign language is limited, there is a certain amount of didactic literature on the benefits and procedures of reading stories to students (e.g., Moody, 1974; Prowse, 2005). West (1953) argued that reading aloud to the class was “valuable for practice in understanding correctly spoken English and the appreciation of literature” (p. 21). In addition, Nation (2001) claimed that “there is a growing body of evidence that shows…that learners can pick up new vocabulary as they are being read to” (p. 117). From the foregoing, successful learning of new vocabulary has been shown to take place when EFL learners are engaged in either an extensive-reading condition or extensive reading-whilelistening condition. However, we know little about the rate at which vocabulary is picked up in these two modes. Would more vocabulary be learnt by reading only, or by reading while listening to a text? Moreover, as native-speaking children have been shown to acquire new vocabulary from listening to stories (Eller, Pappas, & Brown, 1988; Elley, 1985; Elley, 1988; Elley & Mangubhai, 1981), it is also pertinent to determine the rate at which foreign-language vocabulary is learnt while only listening to stories. This question is of vital importance as it can help determine how much reading or listening (and what type) needs to be done in foreign language learning. The investigation that follows, therefore, is primarily concerned with how foreign-language vocabulary acquisition rates compare across these three distinct input modes. The main questions under investigation in this paper are as follows: Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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1. Do the subjects learn more vocabulary from reading, reading while listening, or listening to stories? 2. At what rate is this new vocabulary knowledge learned, and at what rate does it decay? 3. Are the subjects more likely to learn a word if they meet it more often? 4. Are there significant differences in acquisition rates depending on whether the test is a multiple-choice test or a meaning-translation test? 5. Do the subjects prefer to read only, read while listening, or listen only to stories? Method In this study, 35 subjects in three experimental groups read and listened once to three stories in graded-reader form, each of which was approximately 5,500 words long. The reading and listening treatments took place during three regular 90-minute classes at intervals of 2 weeks. The subjects were then assessed on their recognition and recall of the target vocabulary items with varying frequency of recurrence rates that they had met in each story. Similar to the Waring and Takaki (2003) study, it was decided that the vocabulary acquisition would be assessed at two levels and over three test periods. Eighty-four target words (3 sets of 28) were selected from three 400-headword-level graded readers. These words, which represented already known common concepts to the subjects (e.g., letter, restaurant, family), were then changed into substitute words. See Table 1 for an overview of the study. Table 1. An overview of the study Text Group A (n = 12) Listen (Week 2) The Elephant Man Read (Week 4) One-Way Ticket The Witches of Pendle Read + listen (Week 6)

Group B (n = 14) Read + listen (Week 4) Listen (Week 6) Read (Week 2)

Group C (n = 9 Read (Week 6) Read + listen (Week 2) Listen (Week 4)

Participants Thirty-five Japanese students of English literature from a medium-sized private university in Kyushu, Japan, completed all aspects of the study. The ages of the 32 females and 3 males ranged from 18 to 21 years old. They had studied English for 7.5 years on average (including 6 years at junior and senior high school). The study began with 68 subjects, but 33 were omitted due to absence or incomplete data. The 35 subjects that saw the study through to its conclusion had been randomly assigned to three experimental groups. In Group A, there were 12 subjects from a 1st-year reading skills class; in Group B, there were 14 subjects from another 1st-year reading skills class; and in Group C, there were 9 subjects from a 3rd-year speaking skills class. All the subjects had pre-intermediate- or intermediate-level competence in English. This was determined by their classwork and homework assignments, as well as by two standardized tests: a 90-item Vocabulary Levels Test (Nation, 2001) and the paper-based version of the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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To test for differences in proficiency between the groups, we administered a combined test of four versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001) at the 2,000word level. Group A’s mean score was 64.83 (SD = 9.3), Group B’s mean was 63.14 (SD = 7.9), and Group C’s mean was 63.56 (SD = 7.9). There was no significant difference between the groups, F(2, 32) = 0.14, p = .87. The means of the subjects’ most recent TOEFL scores were as follows: Group A, M = 454 (range: 407–483); Group B, M = 448 (range: 390–483); and Group C, M = 460 (range: 420–510). The subjects were initially told that they would take part in a vocabulary-learning strategies program in which they would read and listen to some stories and that by using background knowledge, context, and co-text, they were to try to infer the meanings of any unknown words. They were also told that after reading and listening to a story, they would have to write some brief comments on their impressions of the experience and on how they felt about the content of the stories. Materials and Design The approach taken in this study was to use graded readers that were well within the subjects’ current reading-ability level (i.e., texts in which 96% to 99% of the running words were already known). This would constitute ideal conditions for successfully inferring the meanings of unknown words from context (Laufer & Sim, 1985). The test items were embedded within the reading and listening texts. A 400-headword graded reader should not have presented any major lexical problems for the pre-intermediate- and intermediate-level subjects. In this way, it could be assumed that the surrounding co-text for the test items would be familiar, and therefore investigating the rate of acquisition that took place based solely on the test items could proceed. Three graded readers from the 400-headword, high-beginner level of the Oxford Bookworms Library were selected: The Elephant Man (Vicary, 1989), a true and tragic story set in 19th century England; One-Way Ticket (Bassett, 1991), a contemporary, human-interest collection of adventures on European trains; and The Witches of Pendle (Akinyemi, 1994), a true and dark story set in 17th century England. Prior to the study, all the copies of The Elephant Man, OneWay Ticket, and The Witches of Pendle in their original graded-reader form held at the university library were removed along with the original audio recordings. It was further determined that none of the subjects had read or listened to these stories before, nor had they seen the movie version of The Elephant Man. Rationale for the use of substitute words. For the purposes of this study, adjustments were made to the texts of each story. The spellings of the 28 test items in each of the three books (total 84) were changed, replicating the design reported in Waring and Takaki (2003). Henceforth called substitute words, these words refer to the change in spelling of an already known word representing a common concept. For example, the words happy, book, and skin from The Elephant Man are rendered mird, hoult, and labin respectively in their substitute forms in the texts and tests. Words being symbols of meanings, a change in the symbol (its spelling), provided it conforms to normal spelling and collocational conventions, has both construct and face validity as it represents the matching of a new form for a given concept (i.e., learning a word in the traditional sense). As Nation (2001) noted, “at the simplest level, the unknown word Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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may represent a familiar concept and so the new label for that familiar concept is being learned” (p. 240). In a recent study on the effects of reading and writing on vocabulary knowledge, Webb (2005) used a similar approach by replacing target words with nonsense words. Controlling the word-frequency variable. Other than Horst et al. (1998), Saragi et al. (1978), and Waring and Takaki (2003), few studies have investigated what types of words are learned in the reading treatment. Moreover, a single gain figure is generally given for the total number of words learned, irrespective of whether the words appeared frequently or not in the reading material. The present study, however, controlled for the word-frequency variable, in the hope that it would lead to greater accuracy in determining how many times a word needs to be met in reading and listening for it to be acquired. Therefore, in addressing Research Question 3 (Are the subjects more likely to learn a word if they meet it more often?), it was necessary to select words of differing frequencies of recurrence. In addition, it was necessary to decide what types of words should be selected. Nouns and adjectives were chosen because they are generally easier to guess than adverbs (Higa, 1965; Laufer, 1997; Rodgers, 1969). Verbs were not selected because they appear with their inflections and in various tenses, which can make it difficult to determine whether the word is known and to ascertain how frequently the word type has occurred in the text. Moreover, in order to get reasonably reliable data, it was necessary to test at least 25 words that the subjects would have to infer from context. After looking at the recurrences of words in several 400-headword-level graded readers, The Elephant Man, One-Way Ticket and The Witches of Pendle were selected as the most appropriate titles for this study because the distribution frequencies in these titles had a good spread of words at different frequency bands. Each band had 7 test words. The frequency bands emerged from the natural frequency occurring in these books. The 28 words—seven words from four frequency bands—from each book were replaced with different spellings to ensure the words were unknown (the substitute words). Seven words occurred between 15–20 times in a given book; seven words appeared 10–13 times; seven words, 7–9 times; and seven words, 2–3 times. When more than seven words were in a given frequency band, the words were chosen randomly. This configuration of frequency groups and substitute words also ensured that a satisfactory coverage rate of running words could be maintained, as indicated in Table 2. Table 2. Lexical coverage of the running words by recurrences and types Running Recurrences Coverage of Text words of test items running words (%) 5,415 272 95.0% The Elephant Man 5,522 272 95.0% One-Way Ticket 5,765 264 95.4% The Witches of Pendle

Types 574 569 651

Coverage by types (%) 95.1% 95.1% 95.7%

The coverage rates in Table 2 refer to the percentage of the total running words assumed to be known by the subjects. For example, for The Elephant Man, 5,143 (which is 5,415 subtracted by 272 total recurrences for the 28 test items) of the 5,415 words in the book makes 95% coverage. When calculating the percentage of coverage by types, we calculated the total number of types minus the 28 types used as substitute words (i.e., 574 - 28 = 546) and then divided it by the total of types, which resulted in 95.1%. In calculating the above coverage rates, as has been mentioned, it was assumed that because they Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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were meeting 400-headword-level texts, the pre-intermediate- and intermediate-level subjects would know all the other words. Clearly, however, this would not be true for all subjects, and for all words, especially considering the range of subjects’ proficiency. It should also be noted that as the subjects read and listened to the stories, many of the highfrequency substitute words would soon be recognized and learned as they got further and further into the narrative, thus the coverage rate would steadily increase. See Appendix A for the list of the substitute words and their English equivalents. Instruments In addressing Research Question 4 (Are there significant differences in acquisition rates depending on whether the test is a multiple-choice test, or a meaning-translation test?), separate tests were required in order to measure different types of word knowledge. Following Waring and Takaki (2003), two tests were selected, namely, a multiple-choice (prompted recognition) test and a meaning-by-translation (unprompted recognition) test to assess various levels of word knowledge. The two tests were extensively piloted with a group of 40 subjects of similar ability and background who were not part of the main study. The aim of the piloting was to confirm that the test words were pronounceable for Japanese subjects, that the tests contained enough words, and that the stories were not too long and could be read or listened to in about 1 hour. The multiple-choice test was a standard, prompted recognition four-choice test with the correct meaning and three distracters. An I do not know option was added to allow subjects to indicate when they did not know an item so as to reduce the effect of guessing. The subjects were asked to circle the words they thought were nearest to the substitute words’ meanings. These choices were the same part of speech. For example, the substitute word grift means leg. Leg is a concrete noun, so the four choices were concrete nouns. Care was taken to ensure that the distracters came from different semantic sets so as to allow small amounts of knowledge to be demonstrated (Donkaewbua, 2008; Joe, 1994, 1998; Joe, Nation, & Newton, 1996). A sample extract from the test appears in Appendix B. The meaning-translation test presented the 28 substitute words in a list. The subjects were asked, “What do these words mean? Write the meaning in Japanese.” Subjects were required to either provide the exact meaning or give a plausible approximate answer, such as a near synonym. For instance, the exact meaning of hoult in The Elephant Man is book (“hon” in Japanese). However, if subjects wrote story (“monogatari” in Japanese), they would be given credit. Thus, half marks were given for partial knowledge of the meanings of the substitute words. Moreover, to further encourage a response, subjects were given two chances to provide an answer. A sample extract from the test appears in Appendix B. Finally, in order to prevent the transfer of knowledge from one test type to another, the meaning-translation test was given first and the multiple-choice test given second. Procedure The subjects were told that the main purpose of this “vocabulary-learning strategies program” Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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(i.e., the study) was to determine whether they learn vocabulary better from reading, readingwhile-listening, or listening to stories. It was explained that they would read and listen to three stories in which certain words had been changed. The rationale for, and examples of substitute words were explained, but none of the actual test items were cited. They were told to enjoy reading and listening to the stories and to do their best to guess the meanings of the substitute words. Afterwards, they would have to answer some questions. Neither dictionary use nor notetaking was allowed. Moreover, during the reading and listening sessions, no questions on the content of the stories were permitted. On completion of the whole program (the study), the researcher would individually inform the subjects which mode was best for them when acquiring new vocabulary in English. The research schedule in detail is set out in Table 3. Table 3. Research schedule in detail Group 1 2 3 A PDVT S1 L Test (n=12) Test S1–2 S1–1 B PDVT (n=14)

C (n=9)

PDVT

Week 4 S2 R Test S2–1

5 Test S2–2

6 S3 R + L Test S3–1

7 Test S3–2 Essay

S3 R Test S3–1

Test S3–2

S1 R + L Test S1–1

Test S1–2

S2 L Test S2–1

Test S2–2 Essay

S2 R + L Test S2–1

Test S2–2

S3 L Test S3–1

Test S3–2

S1 R Test S1–1

Test S1–2 Essay

3 Month Delay Tests 1–3 2–3 3–3 Tests 1–3 2–3 3–3

Tests 1–3 2–3 3–3 Note. PDVT = profile data vocabulary test; R = Reading-only mode; R + L = Reading-while-listening mode; L = Listening-only mode. S1 (Story 1): The Elephant Man; S1–1: Story 1, Posttest 1; S2 (Story 2): One-Way Ticket; S2–2: Story 2, Posttest 2; S3 (Story 3): The Witches of Pendle; S3–3: Story 3, Posttest 3.

The reading-only mode and the reading-while-listening mode. For the purposes of this study, the full texts of The Elephant Man, One-Way Ticket, and The Witches of Pendle with their substitute words were printed and put into book form. In the reading-only mode and the reading-whilelistening mode, the subjects were asked to read (and listen to) the stories as usual and enjoy them. Short written introductions to the stories (150 words approximately) were given in each of the three modes; however, these words were not counted in the figures for the main experiment. These introductions were added to provide schematic background for each book. Furthermore, to control for consistency of coverage rate, key words in each story that fell outside the 400-headword range and that appeared in the books’ glossaries were written on the chalkboard with their Japanese translations. Subjects could consult these lists (8 words per story) if they needed to as they read or listened. A short, verbal preamble was given for each story to orientate the subjects towards its topic, setting and background, but without mentioning anything about the storyline or characters. Maps were used to help set the scene when necessary.

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The listening-only mode. The full texts of the three stories were read aloud and recorded on audiocassette by the second author. Care was taken to ensure that the narration was as clear and as natural as possible. Piloting determined that a mean speech rate of 93 words per minute (wpm) was appropriate for the subjects as they had never before listened to a long narrative on audiocassette in English (e.g., Hirai, 1999). These recorded versions of the stories had a mean duration time of 63 minutes. In the listening-only mode, the subjects’ supplementary-text support was a short written introduction (150 words approximately) and a set of six or seven illustrations (without captions) both from the original book. Subjects were asked to listen to the audiocassette and to look at the pictures while listening to help them follow the narrative. There was a midsession interval of 3–4 minutes during which the subjects could stand up and stretch. Because of the long duration time of the listening treatment, it was hoped that general fatigue or attentionspan limitations would not have a detrimental effect on word learning. Such long listening sessions are not uncommon, however, especially in commercial testing and when listening to university lectures. If we compare, for example, the current generation TOEFL, the Internet Based Test (iBT), we find that it has a listening section that is between 60–90 minutes long and contains up to six lectures and three conversations. Data Collection After reading or listening to the stories, as mentioned, the two tests were given in this order: (a) meaning-translation test, and (b) multiple-choice test. These instruments formed the test set. The test set was administered three times: Posttest 1, immediately after the story reading or listening sessions; Posttest 2, 1 week later; and Posttest 3, 3 months later. The test items used in each administration were the same, but the item order was rotated so as to control for a potential learning effect from the tests. All of these test administrations were unannounced. The subjects took the tests without seeing or hearing the story again, and they never met the substitute words again. In the listening-only mode, because the subjects had not read but had heard the substitute words in a recording of the story, the test instrument for this mode necessitated the recording of the prompts on audiocassette. It was considered important to test the subjects in the way that they had learned so as to maintain reliability of data. Thus, at test time, the subjects listened to the prompts and marked their responses on paper. The mean duration time of the listening test set was 20 minutes. The reading-only and the reading-while-listening test sets were the same instrument and took subjects approximately 10 minutes to do. At the beginning of Posttest 1 (as shown in Table 3), the time taken to read or listen to the story was written down by each subject. A questionnaire asked subjects to indicate on a six-point attitude scale (5–0): (a) if they thought the story was easy or difficult to read or listen to; (b) if they knew most or only a few the words; (c) if they understood most or only a little of the story; and (d) if they thought the story was interesting or not. An open-ended question asked what they thought of the story. At the conclusion of the reading and listening (story) sessions, and on completion of Posttest 2 in Week 7, the subjects were asked to write a brief essay describing how they felt about the program (i.e., the study). In so doing, they were asked to consider these three points: (a) the story Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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they liked the most, and why; (b) the story that was easiest, and why; (c) the mode they preferred, and why. The data collected from the subjects’ responses were examined in order to address Research Question 5 (Do the subjects prefer to read only, read while listening, or listen only to stories?). Marking On the multiple-choice test, correct answers were given one point each. On the meaningtranslation test, correct answers were given one point and a word with a similar meaning was given a half point. For example, if the test word’s correct answer was book, one point was given, but if the subject supplied story, because it is a near synonym, a half point was awarded. A total of only 41 (0.46%) of all the possible responses were given a half point for the 35 subjects over the three test administrations and thus did not significantly affect the overall results. Moreover, 99.1% of the subjects used only one blank to provide a translation. The first author and a native Japanese speaker scored the test. Results and Discussion Research Question 1: Do the subjects learn more vocabulary from reading, reading while listening, or listening to stories? Table 4 summarizes the data for the three input modes and the two test types at the immediate posttest (i.e., at Posttest 1). The data are presented graphically in Figure 1. Data for the delayed tests are reported later. The data by test type are reported first. All standard deviations are in parentheses. Across all texts, the mean scores for the multiple-choice (MC) test are: reading-only mode 12.54 (5.03), reading-while-listening mode 13.31 (3.90), and listening-only mode 8.20 (2.82). The mean scores for the meaning-translation test are: reading-only mode 4.10 (4.02), reading-while-listening mode 4.39 (3.29), and listening-only mode 0.56 (1.13). Table 4. Mean scores for all texts for the two tests by the three input modes at Posttest 1 Reading-only Reading-while-listening Listening-only Text MC Translation MC Translation MC Translation 8.11 12.67 4.06 7.83 0.00 Elephant Man 18.67 n = 12 (3.61) (4.41) (4.15) (2.90) (1.52) (0.00) 9.58 1.71 11.25 2.13 7.93 0.82 One-Way n = 14 (3.20) (2.18) (3.52) (1.87) (2.64) (1.49) 11.14 3.57 15.50 6.54 9.11 0.89 Witches n=9 (3.66) (3.11) (3.06) (3.23) (4.23) (1.05) All Texts 12.54 4.10 13.31 4.39 8.20 0.56 n = 35 (5.03) (4.02) (3.90) (3.29) (2.82) (1.13) Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Max = 28.

The MC test results for the reading-while-listening mode across all texts indicate that an impressive 48% (13.31) of the 28 words were learned (compare gains of 22% in the study by Horst et al., 1998). MC gains made in the reading-only mode were similarly impressive standing at 45% (12.54). Gains made in the listening-only mode, however, were less remarkable standing Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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at 29% (8.20). Of the two tests, the meaning-translation test is probably the one that most closely indicates whether a subject actually knew the meaning of the word while reading and listening. This is because it shows that the subject is not only capable of recognizing the word but can also assign a meaning to it without being prompted. In Table 4, the meaning-translation test results across all texts show that 16% (4.39) of the 28 words were learned in the reading-while-listening mode. This rate of acquisition is followed closely in the reading-only mode, which yielded gains of 15% (4.10) of the 28 target words. This reading-only rate matches that in the Waring and Takaki (2003) study, in which the meaning-translation test scores showed that 18% of the 25 target words were learned. In the present study, gains in the listening-only mode were minimal with only 2% (0.56) of the 28 words learned. Table 4 also displays the mean scores of the input modes by text and test type, and these scores help indicate which modes were easier or harder for the subjects. We find that of the 28 new words presented in this study, the most outstanding gains of all were those achieved when the subjects read The Elephant Man (18.67 on the MC test and 8.11 on the translation test). These were followed by the reading-while-listening gains for The Witches of Pendle (15.30 on the MC test and 6.54 on the translation test). Conversely, it can be seen that on listening-only to The Elephant Man, the subjects did not register any perceptible gains on the translation test. With regard to One-Way Ticket, it can be seen that most of the test scores across the three input modes were quite close, with the test scores for listening-only being marginally better than those attained when listening-only to The Elephant Man. Interestingly, although the story was generally reported not liked, the test scores for listening only to The Witches of Pendle yielded the best overall results in this mode (9.11 on the MC test and 0.89 on the translation test).

Figure 1. Overall mean scores for the two tests by the three input modes at Posttest 1.

ANOVA administrations revealed significant differences between the MC tests and the meaningtranslation tests for the three modes (reading-only, reading-while-listening, and listening-only). Significant differences in test scores emerged in the three modes for the MC test, F = 13.32, p < .001, and the meaning-translation test, F = 16.38, p < .001. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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To determine where the differences between the tests were, t tests were conducted for the two tests by three input modes. The results are presented in Table 5. There was a significant difference between the reading-only and listening-only modes, as well as for the reading-whilelistening and listening-only modes for both test types. This suggests that it is far more difficult to pick up words from listening-only than from either the reading-only or reading-while-listening modes. There was, however, no significant difference between reading-only and reading-whilelistening modes. Table 5. T-test data for the two tests by three input modes at Posttest 1 Reading-only and Reading-while-listening Reading-only and Test listening-only and listening-only reading-while-listening MC 6.93* 7.23* 0.86 Translation 5.66* 7.24* 0.41 Note. *p < .05.

Reading-only mode versus reading-while-listening mode. The scores the subjects attained in these two modes were similar across the tests. The mean test scores for the three books varied relatively little depending on the test type (even after 3 months). Given the almost equal expected learning outcome from each of these modes, it would seem that the selection of preferred input mode should rest with the learner. Listening-only mode. It seems rather obvious that the listening-only mode should be the most difficult to acquire new vocabulary from (especially given the length of the listening task). In this study, the results of the meaning-translation test at the immediate posttest for the listening-only mode showed that only 2% (0.56) of the 28 target words were learned (compared with 15% and 16% in the other two modes). Moreover, as we shall see in detail later, when asked which input mode they preferred, 0% of the subjects chose listening-only. The subjects, it seems, displayed a critical lack of familiarity with spoken English. As they listened to the story, they had to pay constant attention to a stream of speech whose speed they could not control. Because they were incapable of processing the phonological information as fast as the stream of speech, they may have failed to recognize many of the spoken forms of words that they already knew in their written forms. A possible reason for this is that the subjects’ phonological knowledge of English varied from the phonological system employed by native speakers. The Japanese language has a different syllable structure to English and is often said to be mora-timed; therefore, Japanese learners may expect to hear words pronounced in this manner and thus may have considerable problems interpreting spoken English. McArthur (2003) claimed that Japanese learners have great difficulty in speaking and listening to English because of this “tendency not only to pronounce English in terms of Japanese syllable structure but also to adapt English words syllabically into Japanese” (p. 21). A second reason might have been a lack of skill in detecting word boundaries in connected speech (i.e., skill in the lexical segmentation of the input signal). On reviewing the comments made by the subjects regarding the listening-only mode, it became apparent that a major Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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challenge for them was negotiating the seamless nature of connected speech. Because of the way one word runs into the next seamlessly “without any little silences between the spoken words compared with the way there are white spaces between written words” (Pinker, 1994, p. 159), subjects may have found it particularly difficult to tell where one word ended and the next began. In terms of second-language listening, Field (2003) characterized the lexical segmentation of streams of speech as “arguably the commonest perceptual cause of breakdown of understanding” (p. 327). A third reason might have been that the subjects were required to listen at a coverage rate (95%) that was set for reading and not listening. The data suggest that the coverage rate was too low for the listening-only mode, rendering the task of inferring the meanings of the 28 target words as too great a challenge. Although no statistical data was provided, Nation (2001) claimed that “it is likely that for extensive listening the ratio of unknown words to known words should be around 1 in 100” (p. 118). Research Question 2: At what rate is this new vocabulary knowledge learned, and at what rate does it decay? The decay data for the three input modes at the three test times are shown in Table 6. Decay data for each test are shown graphically in Figures 2 and 3. These data show relatively little decay from their initial learning. Table 6. Decay data by input mode over the three test periods One-week delay Immediate posttest Mode MC Translation MC Translation Reading-only 12.54 4.10 12.46 2.34 (5.03) (4.02) (4.25) (2.39) Reading-while-listening 13.31 4.39 12.37 1.83 (3.90) (3.29) (3.41) (1.94) Listening-only 8.20 0.56 9.06 0.74 (2.82) (1.13) (2.65) (1.12) Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Max = 28.

Three-month delay MC 11.37 (3.10) 12.14 (2.86) 10.09 (2.72)

Translation 0.97 (1.47) 1.14 (1.32) 0.37 (0.72)

Table 6 shows that there was relatively little decay over a 3-month period in the scores for the reading-only, reading-while-listening, and listening-only modes for the two test types. The scores remained about the same irrespective of the mode or the test, except for the meaning-translation test scores, which dropped more considerably or stayed very low in all three modes. Thus, the knowledge needed to complete a translation test seems to be far higher than simply selecting the best answer on an MC test. ANOVA administrations were carried out to determine if there were any significant differences between the scores across the three data times for the two tests for each mode. Here are the results: on the translation test, the reading-only mode, F = 11.11, p < .01, reading–whilelistening, F = 19.52, p < .01, and listening-only F = 0.88, p = .42; and on the MC test, the reading-only mode, F = 0.76, p < .50, reading–while-listening, F = 0.84, p = .43, and listeningonly, F = 4.20, p < .05. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Figure 2. Decay data for the MC test over the three test periods.

Figure 3. Decay data for the translation test over the three test periods.

The ANOVA scores suggest that there were significant differences for many of the translation tests, but not for the MC tests; so t tests were performed on the data to determine where the differences were. Table 7 presents the data for the translation test, and Table 8 presents the data for the MC test. The translation test scores tended to drop over time while the MC test scores did not, for both the reading-only and reading-while-listening modes. However, in the listening mode, the scores fluctuate, but given the small data set, the small number of subjects, and the possibility of floor effects, we should not read too much into these data. Table 7. The t-test scores for the three modes across the three data times for the translation test. Immediate posttest Æ Immediate posttest Æ One-week delay Æ Mode One-week delay Three-month delay Three-month delay Reading-only 3.67* 5.41* 5.24* Reading-while-listening 5.83* 7.17* 2.70* Listening-only .89 .94 1.8 Note. *p < .05. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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This seems to suggest that the prompted-meaning recognition knowledge is better retained than the unprompted knowledge. In other words, learners are much more likely to forget the meaning of a word if they are not primed for its meaning. This suggests that teachers should ensure that the learners meet words very often and that they be primed to remember words before reading a passage again. Table 8. The t-test scores for the three modes across the three data times for the MC test. Immediate posttest Æ Immediate posttest Æ One-week delay Æ Mode One-week delay Three-month delay Three-month delay Reading-only 0.17 1.87 2.01 Reading-while-listening 1.98 2.26 0.50 Listening-only 2.05* 3.69* 2.24* Note. *p < .05.

It is noted that some of the mean scores in Table 6 appeared to increase over time without further exposure. This is not an uncommon phenomenon and has been shown in other studies (e.g., Waring & Takaki, 2003). Often this is because the true means vary by the size of the standard deviation and while it may appear that the mean scores went up, it is likely that no real increase in knowledge was gained over time. Another possible explanation for this is found in a recent study of the rate of learning collocation from graded reading (Waring, 2008). This study shows that certain subjects retain knowledge of partially known words learnt in their reading and associate that knowledge with other words in the lexicon as they continue to learn the language. It seems that the subjects’ developing systemic knowledge of words over time has a facilitating effect on the entire lexicon, and thus has a knock-on effect on all partially known words (even substitute words), as has also been found in the present study. Research Question 3: Are the subjects more likely to learn a word if they meet it more often? The data for the effect on learning as influenced by a word’s frequency of recurrence are presented in Table 9. These are the mean scores across the three books in each input mode. The table is read as follows: On the MC test for the reading-only mode, of the seven words that were met 15–20 times in each of the stories, 4.29 (2.0) of them were recognized; of the seven words met 10–13 times, 2.86 (2.3) were recognized; of the seven words met 7–9 times, 3.14 (1.4) were recognized; of the seven words met 2–3 times, 2.26 (1.2) were recognized; and so on. Table 9. Data by word frequency of recurrence at Posttest 1 Test

Reading-only

Reading-while-listening

Listening-only

15–20 10–13 7–9 2–3

15–20 10–13 7–9 2–3

15–20 10–13 7–9 2–3

MC

4.29 2.86 3.14 2.26 4.43 4.03 3.23 1.63 2.06 2.54 2.23 1.37 (2.0) (2.3) (1.4) (1.2) (1.5) (2.1) (1.2) (0.8) (1.5) (1.6) (1.2) (1.0) Translation 1.97 1.39 0.70 0.04 1.86 1.44 1.01 0.07 0.19 0.11 0.14 0.11 (1.9) (1.6) (1.0) (0.1) (1.5) (1.5) (1.2) (0.3) (0.5) (0.4) (0.4) (0.3) Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Max = 7.

By and large, the data show that the more frequently an item is met, the more chance it has of Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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being learned. The data also show that the scores tend to decrease depending on the test type, with the meaning-translation test scores considerably lower than those on the MC test. The frequency-of-recurrence data are valuable because they can indicate how frequently a word should be met in order to learn it in the three modes. The data in Table 9 show that the words met more frequently were more likely to be known at the immediate posttest in each mode. This finding was consistent across the two test types with mean scores dropping as recurrence frequency diminished. ANOVA administrations were carried out to determine if there were any significant differences between the scores across the four frequency bands for the two tests for each mode. Here are the results: on the translation test for the reading-only mode, F = 24.14, p < .01, for reading–whilelistening, F = 20.80, p < .01, and for listening-only, F = 0.31, p = .82; and on the MC test for the reading-only mode, F = 24.63, p < .01, for reading–while-listening, F = 52.02, p < .01, and for listening-only, F = 4.67, p < .01. Table 10. T-test scores for the translation test for each frequency band by input mode at Posttest 1 15–20 15–20 15–20 10–13 10–13 7–9 Mode vs.10–13 vs. 7–9 vs. 2–3 vs. 7–9 vs. 2–3 vs. 2–3 Reading-only 2.57* 5.56* 6.24* 3.99* 5.17* 4.18* Reading-while-listening 1.37 2.92* 7.18* 2.00* 5.32* 4.33* Listening-only 1.22 .49 .82 .33 .00 0.33 Note. *p < .05.

Table 10 presents the t-test data for each input mode analyzed between each frequency band for the translation test, and Table 11 presents the same data for the MC test in order to show where the differences were. Table 11. T-test scores for the MC test at each frequency band by input at Posttest 1 15–20 15–20 15–20 10–13 10–13 7–9 Mode vs.10–13 vs. 7–9 vs. 2–3 vs. 7–9 vs. 2–3 vs. 2–3 Reading-only 3.50* 4.02* 6.42* 0.79 1.50 3.90* Reading-while-listening 1.36 4.19* 9.49* 2.34* 6.34* 5.74* Listening-only 1.79 .56 2.05* 1.01 3.43* 3.43* Note. *p < .05.

As one would expect, the more frequently met words were better learnt than the less frequently met words. Both tests showed significant decay between each frequency band. This did not happen for the listening-only mode probably because of floor effects. Table 9 also confirms differences in the acquisition rates by frequency of recurrence by input mode. The MC tests for reading-only and reading-while-listening modes yielded the following rates for the 7–9 frequency band: 45% (3.14/7) and 46% (3.23/7) respectively. However, the meaning-translation test rates for the 7–9 band were far lower: 10% for reading-only and 14% for reading-while-listening. In the listening-only mode, according to the MC test results, even having met a word 10–13 Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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times, there is a less than 36% (2.54/7) chance that the word can be recognized. Furthermore, meaning-translation test results indicate that 10–13 meetings of a word will yield only a 1.5% (0.11/7) chance that its meaning will be understood when encountered again. Moreover, only 3% (0.19) of the 7 words met 15–20 times in the texts were acquired. The data suggest that the acquisition of words through listening is considerably slower than from reading, and as such more recurrences of words are needed for acquisition (as defined by a correct score on the meaning-translation test) to take place. Ultimately, this suggests that there is little or no chance a new word will be picked up from listening unless the word is met considerably more than 20 times. Extrapolation of these data shows that maybe 50 or even 100 meetings may not be enough to acquire a word’s meaning from listening-only. As has recently been shown, even partial knowledge such as the ability to recognise a word’s form is hard to pick up from listening alone (Donkaewbua, 2008). It also suggests that far more listening than reading needs to be done for vocabulary learning through extensive exposure. It should also be noted that in this study more uptake of vocabulary might have been possible if the listening treatment had been in shorter, more manageable sessions. The reading-only mode data in this study replicate the Waring and Takaki (2003) findings, which showed that (a) unless words are met a sufficient number of times and (b) are met again soon after reading, then the word knowledge gained will decay. Recent research indicates that a sufficient number is likely to be much higher than 7–9 times for long term retention, and in fact may be closer to 30–50 times or higher (Waring, 2008) for new words met through graded reading. Research Question 4: Are there significant differences in acquisition rates depending on whether the test is a multiple-choice test or a meaning-translation test? The aim here is to determine if there are significant differences between the test types, which in turn can tell us if one type of test is more difficult than others, or to put it another way, do the tests measure different levels of word knowledge? This has considerable implications for the type of test used in this kind of research. There were significant differences between each test within each input mode as shown by the data in Table 4 and Table 12 and the ANOVA scores. For the reading-only mode there was a significant difference between the two test types, F = 57.17, p < .01, for the reading-while-listening mode, F = 68.14, p < .01, and for the listeningonly mode, F = 208.49, p < .01. The t-test results (based on adjusted alpha) in Table 12 show that the scores differed significantly depending on which test was taken. These data show that the test types employed by researchers that aim to assess gains from incidental vocabulary acquisition matter greatly. Table 12. T-test results between test types at Posttest 1 Mode MC test vs. translation test Reading-only 20.4** Reading-while-listening 23.1** Listening-only 17.8** Note. **p < .01.

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Table 13 presents the t-test data for differences between each of the various input modes for each test. While there was no significant difference between reading-only and reading-while-listening modes for the two tests, four of the t tests showed significant differences. There were significant differences between the listening-only and reading-only scores, and listening-only and readingwhile-listening scores on each test type. Table 13. T-test results between the input modes at Posttest 1 Reading-only vs. Listening-only vs. Test reading-while-listening reading-only MC 0.86 5.70* Translation 0.41 5.67* Note. *p < .05.

Listening-only vs. reading-while-listening 7.23* 5.52*

In terms of test type, the MC test showed significant differences in the listening-only versus reading-only modes, t = 5.70, and the listening-only versus reading-while-listening modes, t = 7.23, but not in the reading-only versus reading-while-listening modes, t = 0.86. Similarly, the meaning-translation test showed significant differences in the listening-only versus reading-only modes, t = 5.67, and in the listening-only versus reading-while-listening modes, t = 5.52, but not in the reading-only versus reading-while-listening modes, t = 0.41. In sum, the data show that the subjects picked up some words from their reading and listening experiences in this study, but far fewer words were picked up in the listening-only mode compared with the other two modes. The data for the reading-only mode replicate that of Waring and Takaki (2003), which found that on the unprompted translation test few words were picked up and retained, but if measured by an MC test, some words were known. This suggests that the recognition of words from reading is acquired before a meaning can be produced on a translation test. Research Question 5: Do the subjects prefer to read only, read while listening, or listen only to stories? Table 14 presents the data from the questionnaire that was administered immediately after the reading and listening sessions for each of the three stories. It is evident that the subjects were most comfortable with the story met in the reading-while-listening mode. They were also quite comfortable with the story met in the reading-only mode. However, the story they met in the listening-only mode was clearly the least favored with almost all scores below the median of 2.5. Table 14. Mean scores from the questionnaire Was it easy to Did you know most Mode read or listen to? of the words? Reading-only 2.86 2.97 Reading-while3.34 2.86 listening Listening-only 1.91 2.34 Note. Max = 5.

Did you understand the story? 3.17 3.34

Was the story interesting? 3.40 3.54

2.06

2.60

Table 15 presents the data from the written comments extracted from the subjects’ brief essays. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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These essays were written at the conclusion of the reading and listening sessions, and on completion of Posttest 2 in Week 7. The Elephant Man was generally perceived to be both the most interesting and the easiest book. The essay data revealed that the great majority of subjects were inclined towards the readingwhile-listening mode (72%). In addition, while a sizeable minority was in favor of the readingonly mode (28%), no subjects indicated unequivocally that they preferred the listening-only mode. These data are supported by their actual performance in each mode. The all-texts scores for the meaning-translation test at Posttest 1 (see Table 4) has the reading-while-listening mode ranked first with 16% of the words learned, the reading-only mode ranked second with 15% of the words learned, and listening-only lies in third place with 2% words learned. The data in Table 14 also point to listening-only being the most difficult, the least pleasurable, and the most difficult to understand. This would most likely have rendered the story also less interesting. The reading-only and reading-while-listening mode ratings though fared considerably better with all the scores above the median of 2.5. Table 15. Data for the written comments in essays

The Elephant Man

One-Way Ticket

The Witches of Pendle

26 (74%)

5 (14%)

4 (12%)

21 (60%)

8 (23%)

6 (17%)

Reading-only

Reading-whilelistening

Listening-only

10 (28%)

25 (72%)

0 (0%)

Q1. Which book did you like the most? Q2. Which book was easiest?

Q3. Which mode did you prefer? Note. n = 35.

Although not a research question in this study, it is nevertheless interesting to look at the subjects’ responses to Items 1 and 2 in their short essays (i.e., the story they liked the most) and the story they thought the easiest (Table 15). It is clear that The Elephant Man was the most favored story by far (74%), followed by One-Way Ticket (14%), and then by The Witches of Pendle (12%). This pattern is repeated in the subjects’ responses to which book they thought the easiest. By examining more closely the subjects’ written comments regarding their favorite book, and which they considered the easiest, a broader picture begins to emerge of the type of material that students may readily engage with at an intellectual or emotional level. From the data, it emerged that there was a good degree of intellectual and emotional involvement due to the stories being interesting, thought provoking, moving, funny or sad. It would seem that, as Elley (1989) argued, “attention levels are greatest when students are aroused by… such variables as novelty, humor, conflict, suspense, incongruity, vividness, and the like” (p. 185). All three stories possessed these variables to a greater or lesser extent. Finally, on reviewing the subjects’ reasons as to why they found a particular story the easiest, 75% reported that it was because the story was in their preferred mode, which, as we have seen, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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was predominantly reading-while-listening, followed by reading-only, reflecting corresponding success rates on the tests. It would seem, therefore, that such over-riding preferences for mode would be worthy of teachers’ consideration when planning lessons. General Discussion The results of the meaning-translation test at the immediate posttest show that the subjects were able to learn new words from context and that they learned most words in the reading-whilelistening mode (4.39 of 28 words), followed by the reading-only mode (4.10 of 28) and then the listening-only mode (0.56 of 28). Moreover, the results from the meaning-translation and MC tests indicated that relatively little decay occurred over 3 months. However, the meaningtranslation test scores dropped more considerably, albeit from a much lower starting point. In terms of 3 months’ retention of unprompted meaning, on average the subjects learned one new word from reading while listening to a graded reader, one new word from reading-only, and effectively no words from listening-only. In terms of the acquisition of new (previously unknown before exposure) vocabulary, this was quite a disappointing rate of return considering the effort involved. More encouragingly, however, the data from the MC test indicated higher learning and retention rates. This, in turn, suggests that some partial knowledge not accessed by the insensitive meaning-translation test was found to be known via the more sensitive (i.e., their knowledge was prompted) MC test. The data also indicated that the more frequently a word is met, the more chance it has of being learned. It also suggests that unless the words are met a sufficient number of times and are met again soon after in subsequent reading or listening experiences, then the word knowledge gained will decay. A sufficient number is likely to be considerably higher than seven to nine times for long-term retention (Waring, 2008). It was found that the type of instrument used to assess vocabulary gains in learning-from-context research had a great bearing on the degree of success deemed to have occurred. In this study, Table 4 shows that the lowest mean rate of uptake of new vocabulary as measured by the MC test was 29% (8.20 of 28 words in the listening-only mode). This was almost double the highest mean rate of uptake as measured by the meaning-translation test, which was found to be 16% (4.39 words in the reading-while-listening mode). Therefore, as Waring and Takaki (2003) pointed out, great care must be taken when selecting test types in studies of a similar design to the one undertaken here. In terms of preferred input mode, reading-while-listening was considered the most comfortable by the majority of subjects; a sizeable minority favored reading-only, while no one explicitly favored listening-only. The vocabulary gains shown in the data mirrored these preferences. It would seem that for the majority of subjects in this study, reading while listening to a 400headword-level graded reader narrated at 93 wpm promoted good understanding. Informal interviews with some of the subjects after the study revealed that a key reason for favoring the reading-while-listening mode was that the necessity of having to segment or chunk the text of the story as they read it was done for them by the narrator on the cassette. Consequently, it would Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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appear they had enough spare working-memory space to access the content more effectively, and in turn make better deductions of the meanings of the target words. This coincides with what Amer (1997) and Dhaif (1990) found in their studies. However, as Goh (2002) pointed out, “in the case of advanced listeners, the bottom-up processes [of word recognition] are largely automatized…they do not need to spend time on matching sequences of sounds with written words in their mental lexicon” (p. 7). Accordingly, they would tend to direct their attention to making higher-level inferences (i.e., engaging in the utilization of already perceived or segmented information). In the present study, it was found that whereas the majority of subjects were comfortable with the reading-while-listening mode, more proficient subjects were not always inclined towards this mode. Finally, while the familiar reading-only mode allowed subjects to keep to their own pace, and if necessary to back track without interruption, the subjects encountered considerable obstacles when trying to comprehend the story and substitute words they met in listening-only mode. Clearly, the inaccurate perception of the pronunciation of words and phrases is potentially a greater barrier in listening than in reading. Implications for Teaching and Learning This study has shown that relatively minimal growth and retention of new vocabulary occurs when reading a single graded reader, and thus points to the need for repeated encounters with words in a collection of graded texts at regular intervals. To ensure exposure to great amounts of written text, graded readers should form part of an extensive reading program and learners should endeavor to read approximately a book a week at coverage rates of 95% or more (Day & Bamford, 1998; Nation & Wang, 1999). Learning vocabulary from listening. The results of this study also confirm learners’ potential difficulty with the listening-only mode. Although some of the contributing factors were outlined earlier, further research will have to be done to determine whether poor performance on the listening-only tests is a linguistic, testing, or language-processing problem. It is certainly clear, however, that teachers of Japanese learners of English should not assume that learners can listen at the same headword level at which they can read. This probably also applies to learners of English from other language backgrounds whose L1 phonological systems are markedly dissimilar to that of English. Moreover, we could say, at least for these subjects, that because their reading level was substantially higher than their listening level, it would be wise for them to practice extensive listening at either (a) an easier graded-reader level than that at which they can read comfortably, or (b) at a slower speed of narration. The data also suggest that teachers should create extensivelistening tests to determine at what level students can listen comfortably rather than rely on tests based on reading ability. Lastly, if learners want to improve their aural perception of streams of speech, one bridge to proficiency in listening-only may be to do extended practice in the readingwhile-listening mode first. Alternatively, learners could read the book first, then read-whilelistening to it, and finally listen only. In this way, learners would be primed for the words when they listen to them. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Inferring meaning from context. As was done with the 35 subjects in this study, foreign-language learners should be provided with opportunities and guidance on how to capitalize on the incidental learning of vocabulary from their extensive reading and listening. As Nation (2001) pointed out, “inferring vocabulary meaning from context…is an essential strategy for developing reading comprehension and promoting lexical acquisition” (p. 240). Thus, if learners do a lot of reading and listening, there will be considerable cumulative enrichment of partially known words as well as the establishment of certain new words in their lexicons. Inferring the meanings of unknown words from context is therefore important both for coping with and learning unfamiliar words. Limitations of the Study This study examined data from only 35 subjects. Thirty-three other subjects had taken part at an earlier stage of the experiment, but for various reasons were not able to submit all the data. This suggests that in order to collect more reliable data, it is important to ensure that there is a larger cohort of subjects. A second limitation was that this study examined only Japanese learners. Therefore, learners from other language backgrounds should be investigated as well. A replication of this experiment would be welcomed. Thirdly, subjects were exposed to a mean of only 5,567 words in each input mode. Therefore, to gather more data on the effectiveness of learning vocabulary from reading and listening to stories in a foreign language, it would be better to devise studies that include multiple or longer texts in each mode. Lastly, the study assumed that the use of a 400-headword-level graded reader would provide no significant hindrance for the necessary conditions for inferring new words from context. As this was not precisely determined beforehand, it may have been a factor in the low learning and retention rates, especially in the listening-only mode. Conclusion This study has shown that relatively few new words are learnt from reading a graded reader as measured by a meaning-translation test. However, more vocabulary knowledge was acquired from the reading if we take the MC test as a measure of vocabulary knowledge. These two tests together suggest that the nature of vocabulary learning from extensive reading or listening is more complex than can be determined from this study. Indeed, it suggests that a considerable amount of vocabulary knowledge was gained from the exposure, but was not assessed. Such knowledge might include the noticing of lexical phrases, collocational and colligational patterns, new nuances of meanings, improved lexical access speed, and so on. It is probably here that the true benefit of reading and listening extensively occurs. Investigating how much collocation, lexical pattern knowledge and so forth is learnt from extensive reading and listening is probably where the future lies with this type of research, because numerous studies including this one have now determined how much learners can pick up from word-focused experiments, as opposed to word knowledge at the supra-word level (i.e., collocation and lexical patterns). We feel it is now time for researchers to look beyond the word level and research the more complex nature of vocabulary learning as measured by collocational Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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knowledge, lexical pattern knowledge and so forth. References Akinyemi, R. (1994). The witches of pendle. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Amer, A. (1997). The effect of the teacher’s reading aloud on the reading comprehension of EFL students. ELT Journal, 51, 43–47. Bassett. J. (1991). One-way ticket. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Boettcher, J. (1980). Fluent readers’ strategies for assigning meaning to unfamiliar words in context. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Minnesota, USA. Bright, J., & McGregor, G. (1970). Teaching English as a second language. London: Longman. Brown, R. (2000). Extensive reading in action. Studies in English Language and Literature, 41, 79–123. Carey, S. (1978). The child as word learner. In M. Halle, J. Bresnan, & G. Miller (Eds.), Linguistic theory and psychological reality (pp. 264–293). Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Carey, S. (1982). Semantic development: The state of the art. In E. Wanner & L. Gleitman (Eds.), Language acquisition: The state of the art (pp. 345–389). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Cho, K., & Krashen, S. (1994). Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series: Adult ESL acquisition. Journal of Reading, 37, 662–667. Clark, E. (1973). What’s in a word: On the child’s acquisition of semantics in his first language. In T. Moore (Ed.), Cognitive development and the acquisition of language (pp. 65–110). New York, NY: Academic Press. Dale, E., O’Rourke, J., & Bamman, H. (1971). Techniques in teaching vocabulary. Palo Alto: Field Educational Publications. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Day, R. R., Omura, C., & Hiramatsu, M. (1991). Incidental EFL vocabulary learning and reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 541–551. Deighton, L. (1959). Vocabulary development in the classroom. New York: Columbia University Press. Dhaif, H. (1990). Reading aloud for comprehension: A neglected teaching aid. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 457–464. Donkaewbua, S. (2008). The effects of previous partial word knowledge on vocabulary learning through listening. Manuscript in preparation. Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Dupuy, B., & Krashen S. (1993). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in French as a foreign language. Applied Language Learning, 4, 55–63. Eichholz, G., & Barbe, R. (1961). An experiment in vocabulary development. Educational Research Bulletin, 28, 1–7. Eller, R., Pappas, C., & Brown, E. (1988). The lexical development of kindergartners: Learning from written context. Journal of Reading Behavior, 20, 5–24. Elley, W. (1985). What do children learn from being read to? Wellington, New Zealand: New Zealand Council of Educational Research & Institute of Education. Elley, W. (1988). New vocabulary: How do children learn new words? Wellington, New Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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reading a graded reader? Reading in a Foreign Language, 15, 130–163. Webb, S. (2005). Receptive and productive vocabulary learning: The effects of reading and writing on word knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 33–52. West, M. (1953). The technique of reading aloud to a class. ELT Journal, 8, 21–24. Widdowson, H. (1979). Explorations in applied linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Appendix A The List of Test Items for the 3 Stories Group

15–20 group

10–13 group

7–9 group

2–3 group

The Elephant Man Word Happy Day/s Book/s All Creature Shop/keeper Lady/ies Cab

Substitute Mird Sall/s Hoult/s Lert Dront Plirty/keeper Smole/s Tander

Door/s Bed Skin Theatre Nurse Body Home

Plitch Crost Labin Weat Koon Bletch Alart

Letter Little Mouth Leg Bag Old Hole

Hine Pusy Reak Grift Slape Throst Kisp

Famous Blind Cigarette Trousers Heavy Nose

Frime Creach Queffle Spullers Sweth Culb

One-Way Ticket Recurrences 20 17 19 17 15 15 15 13

Total Running words Coverage

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Word Guard Police Money Woman/men Tall/er Long Diamond Slow/ly

Substitute Loncher Dant Shunk Bandom/s Nagent/er Boke Mong Mald/ly

13 12 12 11 11 10 9

Story/ies Knife Restaurant Newspaper Station Holiday Voice

Preat/s Flotter Onder Nivel Whiffle Trank Blamp

9 9 7 6 7 7 3

Loud/ly Quick/ly Great Seat Drink Husband Expensive Boat Corridor Top Village Blood Hot

2 2 2 2 2 2 272

The Witches of Pendle Recurrences 20 20 17 18 16 15 15 12

Word Floor Family Big True/truth Judge Afraid Prison Friend

Substitute Gaffle Blunk Rait Wathe Heaft Clomb Wessant Fandle

Recurrences 15 18 16 20 20 15 15 13

12 11 11 11 11 10 9

Eye Pedlar Food Warm Fire Hair Dark

Florp Pline Chorm Thift Gorgan Gurt Poken

13 11 10 10 10 10 9

Dage/ly Roth/ly Gline Shuft Mastime Mollet Dasp

9 8 9 8 6 7 3

Picture Horse Table Bad Kind/ly Noise/y Difficult

Fent Brask Chutter Lood Spollen/ly Drint/y Aspute

8 8 7 7 6 6 2

Elver Scront Pib Bawn Chonter Teft

3 3 2 2 2 2 272

Summer Ugly Hat Bottle Boy Chair

Starp Lorky Jerth Keem Platt Slone

3 3 3 2 2 2 264

5415

5522

5765

95.0%

95.0%

95.4%

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Appendix B Samples of the test Test 1. Meaning-translation Test What do these words mean? Write the meaning in Japanese. (以下の単語の意味は何だと思いますか？日本語で答えて下さい。もし考えが複数ある場合は、 自信のある順に書いて下さい。) 1) 2) 3)

1…………… 1…………… 1……………

mird sall hoult

2…………… 2…………… 2……………

Test 2. Multiple Choice Recognition Test Circle the word with the nearest meaning. (１～２8 の単語の意味に近いと思う単語を 4 つの中からそれぞれ選んで下さい。 分からない場 合は分からないを選んで下さい。) 1) 2) 3)

mird sall hoult

ハッピー 日 人

ワクワクする 誕生 本

寒い 腕 家

臭い 願い 鳥

分からない 分からない 分からない

English translations of the correct choices and distracters in this sample test for The Elephant Man. 1) 2) 3)

mird sall hoult

happy day Person

exciting birth book

cold arm house

smelly wish bird

I don’t know I don’t know I don’t know

About the Authors Ronan Brown, MA MEd, has taught English as a foreign language in Saudi Arabia, UAE, China, and Japan. He is a professor of English at Seinan Gakuin University in Fukuoka, Japan. His research interests include extensive reading, vocabulary acquisition, and the teaching of literature in the language classroom. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. Rob Waring researches extensive reading and second language vocabulary acquisition. He has presented and published widely on these topics. He is an associate professor at Notre Dame Seishin University in Okayama, Japan. Professor Waring is a board member of the Extensive Reading Foundation. E-mail: [email protected] Dr. Sangrawee Donkaewbua is currently a lecturer at Rajabhat Mahasarakham University, Thailand. In 2008, she was awarded her PhD in Applied Linguistics from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 164–190

The virtuous circle: Modeling individual differences in L2 reading and vocabulary development Diana Pulido and David Z. Hambrick Michigan State University United States Abstract The present study investigated the relative contributions of experiential and ability factors to second language (L2) passage comprehension and L2 vocabulary retention. Participants included a cross section of 99 adult learners of Spanish as a foreign language enrolled in beginning through advanced level university Spanish courses. Participants completed a standardized reading proficiency test (Adult Basic Learning Examination, Spanish version) to verify a range in proficiency, a checklist and translation passage sight vocabulary test, and a written recall in the native language of the 4 passages that were read. Vocabulary retention was measured at 2 time intervals by a multiple-choice test of receptive retention of meaning of targeted vocabulary. Data were analyzed using structural equation modeling (SEM). Results revealed consistent support for the following model: (a) Language processing experience positively influenced L2 passage sight vocabulary; (b) L2 passage sight vocabulary positively influenced narrative passage comprehension; and (c) L2 comprehension positively influenced L2 vocabulary growth. Keywords: sight vocabulary, reading comprehension, incidental vocabulary learning, SEM, language processing experience

What explains variance in second language (L2) reading comprehension ability and related literacy skills? Vocabulary knowledge is one important component of literacy. Vocabulary can develop as a byproduct of engaging in the component processes involved in reading, such as lower-level linguistic and higher-level discourse processing and its integration with prior knowledge. Such processing requires knowledge that is accrued through experience with the target language, as well as experience with everyday situations or specific subject matter (e.g., Ellis, 1994; Hu & Nation, 2000; Koda, 1989; Krashen, 1989; Laufer, 1997; Nagy, 1997; Nation, 2001; Pulido, 2003, 2004a, 2007, in press-b, in press-a; Pulido, Hambrick, & Russell, 2007). Nuttall (1982), and later Coady (1997), described the relationships among literacy skills, engagement in reading, and language learning as being both a vicious circle and a virtuous circle. On the one hand, it is a vicious circle because L2 readers who do not engage in frequent reading also tend to be weak in the requisite skills and knowledge sources required for reading. Such readers also lack sufficient experience with the target language. When weak readers do read, they stumble over words that they do not know, read slowly, and experience difficulty in following http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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the ideas contained within and across sentences. With such difficulty they become frustrated and develop a distaste for reading. This results in infrequent reading and inhibits potential growth of knowledge, such as linguistic knowledge. On the other hand, it is a virtuous circle in that with more L2 processing experience, learners become more efficient in the skills required for reading. They read more frequently and better, and are apt to experience more growth in knowledge from engaging in literacy activities. At present, there is a lack of L2 research using sophisticated modeling frameworks to delineate the nature of the multi-componential cycle described above. The present study attempts to shed a new light on the nature of the cycle by uncovering in specific reading activities the simultaneous contributions of language processing experience and proficiency factors to L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary retention. The aim is to provide a more comprehensive model of L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary development through reading than what has been previously obtained through “single-focus” studies (Koda, 2005, p. 183). Reading Comprehension Comprehension, a complex cognitive process, is central to acquiring a new linguistic system: Input must be decoded in some comprehensible fashion for second language acquisition (SLA) to occur. In the case of L2 reading comprehension, the reader uses previous knowledge to construct and integrate meaning from text (e.g., Bernhardt, 1991; Carrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 2005, 2007; Nassaji, 2002; Swaffar, Arens, & Byrnes, 1991). During reading there is simultaneous cognitive processing involving pattern recognition, letter identification, lexical access, concept activation, syntactic analysis, propositional encoding, sentence comprehension, intersentential integration, activation of prior knowledge, information storage, and comprehension monitoring. According to connectionist models (e.g., Koda, 2005, 2007; Nassaji, 2002) the generic knowledge structures, or background knowledge, that are accessed during reading are largely determined by the quality of the textbase that the learner constructs. Textbase quality is affected by the individual’s text processing efficiency (i.e., ability in lower-level processes, such as word recognition and syntactic parsing) and working memory. Comprehension processes and SLA processes, although somewhat overlapping, are also distinct. For example, comprehension involves constructing a mental representation from the propositional content for the purpose of understanding the message. However, in order for a linguistic system to be developed through comprehension activities, additional input processing must occur. Such processing entails making form-meaning connections from the input, or focusing attention on new forms and associating them with their functions or referents. For vocabulary development through reading, readers must first notice that words are unfamiliar. Then, if deemed relevant enough for further processing, they must infer meaning using context cues and linguistic and extra-linguistic knowledge. The syntactic, semantic, and pragmatic knowledge that becomes activated and held in working memory during reading is then utilized on-line to constrain subsequent textual and lexical interpretations. This process is known as lexical bootstrapping (for the first language [L1] see Clark, 1993, and Sternberg, 1987; for the L2 see De Bot, Paribakht, & Wesche, 1997). When word meanings are not known during reading, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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adult L2 learners may use whatever information is available to interpret them to the extent that their proficiency in the language enables them to use such information: all of the elements above function in tandem in generating initial form-meaning connections for new words during reading (see also Nagy, 1997; Nassaji, 2003; Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Pulido, 2007, in press-b, in press-a; Pulido et al., 2007). At the same time, readers must also pay sufficient attention to the connection between the meaning and the new word form. This involves some unspecified degree of elaborative rehearsal and association with previous knowledge (Baddeley, 1998). If there are too many constraints on the individual’s processing capacity (Just & Carpenter, 1992; McLaughlin, 1987), characteristic of lower proficiency learners, or if unfamiliar words are not deemed important (Craik & Tulving, 1975), then these words may be processed more superficially and are less likely to be retrieved from memory (e.g., Ellis, 1994, 2001; Gass, 1999; Hulstijn, 2001, 2003; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001; Robinson, 2003; Schmidt, 2001). That is, learners may be able to achieve general comprehension without having to attend to the formal properties of new words. In sum, additional processing must be completed for vocabulary to develop through reading. Success in such processing presumably occurs as learners increasingly use the L2 and also as they gain more knowledge of the L2 itself. The following section discusses these crucial factors in more depth. Language Processing Experience Language learning requires exposure to language and engagement in input processing through reading, writing, speaking, and listening. Frequency of exposure to language has been implicated as the key catalyst driving the acquisition of simple and complex, and concrete and abstract linguistic structures (e.g., Ellis, 2002, 2005). Foreign language exposure can be accomplished in various ways, from formal coursework activities to study abroad experiences. Exposure outside of the classroom can occur through various modes, including conversation, television or film viewing, or via literacy activities (e.g., book, magazine, and newspaper reading). With regard to forms of exposure to print,1 Stanovich (e.g., 1986, 2000) has described how this might contribute to cognitive change, and, in particular, change in reading comprehension ability and vocabulary knowledge. The linguistic structures encountered through reading are qualitatively and quantitatively different from those encountered in common speech. Moderate-to low-frequency words and more complex linguistic structures appear more frequently in reading materials compared to everyday conversation (for the L1 see Biber, 1986, or Hayes, 1988; for the L2 see McCarthy & Carter, 1997; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000). Print exposure has also been implicated in connectionist models of L1 reading, for example, Landauer and Dumais’ (1997) latent semantic analysis. Their analysis demonstrated that vocabularies grow at very rapid rates through exposure and despite the lack of direct instruction in vocabulary. This serves as an example of the potential benefits of print exposure for L2 vocabulary learning, in addition to direct instruction. Numerous studies of English and Spanish L1 literacy conducted with children and adults have demonstrated strong contributions of print exposure to reading ability, vocabulary and Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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orthographic knowledge, as well as other indices of verbal intelligence (e.g., Beech, 2002; Cipielewski & Stanovich, 1992; Cunningham & Stanovich, 1991; Echols, Stanovich, West, & Zehr, 1996; Gutierrez-Clellen & Kreiter, 2003; Lee, Krashen, & Tse, 1997; Rodrigo, McQuillan, & Krashen, 1996; Stanovich & West, 1989; West, Stanovich, & Mitchell, 1993). Findings of a strong reciprocal relationship between vocabulary knowledge and reading ability led Stanovich (1986) to conclude that the amount of exposure to print outside of school was a key contributing factor in causing achievement differences that were observed inside the classroom. He subsequently concluded that “the differential reading skills thus acquired enable differential bootstrapping of further vocabulary, knowledge, and cognitive structures outside of school” (Stanovich, 2000, p. 151). In native language studies, other avenues of language exposure (e.g., television and film viewing or everyday conversation) have not contributed to literacy development and content knowledge as robustly as print exposure. In fact, television viewing accounted for no additional variance in general knowledge after controlling for intelligence, verbal and non-verbal ability (e.g., Stanovich & Cunningham, 1993). In some studies it even resulted in negative correlations with vocabulary knowledge in readers and non-readers, and individuals high and low in print exposure (e.g., West et al., 1993). Similar arguments for the benefits of language exposure and reading have also been applied to the L2 context. For example, Ellis (1994, 2002) and Krashen (1989, 2004) have described the phenomenon of the rich getting richer for L2 vocabulary acquisition through reading and the effects of frequency of exposure on SLA.2 There are numerous correlational studies associating greater gains on measures of L2 literacy (e.g., orthographic, phonological, vocabulary, and grammar knowledge, and reading proficiency) with increased exposure to the foreign language, especially through extensive reading activities (e.g., Constantino, Lee, Cho, & Krashen, 1997; Elley, 1991; Elley & Mangubhai, 1983; Haynes & Carr, 1990; Kim & Krashen, 1997; Lee, Krashen, & Gibbons, 1996; McQuillan, 2006; Pulido et al., 2007). In the case of foreign language learning, additional exposure to language through speaking and listening should also be beneficial to L2 literacy development, unlike in the case of the L1 studies.3 As L2 learners advance in formal language study, they also engage in more speaking and listening activities (e.g., through literature, culture, film, and conversation courses). Such exposure should increase the frequency with which they encounter more varied vocabulary and complex language structures. In turn, this should be beneficial in promoting automaticity in processing such structures. Thus, it appears that the amount of exposure to language is a significant factor in contributing to gains in literacy. Passage Sight Vocabulary Stanovich (1986) argued that the key mechanism allowing for capacity to be allocated to comprehension during reading was efficient decoding and word recognition skills. L2 reading research has also demonstrated the importance of word recognition efficiency and general vocabulary knowledge in reading development (e.g., Koda, 1989, 2005, 2007; Laufer, 1992; Laufer & Sim, 1985; Mecartty, 2000; Ulijn & Strother, 1990). For instance, Laufer (1997, p. 21) suggested that for L2 readers the “threshold for reading comprehension is, to a large extent, lexical”. Likewise, a general vocabulary knowledge threshold has also been reported for learning vocabulary through reading (Haynes & Baker, 1993; Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Nassaji, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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2004). Yet, crucial to reading and lexical input processing is knowledge of vocabulary specifically associated with the passages, or passage sight vocabulary (Pulido, 2000, 2003, 2004b, 2007, in press-b).4 Passage sight vocabulary has been largely ignored in reading research (see Bernhardt, 2004). The more knowledge that readers have of the vocabulary specific to a given passage (i.e., the higher the text coverage), the more comprehensible the input becomes. And, with sufficient passage sight vocabulary and efficient decoding and word recognition skills, readers can then allocate attentional resources to engaging in other required text comprehension processes such as parsing sentences, constructing and integrating ideas from context, using information from long-term memory, and monitoring comprehension. That is, passage sight vocabulary fuels comprehension processes and results in a greater likelihood of successful lexical inferencing and further lexical growth. Without such knowledge and efficiency, readers are apt to experience a short circuit—that is, a failure to understand the relationships among ideas in the text, to monitor comprehension, and to infer and integrate new meaning. Ultimately, this will result in fewer chances for vocabulary development (e.g., Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 2005, 2007; Laufer, 1997). Several studies using think-aloud tasks have elicited the knowledge sources that L2 readers use during reading. They observed that weaker learners experienced more difficulty in integrating multiple textual cues and background knowledge than stronger learners, who appeared to know more words in the context (e.g., Haynes, 1993; Haynes & Baker, 1993; Lee & Wolf, 1997; Parry, 1997; Rott, 2000). These results were determined by anecdotal observations, rather than quantitative measurements of the vocabulary contained within the passages. There is scant published empirical evidence illustrating the precise relationship between vocabulary knowledge specific to a given text and lexical development associated with processing that text. Pulido (2003, 2004b, 2007) investigated the role of passage sight vocabulary in vocabulary development through reading. Passage sight vocabulary was measured by a combination self-report of familiarity with non-target words in a passage and an L2-L1 translation test of the words in the passage for which participants had reported prior familiarity. In Pulido’s (2003) study with a cross-section of L2 learners of Spanish, the results revealed a significant role of passage sight vocabulary on measures of lexical gain (L2-L1 translation production and L2-L1 translation recognition) 2 and 28 days after reading. In a different cross-sectional study, Pulido (2007) found significant effects of passage sight vocabulary on measures of lexical inferencing, difficulty in lexical inferencing, and receptive retention of target word (TW) meanings. These results were obtained even after a verification task to confirm or correct the guesses that had been made. In addition, the learners of the group with greater levels of sight vocabulary also reported greater ease in guessing the TWs from the more familiar story. These combined findings concerning passage sight vocabulary underscore the importance of knowledge of vocabulary specific to passages as one of many knowledge sources critical to successful reading comprehension and lexical input processing. The preceding review establishes that individual differences in vocabulary arise from a number of factors, some of which include L2 language processing experience, L2 passage comprehension, as well as preexisting L2 passage sight vocabulary. Therefore, the following questions were addressed: 1. Does L2 language processing experience positively contribute to L2 passage sight Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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vocabulary knowledge? 2. Does L2 passage sight vocabulary knowledge positively contribute to comprehension of L2 passages containing such vocabulary? 3. Does L2 reading comprehension positively contribute to L2 vocabulary growth through reading? We hypothesized the following relations among these factors: (a) L2 language processing experience positively contributes to L2 passage sight vocabulary knowledge; (b) L2 passage sight vocabulary knowledge positively contributes to comprehension of passages containing such vocabulary; and (c) L2 reading comprehension positively contributes to L2 vocabulary growth through reading. Method Participants Ninety-nine adult English-speaking learners of Spanish served as participants. They were recruited from three distinct university course levels: beginning (2nd-semester elementary Spanish), n = 43; intermediate (5th-semester composition), n = 39; and advanced (8th-semester literature), n = 17. Table 1 summarizes additional participant characteristics. The participants represented a wide range of Spanish reading ability, as measured by the Spanish version of the Adult Basic Learning Examination (ABLE); total scores ranged from 18 to 47 (M = 35.6, SD = 8.0, Max = 48). It can also be seen that the subjects had diverse Spanish language learning backgrounds, both through formal instruction and through studying and living abroad. Table 1. Background characteristics of participants Total Beginning (N = 99) (n = 43) Variable

Intermediate (n = 39)

Advanced (n = 17)

M SD M SD M SD M SD ABLE score 35.6 8.0 28.0 5.2 40.1 4.1 43.1 2.2 Years of Spanish study 4.4 3.1 1.4 1.2 6.6 1.8 6.9 2.0 No. of Spanish courses 4.2 3.5 2.0 0.0 3.6 1.5 11.2 2.0 Age of starting Spanish study 15.3 6.1 19.3 5.8 12.2 4.2 12.4 5.0 Study abroad in L2 country (%) 22.2 – 2.3 – 12.8 – 94.0 – Visit L2 country (%) 48.5 – 39.5 – 56.4 – 52.9 – Note. ABLE = Adult Basic Language Examination reading proficiency test (Spanish version).

Materials Reading passages. An incidental learning research paradigm was used. The term incidental learning is used simply to refer to the specific research paradigm (e.g., Hulstijn, 2001, 2003) where, in the orienting instructions, there was no mention of an upcoming vocabulary test. This paradigm was chosen in order to approximate real world reading, where readers do not typically Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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read for the purpose of taking a vocabulary test afterward, but rather for comprehending the passage as a whole. The texts used for the present study were four contrived script-based narrative passages, two depicting more familiar scenarios, and two depicting less familiar scenarios (for examples of the passages, methodology to create them, and familiarity ratings see Pulido, 2003). By including passages ranging in familiarity to learners based on their background knowledge we were able to provide a more generalizable test of a model, as opposed to simply including either familiar or unfamiliar passages. El viaje al supermercado (“The Trip to the Supermarket”) and La cita con el médico (“The Doctor's Appointment”) were based on scenarios considered to be routine and very familiar to the participants, based upon their experience. The two less familiar passages, La publicación de un artículo (“Publishing an Article”) and Comprando una casa (“Buying a House”) were based on scenarios that were regarded as less familiar to participants, based upon their experience. All of the stories conformed to a temporally ordered set of activities pertinent to the scenarios at hand. In addition, within each scenario there were particular roles and objects associated with the actions involved in the story; that is, each familiar story was loosely centered around a script purported to be stored in participants’ long-term memory (Graesser, Singer, & Trabasso, 1994; Schank & Abelson, 1977). All stories were of similar sentence and text length and were, in general, structurally comparable. Each of the four passages was submitted to a semantic propositional analysis (e.g., Kintsch, 1998). A comparison of various text features of each story is found in Table 2. Table 2. Characteristics of passages Grocery shopping

Doctor’s office Publishing article

Home buying

Length (words) 174 168 164 172 ASL 10.89 9.88 10.25 10.11 Que clauses 1 2 2 2 Object pronouns 3 9 6 3 Reflexive pronouns 1 8 1 4 Semantic Propositions 58 55 45 46 a Familiarity rating 4.9 4.7 2.2 2.6 Note. ASL = average sentence length. a Familiarity with the activities in the situation and their order was rated on 5-point scale (1 = very unfamiliar to 5 = very familiar).

Target words. The TWs were 32 nonsense words (6 nouns and 2 verbs per story) that represented concepts frequently associated with the story scenarios (for a complete list see Pulido, 2003). The nonsense words were invented words constructed according to orthographic and morphological rules of Spanish. These were used to ensure that no learner had prior knowledge of the TWs. Each TW appeared only once in each story, and there were no definitional context clues provided for any of them. Language processing experience. Language processing experience was measured through a background questionnaire administered to all participants (see Appendix A). Four questions tapped language processing experience outside of formal learning experience (i.e., the number or type of Spanish courses taken). Participants were asked to estimate the amount of time (hours per Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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week) that they spent in reading, writing, speaking, and listening outside of their class time. Similar questionnaires have been used in reading research (e.g., Dewey, 2004; Freed, Dewey, Segalowitz, & Halter, 2004). L2 reading proficiency. Efficiency in reading ability is crucial for lexical bootstrapping. To ensure that there was a sufficient range of proficiency that was captured by our cross-sectional sample we assessed L2 reading proficiency, in addition to obtaining information about course level membership. The measure used was the Spanish version of the ABLE (Karlsen & Gardner, 1990) reading comprehension section. This is a timed test (i.e., 35 minutes) containing readings of a functional (e.g., letters, signs, ads, etc.) and educational (e.g., expositions) nature. The 48item multiple-choice measure contains 24 items that test literal comprehension ability (i.e., ability to understand what is explicitly stated in the texts, that is a text-based dimension) and 24 items that test inferential comprehension ability (i.e., ability to make inferences and draw conclusions from what is not explicitly stated, that is, a situation-model dimension). L2 passage sight vocabulary. Previous knowledge and familiarity with non-target vocabulary within each passage was tested via a self-report and translation (Spanish to English, L2-L1) measure. The first subcomponent consisted of a yes or no checklist to determine self-reported familiarity with the lexical items, while the second component was a translation (L2-L1) to measure previous knowledge of the meanings of words reported as being familiar. Since it was not feasible to test every single word type from each of the four passages, we counted the amount of new word tokens for each story. From this figure we then estimated which words were likely to be known by all learners. These words primarily included high frequency function words (e.g., el, la, en) and cognates (e.g., supermercado, clínica, publicación, visitar). After excluding these items, the remaining percentage of non-target words selected from each story and randomly included in a 125-item test was as follows: (a) grocery, 48%; (b) doctor, 45%; (c) publishing, 42%; and (d) home buying, 43%. Text comprehension. After reading each story participants completed a free written recall in their L1 (English). They were asked to write down as much information as possible without looking back at the passage. Each passage was first divided into complex propositions reflecting its semantic content (i.e., the predicate-argument schema), adapting methodologies from Kintsch (1998) for native language reading, and Barry and Lazarte (1998) for L2 reading (see Appendix B for a sample of the propositional breakdown). Propositional analyses such as these represent the semantic content of the text (i.e., the textbase), rather than the surface form or rhetorical organization of the passages. This methodology has received support in the psychological literature due to the psychological reality and validity of propositions (e.g., Chen & Donin, 1997; Kintsch, 1998; Underwood & Batt, 1996). In addition, a two-tiered hierarchy was adopted whereby propositions containing a verb as a relational term were worth 2 points. Propositions with an adverb or connective as the relational term were worth 1 point.5 Each proposition was scored according to the following system: (a) maximum points awarded for mentioning the gist of the proposition (e.g., predicate and all arguments), (b) half of all possible points awarded for mentioning a fragment of the proposition (e.g., predicate and/or some of the arguments), and (c) no points awarded if there was no mention whatsoever of the proposition. Level of text comprehension was calculated by first tabulating the percentage of semantic propositions correctly recalled by each participant on each passage, then tabulating the average across the four Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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stories. Vocabulary retention. Target word vocabulary gains from reading the four passages were measured at two distinct time intervals (e.g., 2 and 28 days after reading the passages). An L2-L1 translation recognition multiple-choice test was administered to measure receptive retention of meaning. One test form contained all 32 nonsense TWs, with each of the verbs in their infinitival forms, and the nouns in their original text forms. The order of presentation of the 32 TWs was randomized. Two test formats were subsequently created by reversing the order of presentation of the items. The multiple choice options were written to emphasize semantic, not syntactic, differences. They included four possible English (L1) translations, and a fifth option, I don't know. Among the four L1 translation options was the correct translation of the TW and three distracters. Each distracter conformed to at least one of the following criteria: (a) contextually proximate to the TW, (b) schematically appropriate, and (c) orthographically or phonologically close to another known word in the L1 or L2 and plausible for the given context. There were no options that were conceptually bizarre. Finally, where possible, the TW translations also appeared as distracters for other test items in order to minimize the likelihood of participants picking up associations between the TWs and their definitions from the test alone. Procedure There were four separate data-gathering phases. During Session 1 all participants completed tests and questionnaires designed to measure the predictor constructs in the following order: (a) background questionnaire, (b) L2 passage sight vocabulary test, (c) topic familiarity questionnaire, and (d) ABLE reading proficiency test. Session 2 was conducted approximately one week later, at which time all participants read all four stories. Each story was followed by a written recall in the L1 (English). During Session 3, conducted two days after Session 2, all participants completed the L2-L1 translation recognition measure to assess vocabulary retention. At session 4, conducted 28 days after reading the passages, the same multiple-choice vocabulary retention instrument was administered, as in Session 3. The order of presentation of the narratives was counterbalanced across all participants, as was the assignment of test formats at the different testing intervals. Before reading each passage all participants were instructed to read for the purposes of answering comprehension questions about the stories. There was no mention of the vocabulary learning focus of the study. Results We screened the data for univariate outliers on a variable-by-variable basis, where an outlier was defined as a value more than 3.5 standard deviation units from the variable mean. There were five such values, which we replaced with a less extreme value of 3.5 standard deviation units from the variable mean. Descriptive Statistics and Correlations Descriptive statistics and correlations are displayed in Table 3 for the language experience, Table 4 for the passage sight vocabulary and passage comprehension variables, and Table 5 for the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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vocabulary retention variables. Table 5 illustrates that the average rate of vocabulary learning was rather low. However, there was observed variation in the scores, which ranged from 0 to 6 points (75%) out of a maximum of 8 points. This indicates that rates were rather high for some learners. Internal consistency estimates were quite high (R2s > .50) for all of the variables, indicating acceptable reliability. The correlations among the passage sight vocabulary variables (average r = .94) and among the passage comprehension variables (average r = .77) were uniformly high, indicating that the measures captured the same construct, as intended. Table 3. Descriptive statistics and correlations for language experience variables M SD 1 2 3 1. Reading (hours/week)

2.9

3.4

(.66)

2. Writing (hours/week)

2.5

3.2

.78

(.64)

3. Speaking (hours/week)

2.1

4.1

.54

.58

4

(.49)

4. Listening (hours/week) 2.3 3.8 .58 .44 .69 (.50) 2 Note. Values along the diagonal are estimates of internal consistency reliability (R s). Correlations are statistically significant at .21 for the .05 level and at .30 for the .01 level. Table 4. Descriptive statistics and correlations for passage sight vocabulary and passage comprehension variables M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 Sight vocabulary 1. Publishing article 0.55 0.28 (.89) 2. Home buying 0.48 0.25 .94 (.96) 3. Grocery shopping 0.48 0.24 .90 .96 (.93) 4. Doctor’s office 0.51 0.28 .93 .96 .94 (.93) Passage comprehension 5. Publishing article 0.31 0.17 .58 .58 .51 .55 (.67) 6. Home buying 0.43 0.19 .57 .62 .58 .57 .73 (.73) 7. Grocery shopping 0.46 0.22 .70 .71 .67 .70 .80 .81 (.78) 8. Doctor’s office 0.42 0.20 .72 .72 .67 .73 .69 .78 .78 (.67) Note. Sight vocabulary variables reflect proportion correct; passage comprehension variables reflect number of propositions recalled. All correlations are statistically significant (p < .01). Table 5. Descriptive statistics and correlations for vocabulary retention variables Vocabulary retention M SD 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 variable Time 1 1. Publishing Article 1.7 1.4 (.31) 2. Home Buying 2.4 1.7 .49 (.31) 3. Grocery Shopping 2.7 1.7 .36 .29 (.18) 4. Doctor’s Office 2.3 1.4 .38 .42 .34 (.25) Time 2 5. Publishing Article 1.8 1.5 .43 .44 .22 .38 (.28) 6. Home Buying 2.5 1.6 .32 .62 .37 .45 .47 (.37) 7. Grocery Shopping 2.2 1.6 .34 .34 .49 .24 .26 .47 (.24) 8. Doctor’s Office 2.1 1.5 .37 .34 .30 .49 .41 .41 .32 (.24) Note. Maximum retention score = 8. Values along the diagonal are internal consistency estimates (R2s). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Variables reflect proportion correct. All correlations are statistically significant (p < .01).

By contrast, although correlations among the language experience variables were all positive, the reading and writing variables correlated more strongly with each other (r = .78) than with the speaking and listening variables, and vice-versa for the speaking and listening variables (r = .69), suggesting the existence of distinct language experience factors. (We test for this possibility in the next section). Finally, internal consistency estimates were somewhat low (.18 ≤ R2s ≤ .37) for the vocabulary retention variables, but correlations of the measures across testing occasions (i.e., test-retest correlations) were at least moderate in magnitude (.43 ≤ rs ≤ .62). Thus, overall, there was evidence that all of the variables had adequate reliability. Structural Equation Modeling Structural equation modeling (SEM) is a statistical approach that comprises two core techniques—factor analysis and path analysis—and affords two major advantages over other approaches that we could have used to analyze the data (e.g., multiple regression). First, SEM permits use of latent variables. Along with random error, it must be assumed that virtually any psychological variable, no matter how carefully measured, will reflect two types of influence: those that originate from the construct of interest and those that are specific to some task. Latent variables reflect only the variance common to a number of measures of some construct; taskspecific influences are statistically canceled out. Second, SEM permits the researcher to model relations, both causal and non-causal, among multiple variables simultaneously. Throughout this section, we report a number of statistics to characterize model fits. The χ2 test indicates whether there was a significant difference between the reproduced and observed covariance matrices. Thus, non-significant χ2s reflect a fit of the model to the data. However, even slight differences between reproduced and observed covariance matrices can result in significant χ2s, and additional fit statistics are typically reported. The comparative fit index (CFI) and non-normed fit index (NNFI) reflect improvement in the fit of a model over a baseline model in which covariances among observed variables are assumed to be zero. The root mean squared error of approximation (RMSEA) reflects the average difference between the observed and reproduced covariances. CFI and NNFI values of greater than .90, and RMSEA values less than .08, indicate acceptable fit (Kline, 2005). The sample size (N = 99) in this study was somewhat, though not extremely, small for SEM, and therefore we report standard errors for all parameter estimates from the models in the Appendix C. As an additional step to prepare the data for the structural equation modeling, we inspected skewness and kurtosis values to see whether the variables were approximately normally distributed; values were near zero for all variables, except the estimates of language experience, which tended to be positively skewed (> 2). To address this, we added a constant to each value to remove zeros, and then we performed a log transformation on each variable; the distributions were approximately normal (skewness values < 1.5, kurtosis values < 1), and thus we use the transformed variables in all subsequent analyses. Confirmatory Factor Analyses We analyzed the data in two steps. With separate analyses for the predictor variables and Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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criterion variables, the first step was to perform confirmatory factor analyses to see whether the constructs of interest were adequately measured. Initially, we specified a model with three factors: language experience, passage sight vocabulary, and passage comprehension. Model fit was not particularly impressive: χ2(51) = 146.59 (p < .01), CFI = .93, NFI = .89, RMSEA = .14. Consistent with the pattern of correlations noted above, modification indices suggested that this was because language experience comprised distinct factors, which seem to reflect conversation experience (i.e., speaking and listening) and print experience (i.e., reading and writing). We added these two factors to the model. Model fit was just at the level considered acceptable, χ2(48) = 97.05 (p < .01), CFI = .96, NFI = .93, RMSEA = .10, and critically, the improvement in fit over the three-factor model was highly significant: Δχ2(3) = 49.54 (p < .01). As shown in Figure 1, each variable had a strong positive loading on a factor, and the factors were moderately intercorrelated. e e

.73 .72

Reading

.86 .85

Print Experience

Writing .53

e e

e e e e

.97 .44

.90 .98 .93 .94

Speaking

.98 .66

Listening

Publishing

Conversation Experience

.34

.49 .95

Home

.99

Grocery

.97 .97

.28 Passage Sight Vocabulary

.37

Doctor .76

e e e e

.70 .77 .87 .74

Publishing

.83

Home

.87

Grocery

.93 .86

Passage Comprehension

Doctor

Figure 1. Measurement model for predictor variables. Values adjacent to single-headed arrows are standardized regression coefficients; values adjacent to double-headed arrows are correlation coefficients. e = error; values reflect proportion of variance accounted for in observed variables.

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For vocabulary retention, we tested a two-factor model (Time 1 and Time 2). We allowed the error terms for each passage to correlate across time. This allowed us to estimate the stability of vocabulary from Time 1 to Time 2, while controlling for passage-specific factors (e.g., greater interest in one passage than the others). Model fit was excellent, χ2(15) = 15.68 (ns), CFI = 1.00, NFI = .94, RMSEA = .02. As shown in Figure 2, the Time 1 x Time 2 correlation was very high, r = .89. However, constraining this correlation to unity (1.0) significantly decreased model fit, Δχ2(1) = 4.24, p < .05, and thus we were justified in treating the factors as distinct. .13

e

.33

e

.33

e

.24

e

.41 .49 .25 .39

Publishing Home

.64 .70 .50

Grocery

Vocabulary Retention - 1

.62

Doctor .89

e e e e

.40 .54 .29 .35

Publishing Home

.63 .74 .54

Grocery

Vocabulary Retention - 2

.59

Doctor

Figure 2. Measurement model for vocabulary retention variables. Values adjacent to single-headed arrows are standardized regression coefficients; values adjacent to double-headed arrows are correlation coefficients. e = error; values reflect proportion of variance accounted for in observed variables.

Structural Model The second step was to test for relations among the latent variables in a structural model. The model is displayed in Figure 3. Conversation experience positively contributed to passage sight vocabulary (.47), whereas the contribution of print experience, though positive, was near zero (.07). In turn, passage sight vocabulary strongly contributed to passage comprehension (.77), accounting for nearly 58% of the variance. The direct contributions of both conversation experience (.04) and print experience (-.05) on passage comprehension were near zero, and thus their contributions were almost entirely mediated through sight vocabulary. Finally, passage comprehension positively contributed to vocabulary retention-1 (.56), and even more strongly to vocabulary retention-2 (.88). Collectively, the predictor variables accounted for 51% of the variance in vocabulary retention-1 and 80% of the variance in vocabulary retention-2. Overall model fit was acceptable, χ2(193) = 307.88 (p < .01), CFI = .94, NFI = .86, RMSEA = .08. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

-.07

D

.26 -.08

Passage Sight Vocabulary

.07

.24

Print Experience

D

D

.55

.18

.47 .56

Vocabulary Retention-1

.77 .04

.88

Vocabulary Retention-2

-.21

Conversation Experience

.56 Passage Comprehension

-.05

D

.12

.57

-.01

Figure 3. Structural equation model predicting vocabulary retention. Values adjacent to single-headed arrows are standardized regression coefficients; values adjacent to double-headed arrows are correlation coefficients. D = disturbance; values reflect proportion of variance accounted for in latent variables. Solid paths are statistically significant (p < .05).

http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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These results provide support for the role of language experience in vocabulary acquisition through reading—and especially speaking and listening—and suggest that input processing and comprehension do indeed contribute to vocabulary acquisition. Discussion The aim of the study was to investigate the vicious and virtuous circle that has been observed in L2 reading. Toward this end, we tested for relationships among literacy skills, engagement in reading, and subsequent language learning. This was accomplished, first, by observing performance from a cross-section of L2 learners on a range of tests and questionnaires that observed these constructs, and, second, through the use of multivariate statistical modeling. The factors deemed relevant to modeling the vicious and virtuous circle included L2 processing experience and L2 passage sight vocabulary. Empirical Evaluation of the Vicious and Virtuous Circle The results expand upon previous single-focus research with respect to the roles of the different variables in L2 reading comprehension and vocabulary acquisition through reading. Overall, the findings provide some evidence for the cycle depicted in the introduction part and also lend support for connectionist models of L2 reading (e.g., Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 2005, 2007; Nassaji, 2002). Connectionist models of reading emphasize that language processing experience and efficiency in lower-level linguistic processing are the driving forces behind successful performance on reading and related literacy tasks. Current SLA theories (e.g., Ellis, 2002, 2005) also argue that L2 knowledge and skills develop through language processing frequency and exposure. In the present study, the readers of the group who most frequently engaged in L2 language use in the different modalities also demonstrated correspondingly high levels of vocabulary knowledge related to the reading passages. Efficiency in linguistic processing presumably allowed these learners to engage in the higher level processes that were necessary for successful passage comprehension, which included literal and inferential comprehension abilities. In turn, this positively influenced the lexical bootstrapping processes required for vocabulary to be learned from context. Language processing experience. From the standpoint of the predictor variables, the results first revealed that language processing experience, measured by self-reports of engagement in literacy and conversation activities, contributed to a more proximal cause of narrative comprehension and vocabulary development through reading (i.e., L2 passage sight vocabulary). Results revealed a moderate contribution of self-reported engagement in speaking and listening activities to the L2 literacy skills. This finding contrasts with L1 reading studies described above (e.g., Stanovich, 2000). The participants of the present study were foreign language learners who resided in a Midwestern city with few opportunities for day-to-day L2 use. It is assumed that at the time of data collection their exposure to the L2 occurred primarily through their Spanish classroom-based activities and course assignments. This type of speaking and listening exposure likely contrasts with that reported for the child participants in the L1 reading research reported above. In those studies engagement in speaking and listening activities outside of the classroom (e.g., through play, television, everyday conversation) did not explain any additional variance in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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literacy development (and sometimes correlated negatively with literacy outcomes). In addition, the majority of the students in the present study had participated in study and living abroad experiences in a Spanish-speaking country at some point in their language learning experience. Such experiences should also indirectly exert a positive influence on subsequent language use and language learning outcomes, especially the learning of the type of language that corresponds to everyday scenarios. These results provide new evidence of the role of L2 processing experience in L2 reading and vocabulary learning, outside of measures of print exposure. Previous studies have failed to obtain significant contributions from self-report questionnaires on language use habits (e.g., Dewey, 2004; McQuillan, 2006). However, the present study differed from previous research in several ways. First, compared to Dewey’s study, we tested a larger participant pool representing a crosssection. We also used a broader and different type of measure of L2 reading proficiency to establish a range of proficiency. In addition, our participant pool was learning Spanish as a foreign language, compared to McQuillan's bilingual language minority ESL high-school students. The present results also suggest that a simple questionnaire eliciting language use habits can predict, to some extent, literacy skills related to comprehension and vocabulary learning outcomes. The discussion below concerns the significance of more proximal causes of reading comprehension and vocabulary learning through comprehension. Passage sight vocabulary and comprehension. The results also revealed significant contributions of processing skills associated with reading to specific L2 reading comprehension activities and vocabulary acquisition via reading. It has been repeatedly argued and illustrated in L1 and L2 studies that engagement in reading activities, and also extensive reading programs, contributes to the development of general vocabulary knowledge (e.g., Krashen, 1989, 2004; Nagy, 1997; Stanovich, 1986, 2000), and vice versa. The present study expands upon this research and illustrates that as passage sight vocabulary knowledge improves, so too does subsequent cognitive processing performance that requires such sight vocabulary, namely, passage comprehension and lexical bootstrapping of new vocabulary. As expected and predicted by connectionist models of L2 reading and language learning, L2 passage sight vocabulary positively contributed to narrative comprehension and vocabulary learning through comprehension. This finding provides new evidence of the role of vocabulary specifically related to the passages in predicting reading comprehension outcomes, following Bernhardt's (2004, 2005) suggestion to account for such knowledge and variation in L2 literacy development. Although we recognize that there is variance yet unexplained by the model, our results underscore the importance of word recognition skills and efficiency in linguistic and lower-level knowledge in enabling the use of higher-level processing skills, such as comprehension monitoring, inferencing, lexical bootstrapping, and storage of new linguistic information (e.g., Coady, 1997; Grabe & Stoller, 2002; Koda, 2005, 2007; Laufer, 1997). The passage sight vocabulary measure required learners to quickly indicate their familiarity with words contained within the passages, and then to provide a translation or definition of those words. Interestingly, although many learners (especially at the lower levels) indicated familiarity with words on the list, they often incorrectly translated or defined those words. This demonstrated inefficiency in word recognition skills, which was hypothesized to be relevant to subsequent reading performance. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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As a complex cognitive skill, reading entails the simultaneous use of various knowledge sources and abilities, as described in the introduction part. The strong readers of the study could efficiently carry out the requisite lower-level processes, which presumably freed up attentional resources to enable the construction and integration of ideas from context, and the access to and use of background knowledge. These readers experienced greater success in inferencing and lexical gains through reading. In contrast, for the weak readers of the study both local comprehension and global comprehension were hampered. They were more apt to experience difficulty, or failure, in the construction and integration of ideas from context. Such difficulties were, in turn, connected with fewer vocabulary learning outcomes through reading. Conclusions and Future Directions The results reported above reveal that L2 processing experience and passage sight vocabulary contribute to and account for a moderate amount of variance in L2 narrative reading comprehension and vocabulary development through comprehension. These results help to illustrate both the virtuous circle and the vicious circle of L2 reading and vocabulary learning through reading. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first such attempt to model adult L2 reading and lexical input processing through reading via structural equation modeling. At the same time, given that our predictor variables were measured at a single point in time, we caution that the results presented here are merely consistent with the particular account that we have described. An important goal for future studies is to use longitudinal approaches, along with statistical techniques like latent growth-curve modeling, to test causal models more directly. Specific issues that could be addressed in such studies include whether or not the results can be replicated with different genre of text (e.g., expository texts), and different measures of print and language exposure. In addition, it would be advantageous to include additional factors relevant to L2 reading and vocabulary learning through reading, such as working memory, L1 literacy, and other sources of linguistic knowledge (e.g., syntactic knowledge). Pedagogical Implications On a final note, these results help to strengthen arguments for promoting extensive L2 reading and language use activities for L2 literacy development (both in and outside of classroom), in addition to direct teaching. It might be helpful to assign the following activities (which promote comprehension and context building, and focus on lower and higher level processing): previewing titles, headings, and illustrations for ideas in the text; scanning for specific information; reading the passage one section at a time and completing comprehension questions; selecting key words and local and global context cues; and identifying main ideas. Teachers should also bear in mind that weaker readers may not learn as many new words, nor learn them as quickly, as stronger readers. Since lexical learning through reading does occur, but is a time-consuming endeavor, teachers should also continue to engage in direct teaching that draws learners’ attention to new vocabulary and encourages additional processing, especially at lower levels of proficiency. Some possibilities include guessing and subsequently verifying meanings of new words through gloss consultation, dictionary and computer-assisted-languagelearning (CALL) hyperlink consultation, or cooperative learning tasks. Finally, given the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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findings, instructors should bear in mind the following practices to promote L2 reading and vocabulary development: match texts to learners based upon their vocabulary knowledge; dedicate time and resources to promoting frequency-based vocabulary and reading instruction through computer-aided resources; incorporate graded readers; and use texts or create materials with textual glosses, with particular emphasis on key words in the readings (e.g., Cobb, in press; Huang & Liou, 2007; Nation, 2001). Notes 1. Print exposure is the amount of time a person spends being visually aware of the written word, for example through reading newspapers, magazines, books, journals, scientific papers, and web materials. It has been typically measured via the Author Recognition Test (ART), Magazine and Newspaper Recognition Test (MRT), and Title Recognition Test (TRT). Alternative measures include diaries, self-report, retrospective questionnaires, quantity of foreign language courses taken, years of study of a foreign language, and study abroad experiences. See Dewey (2004) and Freed et al. (2004) for additional examples. 2. Admittedly, many of these studies deal with cognate languages or are connected with investigating the benefits of extensive reading programs (e.g., Krashen, 1989). 3. Relying on extensive reading and listening for vocabulary development is not as efficient as direct teaching because the learning rates are considerably lower (e.g., Nation, 2001). 4. Passage sight vocabulary knowledge can be contrasted with general vocabulary knowledge. Whereas the former refers to knowledge of words in a specific text and has been measured by L2-L1 translation and self-reported recognition tests (e.g., Pulido, 2000, 2003, 2004b, 2007), the latter refers to knowledge of vocabulary in general, and may or may not include words from a specific text that learners have been assigned to read. 5. Examples of connectives (CON) include (a) causal (because, so, etc.), (b) condition (if-then), (c) purpose (to, in order to), (d) concession (but, etc.), (e) conjunction (and, also, etc.), and (f) temporal (first, then, etc.). See Kintsch (1998, p. 60) for more examples. References Baddeley, A. (1998). Human memory: Theory and practice. Needham Heights, MA: Allyn & Bacon. Barry, S., & Lazarte, A. (1998). Evidence for mental models: How do prior knowledge, syntactic compexity, and reading topic affect inference generation in a recall task for nonnative readers of Spanish? The Modern Language Journal, 82, 176–193. Beech, J. (2002). Individual differences in mature readings in reading, spelling, and graphemephoneme conversion. Current Psychology, 21, 121–132. Bernhardt, E. B. (1991). Reading development in a second language: Theoretical, empirical, and classroom perspectives. Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Stanovich, K., & Cunningham, A. (1993). Where does knowledge come from? Specific associations between print exposure and information acquisition. Journal of Educational Psychology, 85, 211–229. Stanovich, K., & West, R. (1989). Exposure to print and orthographic processing. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 402–433. Sternberg, R. (1987). Most vocabulary is learned from context. In M. McKeown & M. Curtis (Eds.), The nature of vocabulary acquisition (pp. 89–105). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Swaffar, J., Arens, K., & Byrnes, H. (1991). Reading for meaning: An integrated approach to language learning. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall. Ulijn, J., & Strother, J. (1990). The effect of syntactic simplification on reading EST texts as L1 and L2. Journal of Research in Reading, 13, 38–54. Underwood, G., & Batt, V. (1996). Reading and understanding. Oxford: Blackwell. West, R., Stanovich, K., & Mitchell, H. (1993). Reading in the real world and its correlates. Reading Research Quarterly, 28, 34–50. Appendix A Background Questionnaire Please print your responses to the questions below. 1. Name: ____________________________________ 2. Telephone contact / e-mail contact ________________________________ 3. Year in school: Freshman Sophomore Junior Senior Other Graduate 4. Spanish Course(s) presently taking: ___________________________________________ 5. Check off ALL of the Spanish courses taken at the X University, and please list other Spanish courses taken here or elsewhere: SPN 101 ___ SPN 122 ____ SPN 210 _____ SPN 255 _____ ______(others) SPA 102 ___ SPN 123 ____ SPN 212 _____ SPN 227 _____ ______(others) SPN 103 ___ SPN 124 ____ SPN 214 _____ ______(others) ______(others) SPN 104 ___ SPN 200 ____ SPN 216 _____ ______(others) ______(others) 6. How many years have you studied Spanish? (circle one) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 ____(other) 7. Age at which you first began to learn Spanish: _________ 8. Where did you first learn Spanish? _______________________________________ 9. Have you studied or do you study presently any of the following languages? FRENCHYES NO For how long? (mos. /yrs.)_________________ ITALIANYES NO For how long? (mos. /yrs.)________________ GERMANYES NO For how long? (mos. /yrs.)________________ OTHER YES NO For how long? (mos. /yrs.)________________ (Please specify:___________________________________________________) 10. How many languages do you speak? _____ Which languages? ________________________ 11. Is English your native language? YES NO 12. Do you speak English at home? YES NO If NO, what language do you speak at home? _____________________________ If you speak other languages at home WHAT are they?______________________ 13. Have you EVER STUDIED ABROAD? YES NO If YES, WHERE? ___________________ LENGTH OF TIME_______________ 14. Have you EVER spent time in a Spanish speaking country? YES NO Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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If YES, WHERE? ___________________ Length of stay_______________ AGE when traveled_____________ Reason for travel___________________ 15. Outside of class do you... read Spanish YES / NO For what purpose?__________________________________ How much per week?_______________ write Spanish YES / NO For what purpose?__________________________________ How much per week?_______________ speak Spanish YES / NO For what purpose?__________________________________ How much per week?_______________ listen to Spanish YES / NO For what purpose?__________________________________ How much per week?_______________ THANK YOU ALL INFORMATION WILL REMAIN CONFIDENTIAL

Appendix B Sample Propositional Analysis of a More Familiar Passage—Translated English Version The Trip to the Supermarket P1 (2): realize [Sue, empty [refrigerator]] P2 (1): today [P1] P3 (2): get [Sue, Sue [purse]] P4 (2): drive [Sue, to-supermarket] P5 (1): CON (and) [P3, P4] P6 (1): CON (so) [P2, P5] P7 (2): park [Sue, car] P8 (2): enter [Sue, supermarket] P9 (1): CON (and) [P7, P8] P10 (2): get [Sue, GROCERY CART] P11 (1): CON (first) [P10] P12 (2): take out [Sue, list, from-Sue [purse]] P13 (1): CON (and) [P10, P12] P14 (2): begin [Sue, walk [Sue, through-AISLES]] P15 (2): go [Sue, to-canned [food [section]]] P16 (1): CON (first) [P15] P17 (2): want [Sue, buy [Sue, soup]] P18 (1): CON (because) [P16, P17] P19 (2): is [so [many [brands]]] P20 (2): decide [Sue, COMPARE [Sue, prices]] P21 (1): CON (that) [P19, P20] P22 (2): continue [Sue, toward-fruit, vegetable [stands]] P23 (2): buy [Sue, grapes] P24 (1): CON (in order to) [P22, P23] P25 (1): CON (then) [P18, P24] P26 (2): choose [Sue, bunch] P27 (1): there-at fruit-vegetable stand [P26] P28 (2): go [Sue, to-bakery] P29 (2): buy [Sue, bread] Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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P30 (1): CON (in order to) [P28, P29] P31 (1): CON (afterward) [P24, P30] P32 (2): greet [Sue, shopkeeper] P33 (2): request [Sue, shopkeeper, loaf] P34 (1): CON (and) [P32, P33] P35 (2): continue [Sue, through-supermarket] P36 (2): determine [Sue, missing [anything]] P37 (1): CON (in order to) [P35, P36] P38 (1): CON (then) [P30, P37] P39 (2): have [Sue, everything] P40 (2): walk [Sue, toward-CHECKOUT] P41 (1): CON (so) [P39, P40] P42 (2): many, waiting in line [people] P43 (2): begin [Sue, read [Sue, TABLOIDS]] P44 (1): CON (so) [P42, P43] P45 (2): arrive [Sue [turn]] P46 (1): CON (finally) [P45] P47 (2): place [Sue, groceries, on-CHECKOUT COUNTER] P48 (2): begin [salesclerk, RING UP [salesclerk, prices]] P49 (1): CON (and) [P47, P48] P50 (1): CON (so) [P46, P59] P51 (2): take out [Sue, credit card] P52 (2): pay [Sue, Sue [bill]] P53 (1): CON (and) [P51, P52] P54 (1): CON (afterward) [P50, P53] P55 (2): get [Sue, BAGS] P56 (2): leave [Sue, supermarket] P57 (1): CON (and) [P55, P56] P58 (1): CON (finally) [P54, P57] Note. P = Proposition. CON = sentence connective (e.g., causal, condition, purpose, concession, conjunction, and temporal). (1) = proposition worth 1 point. (2) = proposition worth 2 points. Italicized words represent argument overlap not explicitly stated in the text. Capitalized words represent the TW L1 translation equivalent.

Appendix C Parameter Estimates With Standard Errors for Measurement and Structural Models Measurement Model: Predictor Variables

β

B

Reading hrs/wk† Writing hrs/wk

 

Print Experience Print Experience

0.86 0.85

1.00 − 0.90** 0.18

Speaking hrs/wk† Listening hrs/wk

 

Conversation Experience Conversation Experience

0.98 0.66

1.00 − 0.72** 0.15

Publishing Home Grocery† Doctor

   

Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Sight Vocabulary

0.95 0.99 0.97 0.97

1.14** 1.03** 1.00 1.17**

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SE

0.05 0.03 − 0.04

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Publishing Home Grocery† Doctor

   

189

Passage Comprehension Passage Comprehension Passage Comprehension Passage Comprehension

Measurement Model: Vocabulary Retention Variables

0.83 0.87 0.93 0.86

0.68** 0.78** 1.00 1.17**

0.06 0.06 − 0.07

β

B

SE

Publishing-1 Home-1 Grocery-1† Doctor-1

   

Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-1

0.64 0.70 0.50 0.62

0.86** 1.22** 1.00 0.87**

0.20 0.28 − 0.20

Publishing-2 Home-2 Grocery-2† Doctor-2

   

Vocabulary Retention-2 Vocabulary Retention-2 Vocabulary Retention-2 Vocabulary Retention-2

0.63 0.74 0.54 0.59

0.99** 1.37** 1.00 0.88**

0.23 0.27 − 0.22

β

B

SE

Structural Model Print Experience Print Experience Print Experience Print Experience

   

Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Comprehension Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-2 -

0.07 0.04 0.18 0.07-

0.06 0.03 0.60 0.22

0.12 0.08 0.50 0.45

Conversation Experience Conversation Experience Conversation Experience Conversation Experience

   

Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Comprehension Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-2 -

0.47 0.050.210.01-

0.33** 0.03 0.61 0.03

0.11 0.08 0.51 0.40

Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Sight Vocabulary Passage Sight Vocabulary

  

Passage Comprehension Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-2 -

0.77 0.24 0.08-

0.68** 0.08 0.97 0.75 0.32 0.60

Passage Comprehension Passage Comprehension

 

Vocabulary Retention-1 Vocabulary Retention-2

0.56 0.12

2.61** 0.84 0.51 0.64

Vocabulary Retention-1  Vocabulary Retention-2 0.88 0.83** 0.23 __________________________________________________________________________________ Note. † = variable used to scale latent factor. β = standardized; B = unstandardized; SE = standard error.

About the Authors Diana Pulido is an assistant professor in the PhD in Second Language Studies program and MATESOL program in the Department of Linguistics and Germanic, Slavic, Asian, and African Languages at Michigan State University. Her main research interests include individual differences in second language reading, multi-componential models of reading, and lexical input processing and acquisition. She has published in Language Learning, Applied Linguistics, and Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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The Reading Matrix. Correspondence concerning this article should be directed to [email protected], A-744 Wells Hall, East Lansing, MI, 48824. David Z. Hambrick is an associate professor in Cognitive Psychology in the Psychology Department at Michigan State University. His research interests include individual differences in working memory, aptitude, multi-tasking, executive functioning, and knowledge acquisition. He has published in the Journal of Memory and Language, Psychonomic Bulletin & Review, Journal of Experimental Psychology, Neuropsychology, and Memory & Cognition. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 191–215

Beyond raw frequency: Incidental vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading Soo-Ok Kweon Pohang University of Science and Technology Korea Hae-Ri Kim Seoul National University of Education Korea Abstract Second language vocabulary can be learned incidentally while the learner is engaged in extensive reading or reading for meaning, inferring the meaning of unknown words (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Hulstijn, 1992; Krashen, 1993; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006). 12 Korean learners of English read authentic literary texts and were tested on their knowledge of vocabulary before reading (pretest), immediately after reading (Posttest 1), and 1 month after Posttest 1 (Posttest 2). The results showed a significant word gain between the pretest and Posttest 1 and that most gained words were retained at Posttest 2. Of the 3 different word classes that were used, nouns were a little easier to retain than verbs and adjectives. More frequent words were more easily learned than less frequent words across all 3 word classes. However, words of lower frequency were better learned than words of higher frequency when the meanings of the lower frequency words were crucial for meaning comprehension. Keywords: Extensive reading, L2 reading, incidental vocabulary acquisition, literature-based approach

The past two decades have seen a considerable amount of interest in the cognitive processing of vocabulary acquisition (Arnaud & Bejoint, 1992; Coady & Huckin, 1997; Haastrup, 1991; Hatch & Brown, 1995; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Meara, 1992). Many scholars have agreed that much second language (L2) vocabulary is learned incidentally while learners are engaged in extensive reading (ER) or reading for meaning and in inferring the meanings of unknown words (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Krashen, 1993; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). In this case, vocabulary learning can be called incidental learning because it is a byproduct rather than the explicit purpose of reading (see Day, Omura, & Hiramatsu, 1991; Dupuy & Krashen, 1993; Hulstijn, 1992; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989; Saragi, Nation, & Meister, 1978; Waring & Takaki, 2003). The goal of the present study was to see how and which unknown words can be incidentally learned and retained while Korean learners of English read substantial amounts of authentic text http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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over a long period of time. More specifically, this study investigated the effect of frequency, but beyond the frequency, examined other factors such as word class. The paper is organized as follows: We introduce the previous studies of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading in the L2 learning literature, followed by a description of the components of the present study. After reporting the design and results of the experimental study in the method section, we discuss how incidental vocabulary learning occurs, how successfully it is retained, and what the relationship between word frequency and learning might be. We conclude by calling for more efficient development and implementation of ER to enhance vocabulary learning in an L2. Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through ER Vocabulary acquisition occurs chiefly through spoken input in child first language (L1) learning. Lexical acquisition has usually been assumed to develop naturally, as children grow older, with no explicit instruction needed. However, the situation differs in an L2 environment. Here, vocabulary acquisition often occurs more through written text (Grabe, 2004). Of course, explicit instruction in word meanings can facilitate vocabulary acquisition by drawing attention to form and meaning mappings. However, incidental vocabulary learning has some advantages over direct instruction. For one, reading and word learning occur at the same time. For another, a richer sense of a word is learned through contextualized input. Furthermore, the incidental acquirer not only acquires word meanings but also increases his or her chances to get a feel for collocations and colligations that are not easily learned by learners of English as a foreign language (Bahns & Eldaw, 1993); therefore, learning can be facilitated by repeated exposure to words that go together (cf. Lewis, 1993; Nattinger & DeCarrico, 1992, for the importance of learning lexical phrases). Research into L2 vocabulary learning has determined that such incidental vocabulary learning is possible while the learner is engaged in ER (Huckin & Coady, 1999; Krashen, 1993; Wodinsky & Nation, 1988). Based on this research, the incidental vocabulary learning hypothesis (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985) claims that teachers should promote ER because it can lead to “greater vocabulary growth than any program of explicit instruction alone ever could” (Coady, 1997, p. 225). In addition to the vocabulary-expanding effects of reading extensively in an L2, many published L2 studies of ER also reveal general benefits for aspects of language development (see Bell, 2001; Hafiz & Tudor, 1989; Lai, 1993; Mason & Krashen, 1997; Robb & Susser, 1989, for change in reading comprehension ability; Hafiz & Tudor, 1990; Tsang, 1996, for essay writing; Lituanas, Jacobs, & Renandya, 1999; Mason & Krashen, 1997, for oral reading). Unfortunately, the evidence of actual incidental word learning through ER does not unambiguously appear in previous research (Day et al., 1991; Hulstijn, 1992; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Waring & Takaki, 2003). This lack of a clear result is not for want of trying. Studies of vocabulary acquisition in L2 reading range from implementations across a whole school district (e.g., Elley, 1991; Lightbown, 1992) to case studies of individual learners (Cho & Krashen, 1994; Parry, 1991; Pigada & Schimitt, 2006). Overall, regardless of the scales of the studies, many studies on vocabulary learning through ER show that very few words are learned after reading in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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relation to the reading time or text length. For example, Pitts et al. (1989) had ESL students read A Clockwork Orange for an hour and tested the subjects after 10 minutes on 28 items of Anthony Burgess’ Russianate “nadsat” vocabulary, which was not invented but nevertheless unfamiliar to the subjects. A control group, which did not read the text, was also tested on the same items. A statistically significant but quite small increase in vocabulary was observed in the experimental group compared to the control group. Another example is that in Horst, Cobb, and Meara’s (1998) study, the teacher read aloud the entire 21,232 words of the simplified Mayor of Casterbridge in class while the students followed along in their books. The students then took a 45-item multiplechoice test and a 13-item word-association test; the posttest results showed mean gains of 4.62 words on the multiple-choice test and 1.28 words on the word-association test. Similarly, Shin (2006) investigated whether vocabulary was incidentally acquired through reading selected units from textbooks (168 pages with 43,465 words) for an ELT writing course by 34 Korean college students and found that a small number of new words (3.6 out of 40 unknown words) were learned, with a significant relationship between the number of occurrences of the words and the relative learning gain. In examining vocabulary learning and retention by 15 Japanese college students who read one graded reader, Waring and Takaki (2003) changed the forms of the 25 words that were used in the text to make them into non-words to control for previous knowledge of the words (e.g., changing house into windle). They found that “words can be learned incidentally but that most of the words were not learned” (p. 130). Three months later, only one of the incidentally learned items was remembered, and none of the items that appeared fewer than eight times were remembered. Waring and Takaki’s (2003) use of non-words in the test should be considered in terms of the retention rate 3 months later. Such non-words might easily be imagined to be more difficult to remember than real words. Pigada and Schmitt (2006) used 70 nouns and 63 verbs in their study in investigating incidental vocabulary acquisition with a participant, G, a native Greek speaker, by using four graded readers in French. Because the texts were short, Pigada and Schmitt included only “the most common parts of speech found in natural text” (Webb, 2005, p. 36, cited in Pigada & Schmitt, 2006, p. 9), in the hope that further research would include other word classes. They organized the two word classes into six different frequency groups according to the number of encounters and tested three types of word knowledge (meaning, spelling, and grammatical behavior). They found that substantial word learning occurred during the ER, although the improvement was not uniform across the three types of word knowledge. Spelling was enhanced in all noun frequency groups and in all but two verb groups. For meaning, low-frequency nouns and verbs showed limited learning, and verbs were more limited than nouns. Grammatical behavior knowledge was improved in all frequency groups of nouns, while the percentage of grammatical mastery of verbs was much lower than that of nouns. A comparison of nouns and verbs has been the focus of attention in the current literature of cognitive and linguistic development, literacy, and academic achievement in school-age children (Snow, Cancini, Gonzales, & Shriberg, 1989; Watson, 1985; Wechsler, 1991, cited in Marinellie & Johnson, 2004). According to Markman (1989), while nouns occur in structured categories with hierarchical internal organizations (e.g., apple–fruit) that may result in simpler, more predictable semantic relations, verbs and adjectives have less structured and less predictable Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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lexical relations. Verbs may be represented by nonhierarchical relations, such as change, causality, and manner (Miller, 1991). Marinellie and Johnson (2004) observed that nouns and verbs are significantly different in terms of their definitional styles in upper-elementary school children. The rate of definitional forms for nouns was significantly higher than for verbs (p. 230). They suggested that this might be due to an internal lexical organization for verbs that is less structured and less predictable than that for nouns. In child language development, verbs are suggested to be more difficult to learn than nouns and to be acquired at a slower rate (Benedict, 1979; Gentner, 1978, 1982; Greenfield & Smith, 1976). Linguistically, the position that nouns and verbs have different conceptual bases has been widely accepted. Gentner (1982) proposed that the concepts referred to by nouns are more accessible than those referred to by verbs because they are conceptually more basic than the concepts referred to by verbs or prepositions. Gentner further posited that “linguistic distinction between nouns and verbs is based on a preexisting perceptual-conceptual distinction between concrete concepts such as persons or things and predicative concepts of activity, change-of-state, or causal relations” (p. 301). According to Huttenlocher and Lui (1979), nouns and verbs have different semantic organizations: Concrete nouns fall into closely related and hierarchically organized domains, while verbs form a more matrix-like organization. Two reasons have been proposed for these differences in organization. First, the object categories encoded in concrete nouns are independent entities in the mental lexicon, organized chiefly in relation to each other, whereas verbs encode dependent categories with directed connections to their noun arguments. Second, verbs have many elements of meaning which cut across semantic field, e.g., manner, intention. (p. 141) The kinds of things denoted by nouns are different from the kinds of things denoted by verbs. Nouns postulate something definite such as a substance or individual; however, verbs cannot be indicated separately from substances. Verbs can be real only if something definite is implied in such a predicate because we never use verbs without implying their argument structures. For example, eat has two argument structures, corresponding to John ate and John ate the apple (cf. Pinker, 1989). Failure of Acquisition vs. Failure of Research Methodology Of course, the generally poor results of incidental vocabulary acquisition research may be due to faults of the experimental methodology. These faults might include the amount of reading text, the number of test items, the kinds of text used (e.g., simplified vs. authentic), and how many words participants already know before the reading. In most studies, the measurement instruments have been multiple-choice tests, and these have limitations in measuring readers’ exact knowledge of words because they allow guessing from contextual information. Other methodologies such as self-report checklist measures, meaning-translation tests, or word-form recognition tests can be used to overcome the shortcomings of multiple-choice tests and to Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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measure more precisely learners’ vocabulary knowledge. The amount and the kind of reading may also affect incidental vocabulary learning and explain the paucity of experimental results. Participants in most of the experimental studies read one or two graded readers or a short reading passage to see the effect of reading on incidental vocabulary learning. Huckin (1983), Rigg (1991), and Widdowson (1979) have variously objected that simplified texts have many problems, offering insufficient exposure to unknown words, tedious rewriting, highly manipulated syntax, and distortions of pragmatic use. In this respect, using authentic texts of substantial length that may contain enough repetitions of words may provide more relevant results. When using authentic materials in the instruction of English as a foreign language, the selection of texts is significant given that students are the most motivated and open to language input when their emotions, feelings, and attitudes are most engaged (Tomlinson, 1986). Students will get few benefits if a text is extremely difficult on either a linguistic or cultural level (Mckay, 1982; Vincent & Carter, 1986). Using simplified texts or graded readers is one common method of solving the problem, but a serious disadvantage is that simplification tends to produce a homogenized product in which the information becomes diluted (Honeyfield, 1977). As an alternative to using simplified versions, Mckay (1982) suggested literature written for young adults. One of the characteristics of these books indicated by Donelson and Nilsen (2005) is that they are stylistically less complicated, which is a significant factor in language learning. Returning to the problem of lower rates of incidental vocabulary acquisition, we are interested in whether different word classes are a factor affecting incidental word learning; for example, whether nouns are easier to learn than verbs or vice versa. As stated above, many studies have looked at the differences between nouns and verbs in definitional style and developmental order in child language acquisition. Unfortunately, however, significant empirical studies have not reported on this issue in second or foreign language learning (cf. Pigada & Schmitt, 2006). It is important to understand how L1 acquisition and L2 learning differ, if at all (cf. Bley-Vroman, 1990), and how different word classes are learned by foreign language learners, especially incidentally, not through instruction. In the attempt to extend the scope of investigation in this study, we included adjectives, a group that has not been included in previous research (e.g., Marinellie & Johnson, 2004, for L1 acquisition; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006, for L2 learning), in addition to the most common word classes, nouns and verbs. We hypothesized that the three word classes would produce different behaviors in the self-report checklist measures of word knowledge in the present study due to the conceptual differences and the different organizations of the internal lexicon on definitions of nouns, verbs, and adjectives. Taken as a whole, the L2 reading studies reviewed indicate that relatively short texts and small numbers of test items result in a relatively modest increase in vocabulary learning. Such small gains may be attributed to the limited opportunity to read and encounter new words. We generated four research questions to examine the amount of incidental vocabulary acquisition, proportion of vocabulary retention, and the effect of occurrence frequency and word Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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classes: 1. How much vocabulary is incidentally acquired from ER of three authentic teen novels (over 100,000 words)? 2. What proportion of the incidentally learned words are retained 1 month later? 3. What is the relationship between the frequency of occurrence and the learning rates of words? 4. How do the learning rates of words vary according to different word classes (i.e., noun, verb, and adjective)? Method We selected authentic, unsimplified texts and explored the effect of these texts containing a large number of words on adult Korean learners of English as a foreign language. Materials From a pedagogical point of view, the main goal of ER is not vocabulary acquisition per se but rather to develop reading fluency through rapid access to known L2 words by encountering them repeatedly (Day & Bamford, 1998). For this purpose, reading passages excerpted from textbooks or graded readers, which are simplified fiction or non-fiction texts graded at varying levels of English vocabulary and structure, have been used in L2 classrooms because of their easy access. However, participants in the present study read authentic written texts (chapter books1) that were uncontrolled for vocabulary and grammatical complexity. The biggest difference between graded readers and chapter books is that the former target English language learners, whereas the latter are written for native speaker readers, mainly adolescents in English-speaking countries. The students in this study read three chapter books over the course of 5 weeks. Holes deals with the interlocking friendships and individual destinies of a group of teenage delinquents. It is 256 pages long. Hatchet is a Robinson Crusoe story about a boy, containing 189 pages. The Giver is a work of dystopic science fiction, containing 193 pages. In all, these three books contained 134,013 words and 638 pages. Details of the three chapter books are given in Table 1. Table 1. Chapter books used Title Author Word count Target grade (NS)a Theme Holes Sachar (1998) 46,213 4–6 Friendship, destiny Hatchet Paulson (1987) 44,168 4–8 Adventure, self-realization The Giver Lowry (1993) 43,632 6–8 Science Fiction, dystopia Total 134,013 a The target grades are based on an online teachers’ resource manual website (www.edhelper.com) that provides paid teaching materials for various chapter books for students in secondary schools in the US.

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Accordingly, the reading time required of the students was considerably long. Participants in this study read on average 4–6 hours per day for 5 weeks, whereas the reading times were about 1 hour in many other studies. Students had to read each text carefully to understand the meaning of the story because they were required to take a detailed comprehension quiz at the beginning of the following class. Participants The participants were 12 students (11 male and 1 female) who were taking the intermediate English reading course during the 2006 winter session at Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea. All of the participants were majoring in science or engineering. Their average age was 21.5 years. Seven of the students provided TOEFL scores (average score = 607) from the ITP (paper and pencil) test, which is administered at the university as a requirement for graduation; the minimum score for graduation is 550. Eight of the students were not taking any other English courses during the winter session, and 3 were taking either conversation or speech courses in addition to the reading class. None had ever lived in an English-speaking country. Test Design All of the pages in each book were computerized and loaded into a software program (Monoconc Pro) that quantified the word frequencies in the corpus of the texts. Of the 134,013 words, the most frequent content words were selected. We then eliminated many common words (e.g., man, water, have, do) that occurred hundreds of times. To determine whether words with higher frequencies were more likely to be learned and retained, several hundred words that were relevant for the current study were selected. Of these, 367 words were selected for the test. These words were sorted into three word classes within three bands of frequency (20 or more, 7–19, and 1–6 occurrences). Table 2. Eighteen most frequent content words in corpus of 134,013 words from books used Frequency Frequency Frequency Word Frequency Word order order 1 136 warden 10 46 spear 2 134 dig 10 46 squid 3 110 shovel 12 43 release 4 93 community 13 42 stare 5 87 shelter 14 40 magnet 6 65 nod 15 37 release 7 58 hatchet 16 33 assignment 8 53 thumb 17 32 shore 9 52 canteen 17 32 sled

The 18 most frequent words, which occurred more than 30 times each, are shown in Table 2. Because these words are context-dependent and low in frequency in the English language as a whole, students had not had many opportunities to encounter these words before reading the stories. We selected verbs, nouns, and adjectives based on their frequencies, which ranged from 1 to ≥ Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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50 occurrences. Of the 367 words used in the test, 147 were nouns, 153 were verbs, and 67 were adjectives. The words in each word class were divided into three bands of frequency: I (≥ 20 occurrences), II (7–19 occurrences), and III (1–6 occurrences). Most of the selected words occurred from 1 to 6 times, and relatively few verbs and nouns (around 10 verbs, 20 nouns, and 1 adjective) occurred more than 20 times. Words that occurred at frequencies in between (i.e., 7– 19 occurrences) were grouped together. The number of words in each band is summarized in Table 3. Table 3. Number of words in three word classes for each frequency band Band Frequency Noun Verb Adjective Total I ≥ 20 14 7 1a 22 7−19 II 39 32 8 79 1−6 III 94 114 58 266 Total 147 153 67 367 a Only one adjective appeared in Band I, and this was already known to the learners based on the pretest; thus, the results for the adjective in Band I are omitted in the analysis and not reported in the results in Table 7 below.

We assumed that if a learner encountered canteen in one place and canteens in another place, the representative lexeme is canteen, and he or she encountered the word twice. In counting verbs, the inflected forms of a regular verb (e.g., stared, staring) were counted as occurrences of the base verb (e.g., stare). However, for irregular verbs, the base form and past form (e.g., slide and slid) were counted as separate items. Table 4. Sample items from self-report checklist of word knowledge Item Option 1 Option 2 1. abate Yes NS 2. abrupt Yes NS 3. absorb Yes NS 4. acknowledge Yes NS 5. acquire Yes NS 6. adequate Yes NS 7. affectionate Yes NS 8. afflict Yes NS 9. agony Yes NS 10. alert Yes NS

Option 3 No No No No No No No No No No

The 367 words were alphabetized after the technique in Horst and Meara (1999) and Horst (2000, 2005). The alphabetical list was presented to the students, who were asked to choose one of the three options: Yes, if they thought they knew the meaning of the given word; NS, if they were not sure; and No, if they did not think that they knew the meaning of the word. We assumed that the NS option would reveal learners’ partial knowledge of the word and also allow an honest response, neither overestimating nor underestimating their word knowledge forcing them to choose between Yes or No. A portion of the test material is shown in Table 4.

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Data Analysis The nominal data were quantified for statistical analysis. A word with Yes circled was assigned 2 points; NS, 1 point; and No, 0 points. The maximum possible scores were therefore 2 times the number of words, resulting in 294 for nouns, 306 for verbs, and 67 for adjectives. The analysis of the nominal data before quantification is reported in the Appendix to show the way the data were collected. This shows the same results as the quantified analysis. Procedure Pretest. On the first day of the class, the students completed the self-report test on word knowledge for the 367 words. They were told that the test would not affect their course grades. The students took the test after they completed their language background information questions. The test took about 15 minutes to administer. Treatment (ER). Because we were interested in how ER facilitates incidental vocabulary acquisition in adult L2 learners, the students were encouraged to read extensively without focusing on learning vocabulary while reading. They were told to skip unknown words if doing so did not interfere with their understanding of the story. To confirm that the students had completed the reading assignments before the next class, a content comprehension quiz for the assigned chapters was given at the beginning of each class. The class met for 100 minutes every day from Monday to Friday for 5 weeks. Each day, the students were assigned three or four chapters of a chapter book to read at home2. Every class began with a comprehension quiz of 15 questions. Then the students were divided into four groups of three or four students, and a leader was chosen. Each group discussed a separate topic prepared by the instructor. After the group discussion, the four group leaders gathered on a stage and reported what they had discussed about their topics. Finally, during the last 20 minutes of each class, the students wrote an in-class response journal on a topic selected by the instructor from the chapters used in the class on that day.3 These journals were submitted at the end of each class. The schedule of instruction for each class is shown in Table 5. Table 5. Class schedule for ER using chapter books Duration Activity Percentage of (minutes) course evaluationa 10 Class management 10 Comprehension quiz 20 20 Clarification questions 10 Report of interesting or best part 20 Small-group discussion (topics provided) 10 20 On-stage discussion by small-group leaders 20 20 Response-journal writing 20 a The percentages do not include the components for attendance (10%) or completing the assigned reading (10%).

Note that none of the class activities encouraged any focus on vocabulary during the in-class treatment session by, for example, drawing attention to particular meanings of words or phrases Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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or completing vocabulary quizzes. Contrary to Horst (2005), who included “adding entries to vocabulary notebook” (p. 367) with other activities like discussing books in pairs in her study with graded readers, the present study was designed to avoid any manipulated attention to vocabulary during the ER treatment session to keep intact the purpose of the study (incidental vocabulary acquisition through ER). Posttests 1 and 2. Posttest 1, the immediate posttest, was given on the last day of instruction. Posttest 2, the delayed posttest, was given 4 weeks after Posttest 1. For both Posttests 1 and 2, the same procedure was followed as in the pretest except for the linguistic background questions. Results Results Based on Word Class The maximum possible scores were 294 for the nouns, 306 for the verbs, and 134 for the adjectives. The mean self-reported scores on the pretest were 128.75 (43.8%) for the nouns, 148.66 (48.6%) for the verbs, and 70.58 (52.7%) for the adjectives (see Table 6). These scores across the three word classes suggest that the participants either knew or thought they might know the meanings of a substantial proportion of the test words before the pretest. Table 6. Mean and percent word knowledge of nouns, verbs, and adjectives summed over all frequency bands Pretest Posttest 1 Posttest 2 F Nouns M 128.75 (40.23) 214.91 (33.17) 207.75 (40.09) 309.65** % 43.2 72.1 69.7 Verbs M 148.66 (45.76) 201.66 (40.488) 209.16 (42.21) 275.05** % 48.6 65.9 68.4 Adjectives M 70.58 (18.11) 94.83 (16.95) 94.41 (21.63) 290.34** % 53.0 71.0 70.0 Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. n = 12 for all tests. % = mean score converted to percent of maximum. **p < .001.

The mean self-reported scores of vocabulary knowledge significantly increased between the pretest and Posttest 1 in all three word classes, and these gains were largely retained 1 month later (Posttest 2). For the analysis, the students’ scores were converted to percentages of the maximum possible score in each word class. This approach eliminated the effects of the differing numbers of words in the three word classes. A repeated-measures one-way ANOVA revealed that the differences in the percentages between the tests were statistically significant for the nouns, F(1,11) = 309.65, p < .001; for verbs, F(1,11) = 275.05, p < .001; and for adjectives, F(1,11) = 290.34, p < .001. Post hoc multiple comparisons using LSD multiple-range tests were run to locate differences, and these revealed that the mean difference between the pretest and Posttest 1 was significant, but the mean difference between Posttests 1 and 2 was not for the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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nouns, MSE = 3,927.78, p > .05; verbs, MSE = 4,552.33, p > .05; or adjectives, MSE = 930.11, p > .05. The mean test scores ranked the pretest < Posttest 1 = Posttest 2 for all word classes. This result suggests that incidental word learning occurred and that knowledge of words was retained without significant attrition 1 month later. The mean scores for each word class on each test were separately converted to percentages of the maximum possible scores (Figure 1). For the comprehension of the word classes, the results differed among the tests. On the pretest, vocabulary understanding differed significantly among the word classes, F(2,22) = 16.1, p < .0001. The comprehension scores of the three word classes were all significantly different from each other (LSD, p < .05) on the pretest. The percentage of understanding ranked adjective > verb > noun.

Figure 1. Self-reported understanding of words in three word classes (% of maximum) in three sequential tests.

On Posttest 1, the understanding of the word classes was ranked noun > adjective > verb, and all differences were significant (LSD, p < .05). Note that compared to the results of the pretest, the nouns moved from the last to first position, while the ranks of the verbs and adjectives did not change. This result indicates strongly that the students acquired nouns preferentially over the other word classes. On Posttest 2, student understanding did not differ among the word classes (LSD, p > .05). These results are congruent with the literature on child L1 lexical development, in which nouns are acquired more quickly than verbs (Gentner, 1982) and are easier to define than verbs (Marinellie & Johnson, 2004). The L2 learners in this study also performed better for nouns than verbs, which implies, in this respect, that the lexical development processes are similar in L1 and L2 vocabulary acquisition.

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Results Based on Frequency in Each Word Class In general, the mean differences between the pretest and Posttest 1 were statistically significant, but those between Posttests 1 and 2 were not, which means that incidental vocabulary learning occurred after reading and was retained for at least 1 month. The students’ self-reported pretest knowledge increased with word frequency. Overall, learning and retention rates were higher for more frequent words than for less frequent words in all three word classes. This supports the intuitively obvious assumption that the more frequently one encounters a content word, the more easily that word may be acquired. The mean word knowledge of all three word classes according to the three tests in all frequency bands is presented in Figure 1. The results of a one-way ANOVA with repeated measures show that the mean differences between the tests were statistically significant, and post hoc multiple comparisons using an LSD multiple-range test revealed that the mean difference between the pretest and Posttest 1 was significant, but the mean difference between Posttests 1 and 2 was not throughout the frequency bands and word classes (pretest < Posttest 1 = Posttest 2). These results suggest that incidental vocabulary learning occurred after reading and that the words learned were retained regardless of the word classes.4 However, one case was an exception for this acquisition pattern (see Table 7). The mean differences between the tests were statistically significant for nouns in Band II, F(1,11) = 418.32, p < .001. A post hoc LSD test revealed that the mean difference between the pretest and Posttest 1 was significant and that the mean difference between Posttests 1 and 2 was also significant: pretest < Posttest 2 < Posttest 1 (MSE = 246.57, p < .05). Better performance on Posttest 1 than on Posttest 2 indicates that words learned immediately after reading attrited in 1 month. Table 7. Mean self-reported understanding of words in three classes in each band and ANOVA results Word Band Pretest Posttest 1 Posttest F class I 13.33 (4.39) 25.92 (1.44) 23.83 (3.38) 776.01** II 38.25 (11.24) 63.08 (7.57) 59.25 (10.29) 418.32** Noun III 77.17 (25.87) 125.92 (25.47) 124.67 (28.19) 220.63**

Verb

I II III

9.17 (2.72) 31.92 (13.87) 107.58 (31.07)

12.42 (1.08) 46.67 (8.35) 142.58 (32.49)

II 11.83 (1.69) 13.83 (1.74) Adjective III 56.83 (16.77) 79.00 (16.10) Note. Standard deviations are in parentheses. **p < .001.

12.00 (4.53) 47.00 (12.76) 150.17 (29.79)

264.47** 190.86** 275.28**

13.92 (1.73) 78.67 (20.15)

1,169.04** 223.58**

The mean self-reported understanding of nouns (% of maximum possible understanding score) is shown in Figure 2. We see a strong frequency effect in word growth in the figure: Nouns in the highest frequency band (I) were less known on the pretest than the nouns in the lower frequency band (II); however, at the times of Posttests 1 and 2, the higher-frequency nouns show a higher learning rate than the lower-frequency nouns in contrast to the pretest. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Figure 2. Self-reported understanding of nouns in each frequency band.

The mean self-reported understanding of verbs (% of maximum possible understanding score) is summarized in Figure 3, and it shows that the more frequent words were already known to a greater degree and consequently, learned and retained more than the less frequent words. Those verbs with higher frequency seem to be easier to learn incidentally and retain than do the less frequent ones.

Figure 3. Self-reported understanding of verbs in each frequency band.

The mean percentages of the adjectives learned in Bands II and III according to the three tests is summarized in Figure 4. Only one adjective was in Band I, and this was already known to the learners on the pretest; so the results for the adjective in Band I are not reported here. The participants reported higher levels of knowledge for the more frequent adjectives on all of the tests. The results for all of the word classes demonstrate that the understanding of the words increased Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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after reading the texts. They also demonstrate that the more frequent words were better understood and were retained at a higher level than were the less frequent ones. This observation proves that text frequency plays a major role in the acquisition of vocabulary. However, the significant attrition of nouns in Band II on Posttest 2 implies that the frequency may not have been sufficient to ensure long-lasting acquisition of some of the words. We will return to this issue in the discussion.

Figure 4. Self-reported understanding of adjectives in each frequency band.

Posttest Verification of Vocabulary Acquisition At the time of Posttest 2, we were interested in seeing how many and what words had been unknown to every participant and how many of them were eventually acquired or remembered through reading. As a check on actual gains of unknown words after reading, participants were asked to complete a second measure, using words selected from the list of words that had been marked No (“I don’t know this word”) on the pretest. The format of this measure was based on Wesche and Paribakht’s (1996) vocabulary knowledge scale (VKS), used in Horst (2005). On the pretest, 32 words were marked No by every participant, and the understanding of these words was assessed again on Posttest 2. The possible scores on the adapted VKS ranged from 1 to 4, as shown in Figure 5. Lullaby Score: 1 I don’t know what this word means. 2 I have seen this word before, and I think it means_________________ 3 I know this word. It means______________________________________ (Give the meaning in English or Korean) 4 I can use this word in a sentence. (Write a sentence) _______________________________________________________________ (If you choose 4, please also complete 3.) Figure 5. Sample of word knowledge rating scale.

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In the VKS measure, if a mean is 4 for a particular word, that means that all the participants knew the meaning of the word and could use it in a sentence. Responses such as “a kind of animal” for porcupine or “a man” for sheriff were considered evidence for partial knowledge; to account for this, 0.5 points were deducted from the full score. Of the 32 words that no students understood on the pretest, the 17 in Table 8 were selected for discussion in terms of the relationship between their frequencies and scores on the adapted VKS. Words that were unknown to all participants before the test were learned to varying degrees according to the scores on Posttest 2, as indicated in Table 8. In general, words with higher text frequencies showed more gain on the adapted VKS than words with lower frequencies. However, this tendency is not straightforward, and word class clearly has a mediating effect. For example, the noun annex, which occurred 13 times, has a mean adapted VKS of only 1.58, but the verb groan in the same occurrence band has a mean of 2.45. We will return to this issue in the next section. Table 8. Frequency and VKS scores of selected words Word class Word Frequency Adapted VKS score Noun canteen 52 3.40 anorak 13 1.91 annex 13 1.58 porcupine 6 2.82 blister 4 1.58 loot 4 1.50 bushplane 3 2.60 twig 3 2.20 bonfire 3 1.90 Verb groan 14 2.45 spat 11 2.40 flicker 4 1.45 evict 1 1.91 spurt 1 1.00 Adjective meticulous 4 1.42 lukewarm 1 1.50 anesthetic 1 1.42

Discussion Our first research question asked how much vocabulary can be incidentally acquired from reading three authentic novels. The results of the tests show significant differences in student understanding between the pretest and Posttest 1 but no significant differences between Posttests 1 and 2. Therefore, we can safely conclude that vocabulary was incidentally acquired through ER and that most words acquired were retained without much attrition. The nouns in Band II were an exception to this observation. The pure word gain rate was as high as 40%, with the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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possibility of learners’ overestimation of their knowledge due to the self-evaluation. Nevertheless, this gain is quite high compared to other studies, although the direct comparison of pure word gain cannot be made between the present paper and other studies mentioned due to the absence of comparable data. We claim that ER has a strong influence on incidental vocabulary acquisition by Korean learners of English. Nouns were significantly lost in Band II between Posttests 1 and 2. This selective attrition may be explained by the circumstance that the nouns in Band II are not words that occur frequently in the input available to Korean learners of English in general. For example, out of the 39 words in this band, 9 were marked as unknown by every participant on the pretest (e.g., anorak, annex, sheriff, chastisement). The remaining words were probably unfamiliar to the learners due to gaps in cultural knowledge (e.g., raspberry, rattlesnake, rudder, tunic). This suggests that incidental vocabulary learning can be affected not only by input frequency (note the successful retention of nouns in the less frequent band), but also by the degree of familiarity with words used in the texts, which convey messages that may be unfamiliar to foreign language learners (e.g., hammock, bushplane). While Pitts et al. (1989) reported that over 50% of their participants failed to finish, the participants in the present study finished their reading. This was mainly because the students were engaged by interesting storylines and partly because a series of comprehension quizzes was administered to assist the students’ completion of the assigned reading. This might have motivated steady reading with attention. Finally, word gain and retention rates can be influenced by the kinds of words that are tested: Non-words and real words may be processed differently in learners’ working memories. The second research question asked what proportion of incidentally learned words was retained 1 month later. As shown in Figures 2–4, significant word gain occurred between the pretest and Posttest 1 and persisted until Posttest 2. The general retention percentages on Posttest 2 are higher than the percentages of prereading word knowledge for the nouns (69.7 vs. 43.2%), verbs (68.4 vs. 48.6%) and adjectives (70.0 vs. 53.0%). Again, these results suggest that nouns are easier to learn than verbs and adjectives (cf. Benedict, 1979; Gentner, 1978, 1982; Greenfield & Smith, 1976, for child language development). This study is in line with the accounts in the literature: A higher percentage of the nouns was retained than of the verbs. The percentages of retention on Posttest 2 are greater than the percentages of prereading knowledge across the three word classes. For example, for words in Band I, the retention percentage is 85.1% for nouns and 85.7% for verbs, which indicates a very high percentage of retention and a significant increase from the prereading knowledge percentages in each word class (see Figures 2–4 for Bands II & III). Therefore, we can safely say that the retention rate of the words gained incidentally through ER was quite high 1 month later. Interestingly, the exceptionally high retention percentage of adjectives seems to be attributable to the quite high prereading knowledge. Of course, concluding that vocabulary was successfully retained through ER would be hasty because the interval between Posttests 1 and 2 is crucial to determine whether the reading program was really successful. However, note that the participants in the study reported that they had not studied English between Posttests 1 and 2. Future studies should be conducted to further investigate this issue. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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The relatively high retention rate (not only word-gain rate) in this study contrasts with other research that showed a quite low retention rate (Day et al., 1991; Dupuy & Krashen, 1993; Hulstijn, 1992; Pitts et al., 1989; Saragi et al., 1978; Waring & Takaki, 2003). One factor that may have contributed to this difference is the difference in the amount of reading. The greater the amount, the more exposure to the input and more repetition may take effect. Horst (2005) reported that her L2 participants read 10.2 graded readers over 5 weeks and learned 7 new words out of 50 test items; she claimed that the amount of reading has a prominent effect on word learning. In contrast, the participants in the present study read around 130,000 words in about 640 pages. The third research question asked whether the frequency of words is related to their learning rates. Unsurprisingly, the words in Band III (the lowest frequency group) show the lowest prereading knowledge compared to the words in the other bands (41% for the nouns, 47.2% for the verbs, and 49% for the adjectives). Correspondingly, students’ prereading understanding of the words in Band II was lower than that of the words in Band I for the verbs (49.9 vs. 65.5%), but not for the nouns (53.1 vs. 47.6%). Nevertheless, the retention percentages of the words on Posttest 2 illustrate that high-frequency words are remembered more readily than low-frequency words regardless of the word classes: The order of the retention rates is Band III < Band II < Band I. Overall, the trends in percentage change of prereading knowledge, word gain, and retention are parallel, as illustrated in Figures 2–4. For all three word classes, the words occurring in higher frequency bands were learned better than those in lower frequency bands. This is the case throughout all three word classes, and we can say that more frequent words were more likely to be learned and were more resistant to attrition. Understanding and retention rates increased significantly even for the words with the lowest frequency, although low-frequency words were retained less than higher frequency words. Note that the frequencies in this study are the text frequency and may not reflect the frequency in the language at large. Horst et al. (1998) did not find that high-frequency words in general language were learned more easily, although they found a significant text frequency factor. They argued that this was due to the lack of sufficient exposure to general English input for a repetition effect to facilitate learning. Similarly, in the present study, one of the highest frequency words was canteen, which occurred 52 times in the text and was successfully acquired in the end, but this word is not frequent in language use and was known to no participant before reading. This observation suggests that the frequency of words in a text may be more important in vocabulary acquisition than the general frequency of words in a language in terms of accumulated exposure and readiness to be picked up. The raw frequency of words in language is insufficient to explain the rate at which learners acquire them. As shown in Table 8, the adapted VKS scores were higher for some words with lower text frequencies than for some of those with higher text frequencies, although they were all entirely unknown at the prereading stage. This observation requires explanation. More often than not, the text frequency is not directly reflected in the adapted VKS score. This observation may be attributable to the different “conceptual” recognitions of the words, which depend on the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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different degrees to which the words were meaningful in the context for comprehension of the storyline. It does not seem feasible to define a number of exposures that is sufficient for successful acquisition, such as at least 10 exposures (Saragi et al., 1978) or 5–16 exposures (Nation, 1990). As Henriksen (1999, p. 314) pointed out, word acquisition seems to be able to range “over continua of lexical knowledge” from partial recognition knowledge to productive use ability, depending on how many and what kinds of exposures are needed for successful acquisition. The observation that some words that do not appear frequently, but are nevertheless acquired and retained, apparently because they are salient and significant to a story, is highly interesting. We suggest that the rate of incidental vocabulary learning is not simply related to the raw frequency of specific words in the language. We further propose that learning is a consequence of noticing and the conscious learning of words that are important in the narrative (Schmidt, 2001). To answer the last research question, we demonstrated that the students learned words in different word classes at different rates. On Posttest 1, the students’ self-reported understanding of the word classes was ranked noun > adjective > verb; this result is in contrast with the results of the pretest, in which the students’ understanding of the nouns was the lowest. This change suggests that the nouns were easier to learn than the verbs or adjectives. Interestingly enough, on Posttest 2, the students’ understanding did not differ among the word classes. Actually, the noun class was the only one that attrited in the interval between the posttests. Two questions arise: (a) Why were the nouns easier to learn incidentally through ER than the other word classes? (b) Why did the understanding of the nouns attrite, unlike the other word classes, 1 month after they were learned? If we can assume that foreign language learning is not fundamentally different from child language development (cf. Slabakova, 2006; White, 2003), we can provide a plausible explanation for the preferential learning of nouns over other word classes in foreign language learning by adopting the accounts of child language development that indicate that nouns are learned before verbs. For the learners in this study, nouns might have been easier to understand because they are conceptually more basic than verbs or adjectives. This interpretation suggests that nouns are relatively simple entities in the mental lexicon, whereas verbs encode dependent word classes with directed connections to their noun arguments. The mapping between form and meaning for verbs would be more difficult because the argument structure information of verbs, such as how many and what kinds of arguments (e.g., theme, goal, or location), should be met in the learning process of verbs, while this process is not necessary when learning nouns. However, we can also assume that because nouns are easier to learn than verbs or adjectives and incur less cognitive cost of storage in the mental lexicon, they can be also more easily forgotten simply because of that low cost. We postulate that ease of acquisition is associated with ease of loss. Finally, the limitations of the present study should be mentioned. First, on the pretest, the participants indicated that they understood 50% or more of the words throughout the three frequency bands (see Figures 2–4). This means that the participants did not have many opportunities to meet unfamiliar words in the ER materials. Learners who have smaller English vocabularies than these participants are needed to observe whether different word gain and retention rates would be observed among those students also. Second, the experimental methodology used in this study, the self-report checklist technique, is one of various Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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methodologies to measure learner word knowledge. If a different methodology, such as multiplechoice questions or translation test, had been used in this study, the number of words remembered on the delayed posttest might have been different because different experimental techniques can produce different measurement results (Gu & Johnson, 1996). Lastly, to determine the retention time of words incidentally learned through ER, a further study is necessary in which the delayed posttest is conducted after a longer period than in the present study. Acknowledgments We deeply appreciate the helpful comments and suggestions of the two anonymous reviewers of Reading in a Foreign Language, which helped us to fill the gaps of the previous version of the paper. We want to thank the students who participated in the study and enjoyed reading novels. All of the remaining errors are, of course, our own. Notes 1. Chapter books are so named because the episodes in most of the books are divided into chapters with or without their own titles. 2. An anonymous reviewer pointed out that “the researcher was not able to observe the extent to which the students might have looked up words in a dictionary or engaged in vocabulary learning activities while they were reading.” The students were strongly encouraged to read for meaning and pleasure, not for learning words. This was verified in students’ oral reports that they had not paid much attention to the meanings of the individual words that they did not know for sure. They tried to guess the meanings in context and did not want to stop reading to look up words in a dictionary, especially when they were deeply engaged in the story. 3. For more information about the class procedure, refer to Kweon’s (2008) article, which describes in pedagogical terms how the ER program can be implemented in L2 classrooms. 4. As an anonymous reviewer correctly suggested, the results of the present study should be interpreted with caution, considering that the tests measured word knowledge on the basis of a self-report measure. The self-report measurement lacks evidence that the words rated Yes and NS were indeed known or unsurely known to the students. However, the results of the adapted VKS study conducted at the time of the delayed posttest in fact prove that the self-report measure was a reliable method of measuring the learners’ knowledge: words that had been checked No by all the participants on the pretest were found to be learned after reading even for the words with low frequencies.

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References References marked with an asterisk indicate the chapter books referred to in this study. Arnaud, P., & Bejoint, H. (Eds.). (1992). Vocabulary and applied linguistics. London: MacMillan. Bahns, J., & Eldaw, M. (1993). Should we teach EFL students collocations? System, 21, 101–114. Bell, T. (2001). Extensive reading: Speed and comprehension. The Reading Matrix, 1(1). Retrieved May 30, 2003, from http://www.readingmatrix.com/articles/bell/ index.html. Benedict, H. (1979). Early lexical development: Comprehension and production. Journal of Child Language, 6, 183–200. Bley-Vroman, R. (1990). The logical problem of foreign language learning. Linguistic Analysis, 20 (1–2), 3–49. Cho, K. S., & Krashen, S. D. (1994). Acquisition of vocabulary from the Sweet Valley Kids series: Adult ESL acquisition. Journal of Reading, 37, 662–667. Coady, J. (1997). L2 vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition: A rationale for pedagogy (pp. 174–200). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Coady, J., & Huckin, T. (Eds.). (1997). Factors in the incidental acquisition of second language vocabulary from oral input: A review essay. Applied Language Learning, 5, 1–32. Day, R. R., & Bamford, J. (1998). Extensive reading in the second language classroom. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Day, R., Omura, C., & Hiramatsu, M. (1991). Incidental EFL vocabulary learning and reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 541–551. Donelson, K. L., & Nilsen, A. P. (2005). Literature for today's young adults (7th ed.). Boston: Pearson Education. Dupuy, B., & Krashen, S. D. (1993). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in French as a foreign language. Applied Language Learning, 4(1), 55–63. Elley, W. B. (1991). Acquiring literacy in a second language: The effect of book-based programs. Language Learning, 41, 375–411. Gentner, D. (1978). On relational meaning: The acquisition of verb meaning. Child Development, 49, 988–998. Gentner, D. (1982). Why nouns are learned before verbs: Linguistic relativity vs. natural partitioning. In S. A. Kuczaj (Ed.), Language development: Language, culture and cognition (pp. 301–335). Hillsdale, NJ: Erlbaum. Grabe, W. (2004). Research on teaching reading. Annual Review of Applied Linguistics, 24, 44– 69. Greenfield, P. M., & Smith, J. H. (1976). The structure of communication in early language development. New York: Academic Press. Gu, Y., & Johnson, R. (1996). Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes. Language Learning, 46, 643–679. Haastrup, K. (1991). Lexical inferencing procedures or talking about words. Tübingen, Germany: Gunter Naar. Hafiz, F., & Tudor, I. (1989). Extensive reading and the development of language skills. ELT Journal, 43, 4–13.

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Hafiz, F., & Tudor, I. (1990). Graded readers as an input medium in L2 learning. System, 18, 31– 42. Hatch, E., & Brown, C. (1995). Vocabulary, semantics, and language education. New York: Cambridge University Press. Henriksen, B. (1999). Three dimensions of vocabulary development. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 303–318. Honeyfield, J. (1977). Simplification. TESOL Quarterly, 11, 431–440. Horst, M. (2000). Text encounters of the frequent kind: Learning L2 vocabulary through reading. Unpublished doctoral dissertation. University of Wales, Swansea, UK. Horst, M. (2005). Learning L2 vocabulary through extensive reading: A measurement study. The Canadian Journal of Language Review, 61(3), 355–382. Horst, M., Cobb, T., & Meara, P. (1998). Beyond a Clockwork Orange: Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 11, 207–223. Horst, M., & Meara, P. (1999). Test of a model of predicting second language lexical growth through reading. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 56, 308–328. Huckin, T. (1983). A cognitive approach to readability. In P. V. Anderson, R. J. Brokmann, & C. R. Miller (Eds.), New essays in technical and scientific communication: Research, theory, practice (p. 91). Fermingdale, NY: Baywood. Huckin, T., & Coady, J. (1999). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 181–193. Hulstijn, J. H. (1992). Retention of inferred and given word meanings: Experiments in incidental vocabulary learning. In P. J. L. Arnaud & H. Bejoint (Eds.), Vocabulary and applied linguistics. London: MacMillan. Hulstijn, J. H., & Laufer, B. (2001). Some empirical evidence for the involvement load hypothesis in vocabulary acquisition. Language Learning, 51, 539–558. Huttenlocher, J., & Lui, F. (1979). The semantic organization of some simple nouns and verbs. Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 18, 141–162. Krashen, S. D. (1993). The Power of Reading: Insights from the Research. Englewood, CO: Libraries Unlimited. Kweon, S.-O. (2008). Implementing extensive reading program at a university immersion classroom. Manuscript in preparation. Pohang University of Science and Technology, Korea. Lai, F. K. (1993). The effect of a summer reading course on reading and writing skills. System, 21, 87–100. Lewis, M. (1993). The lexical approach. Hove, England: Language Teaching Publications. Lightbown, P. M. (1992). Can they do it themselves? A comprehension-based ESL course for young children. In R. Courchene, J. St. John, C. Therein, & J. Glidden (Eds.), Comprehension-based second language teaching: Current trends (pp. 353–370). Ottawa, Ontario, Canada: University of Ottawa Press. Lituanas, P. M., Jacobs, G. M., & Renandya, W. A. (1999). A study of extensive reading with remedial reading students. In Y. M. Cheah & S. M. Ng (Eds.), Language instructional issues in Asian classrooms (pp. 89–104). Newark, DE: International Development in Asia Committee, International Reading Association. *Lowry, L. (1993). The Giver. New York: Dell Laurel-Leaf. Markman, E. (1989). Categorization and naming in children: Problems of induction. Cambridge, MA: MIT Press. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Marinellie, S. A., & Johnson, C. (2004). Nouns and verbs: A comparison of definitional style. Journal of Psycholinguistic Research, 33, 217–235. Mason, B., & Krashen, S. D. (1997). Extensive reading in English as a foreign language. System, 25, 91–102. McKay, S. (1982). Literature in the ESL classroom. TESOL Quarterly, 16, 529–536. Meara, P. (1992). Vocabulary in a second language. Reading in a Foreign Language, 9, 761–831. Miller, G. (1991). The science of words. New York: W. H. Freeman & Company. Nagy, W. E., Herman, P. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 233–253. Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. New York: Heinle and Heinle. Nattinger, J., & DeCarrico, J. (1992). Lexical phrases and language teaching. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Paribakht, T. S., & Wesche, M. (1997). Vocabulary enhancement activities and reading for meaning in second language vocabulary acquisition. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second language vocabulary acquisition: A rationale for pedagogy (pp. 174–200). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Parry, K. (1991). Building a vocabulary through academic reading. TESOL Quarterly, 25, 629– 653. *Paulson, G. (1987). Hatchet. New York: Aladdin Paperbacks. Pigada, M., & Schmitt, N. (2006). Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study. Reading in a Foreign Language, 18, 1–28. Pinker, S. (1989). Learnability and cognition: The acquisition of argument structure. Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press. Pitts, M., White, H., & Krashen, S. (1989). Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading: A replication of A Clockwork Orange study using second language acquirers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 271–275. Rigg, P. (1991). Whole language in TESOL. TESOL Quarterly, 25(3), 520–540. Robb, T. N., & Susser, B. (1989). Extensive reading vs. skills building in an EFL context. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 239–249. *Sachar, L. (1998). Holes. New York: Yearling. Saragi, T., Nation, I. S. P., & Meister, G. (1978). Vocabulary learning and reading. System, 6, 72–80. Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Shin, S. K. (2006). Kanguy kyojay ilki-lul thonghan wuyencek ehwihaksup-ey kwanhan yenkwu [Incidental vocabulary learning from reading course materials]. Foreign Languages Education, 13, 321–337. Slabakova, R. (2006). Is there a critical period for semantics? Second Language Research, 22, 302–338. Snow, C. E., Cancini, H., Gonzales, P., & Shriberg, E. (1989). Giving formal definitions: An oral language correlate of school literacy. In D. Bloome (Ed.), Literacy in classrooms (pp. 233–249). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Tomlinson, B. (1986). Openings. London: Lingual House. Tsang, W. K. (1996). Comparing the effects of reading and writing on writing performance. Applied Linguistics, 17, 210–233.

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Vincent, M., & Carter, R. A. (1986). Simple text and reading text. In C. Brumfit & R. Carter (Eds.), Literature and language teaching (pp. 208–222). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Waring, R., & Takaki, M. (2003). At what rate do learners learn and retain new vocabulary from reading a graded reader? Reading in a Foreign Language, 15, 130–163. Watson, R. (1985). Towards a theory of definition. Journal of Child Language, 12, 181–197. Webb, S. (2005). The effects of reading and writing on word knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 33–52. Wechsler, D. (1991). Wechsler intelligence scale for children (3rd ed.). San Antonio, TX: Psychological Corp. Wesche, M., & Paribakht, T. S. (1996). Assessing vocabulary knowledge: Depth versus breadth. The Canadian Modern Language Review, 53, 13–39. White, L. (2003). Second language acquisition and universal grammar. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Widdowson, H. G. (1979). Explorations in applied linguistics. Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. Wodinsky, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (1988). Learning from graded readers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 155–161. Appendix Nominal Data Collection 1. Numbers of Yes, NS, and No responses by all participants on the three tests Pretest Noun Verb Adjective

Yes 629 720 345

NS 287 344 158

No Total 848 1,764 772 1,836 301 804

Posttest 1 Yes 1,156 1,049 493

NS No 267 341 322 465 152 195

Posttest 2 Total 1,764 1,836 804

Yes 1,138 1,139 513

NS 217 209 107

No 409 488 185

Total 1,764 1,836 804

The total of 1,764 indicates 147 nouns × 12 students. The total of 1,836 indicates 153 verbs × 12 students. The total number of 804 indicates 67 adjectives × 12 students. For information on the total number of words in the classes, refer to Table 3.

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2. Number of Yes responses in three word classes on the three tests

The figure shows that the number of Yes responses in three word classes across the three tests increased significantly. Nouns increased on Posttest 1 by about 85%; verbs, 46%; and adjectives, 43%, which suggests that the learners acquired word knowledge on Posttest 1. This supports the hypothesis that nouns are easier to learn than verbs. Interestingly, however, the students’ word knowledge had increased at the time of Posttest 2 compared to Posttest 1. Based on the enormous increase of Yes answers on Posttest1, vocabulary was possibly acquired through extensive reading. 3. Number of NS response in the three word classes on the three tests

The numbers of NS responses in the three word classes across the three tests are shown in the figure. Between the pretest and Posttest 1 is not a big change; however, on Posttest 2, the NS responses decreased. The consistent NS response between the pretest and Posttest 1 suggests that if change occurred between these two tests, it was between the Yes and No responses, and in fact, as the Yes responses increased, the No responses decreased proportionally (see the figure below). Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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4. Number of No responses in the three word classes on the three tests

About the Authors Soo-Ok Kweon teaches at Pohang University of Science and Technology in Korea. She received her PhD in linguistics from the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. Her primary research interests include SLA theory and practice, psycholinguistics, and corpus linguistics. She is currently working on L2 reading research using literature with Korean university students. E-mail: [email protected] Hae-Ri Kim teaches at Seoul National University of Education in Korea. She received her EdD from Arizona State University. Her research interests include language teaching methodology, curriculum and materials development, and literacy. She is working with teachers to develop and implement a literature-based program in EFL elementary schools across Korea.

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 216–231

Evaluating L2 readers’ vocabulary strategies and dictionary use Caleb Prichard Ferris Women’s University Japan Abstract A review of the relevant literature concerning second language dictionary use while reading suggests that selective dictionary use may lead to improved comprehension and efficient vocabulary development. This study aims to examine the dictionary use of Japanese university students to determine just how selective they are when reading nonfiction English texts for general comprehension. The findings suggest that highintermediate and advanced learners are often selective when considering whether to look up a word. However, a third of the participants in this study were judged to have used the dictionary excessively. In addition, a quarter of the words looked up in the study were neither essential to the articles’ main points nor frequent or useful words, according to corpus research. It is concluded that some learners might benefit from training in selective dictionary use. Keywords: vocabulary strategies, dictionary use, reading online

Vocabulary knowledge is the most important component of second language (L2) reading comprehension, even more so than background knowledge and syntax (Laufer, 1997). When learners come upon an unknown word that they cannot infer from context, they can either ignore the word or consult a dictionary. While it is often stated that learners tend to depend on dictionary use excessively, research shows that learners’ strategy use varies depending on a number of variables (Gu & Johnson, 1996; Hulstijin, 1993; Zhang, 2001). Second language instructors often have different assumptions as to the effectiveness of using a dictionary while reading. Instructors following traditional grammar-translation methods have tended to focus on decoding text and have encouraged the extensive use of dictionaries. However, current communicative practices in the field focus on strategic reading and inferring the meaning of unknown words from context (Grabe & Stoller, 2004; Knight, 1994; Laufer, 1997), and many teachers discourage the use of dictionaries altogether in the reading classroom (Bensoussan, Sim, & Weiss, 1984). Teachers’ views on dictionary use do not always seem to be based on empirical evidence (Luppescu & Day, 1993), though in the past two decades researchers have paid more attention to examining the efficacy of dictionary use. A number of studies have focused on the postreading vocabulary and comprehension scores of learners with and without the use of dictionaries (Bogaards, 1998; Knight, 1994; Luppescu & Day, 1993; Summers, 1988). Though studies have http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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shown contrasting results, most have demonstrated that dictionary use can enable comprehension. Therefore, rather than focusing solely on whether or not dictionaries should be used, there is a need to examine when and how often learners might optimally use dictionaries. This study is motivated by the need to further understanding of how dictionaries can be used to increase comprehension and enable vocabulary acquisition. Specifically, it will be considered under what circumstances unknown lexical items should be looked up, as opposed to using other strategies such as ignoring words or trying to infer meaning from context. The relevant literature concerning reading strategies, incidental vocabulary acquisition, and dictionary use will be analyzed in order to define and describe selective dictionary use. Second, using this foundation, this paper will then describe a small-scale study on the dictionary use of Japanese learners of English in order to determine just how selective they are in using their dictionary when reading nonfiction texts for general comprehension. The study could hopefully spark more interest in the area and could also help educators determine whether learners might benefit from more explicit instruction on vocabulary strategies and dictionary use. Studies of Dictionary Use Language educators sometimes claim that using a dictionary while reading can lead to inefficient learning (Bensoussan et al., 1984; Knight, 1994), and research indicates that this may often be the case. Compared to control groups who were not allowed to use dictionaries, L2 learners using dictionaries took twice as long to complete the reading task in Luppescu and Day’s (1993) study and half as long in Knight’s study. More proficient learners showed little or no gain when using dictionaries in the studies by Bensoussan et al. and Knight, indicating that the extra time used to look up words was used inefficiently. Indeed, using a dictionary does not always improve comprehension (Bensoussan et al., 1984; Koyama & Takeuchi, 2004). One concern is that the time it takes to look up words interferes with readers’ short-term memory and prevents them from focusing on the text as a whole (Bensoussan et al., 1984; Knight, 1994). In addition, learners with access to dictionaries sometimes locate the wrong dictionary entry, leading to miscomprehension (Bogaards, 1998; Luppescu & Day, 1993; Tang, 1997). However, Bogaards (1998) found that learners were significantly more likely to identify the correct definition in the dictionary than they were to accurately guess the meaning of unknown words from context. In fact, many studies have shown that L2 dictionary use improves reading comprehension and could lead to lexical development. In a series of three studies (Summers, 1988), L2 English learners using a dictionary scored significantly better on both postreading comprehension and vocabulary tests. In a study of nearly 300 Japanese learners of English, the experimental group with access to bilingual dictionaries while reading scored significantly better than the control group on a vocabulary posttest (Luppescu & Day, 1993). In another study involving 112 learners of Spanish (Knight, 1994), learners who had access to a dictionary scored higher on postreading comprehension and vocabulary tests, though the difference in the comprehension scores of more proficient learners was not significant, as mentioned above. Utilizing new technologies such as handheld electronic dictionaries, online dictionaries, and marginal glosses may affect the efficacy of dictionary use. Referring to an unknown word Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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through an electronic link, for example, takes much less time and distracts the reader from the text to a lesser degree. In a study by De Ridder (2002), there was no correlation between the time needed to complete the reading task and the number of words looked up through marginal (electronic) glosses. In another study (Koyama & Takeuchi, 2004), users of electronic dictionaries looked up more words in less time than users of printed dictionaries. However, the greater number of lookups did not lead to increased comprehension in either study. Text Coverage and the Use of Dictionaries Corpora and research on text coverage may provide some clues as to why some less proficient learners benefited more from dictionary use in the above studies. Nation (1990, 2001), Laufer (1997), and others have shown that L2 readers may have difficulty comprehending reading passages if they understand less than 95% of the running words in the text, or approximately 3,000 word families. Extensive dictionary use may not enable learners with a very low vocabulary to reach the threshold. Strategic reading requires significant cognitive resources (Laufer, 1997), and using a dictionary often may use too much of this capacity. Many researchers in the field (e.g., Laufer, 1997; Nation & Warring, 1997) recommend having low-level students read graded readers or build their sight vocabulary rather than having them tackle authentic texts. However, whether or not dictionary use can enable intermediate or preadvanced learners to reach the threshold has largely been ignored in the research on text coverage. Moreover, 95% is not an absolute tipping point between noncomprehension and comprehension, as it often seems to be considered in the field. In Hu and Nation (2000), for example, readers with coverage as low as 80–90% showed some comprehension of text, and it is suggested that access to a glossary would have increased comprehension even more. Indeed, the dictionary use studies mentioned above support the idea that looking up words can increase learners’ coverage of the text and enable comprehension. There was a significant correlation between the number of words looked up and the comprehension scores of less proficient learners in Knight (1994), suggesting that dictionary use helped these learners reach the comprehension threshold. On the other hand, considering that there was no significant difference in the comprehension scores of control and experimental groups of high-proficiency learners in Knight’s study and in Bensoussan et al. (1984), it is possible that these learners already knew enough words in the passages to enable comprehension. Coverage is not only important for comprehension but also for lexical development. Hirsh and Nation (1992) hypothesized that learners may need to comprehend up to 98% of the running words in a passage in order for incidental vocabulary learning to take place when reading for pleasure, though empirical support is needed to support this claim. If a text is too difficult, context clues that are necessary to infer a word’s meaning from context are not accessible (Laufer, 1997; Robinson, 2003). Recent research shows a significant correlation between comprehension and the gain and retention of new lexical items (Pulido, 2007). Therefore, it could be hypothesized that if a dictionary can be used to increase comprehension, dictionary use may also lead to incidental learning of other unknown words. It is possible, however, that the process of looking up a word in the dictionary may require too much of the cognitive resources necessary for learners to infer the meaning of words from context.

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Nevertheless, the dictionary use studies mentioned above indicate that looking up words can lead to the retention of words looked up. Noticing language is the first step to acquisition (Schmidt, 2001), and looking a word up in the dictionary and identifying the correct definition calls more attention to the word, which increases the chances the word will be retained (Peters, 2007; Pulido, 2007; Robinson, 2003). However, looking up nearly all unknown words without careful attention would be unlikely to lead to retention. In the studies mentioned above on the learners’ overuse of electronic glosses, it is hypothesized that looking up too many words without careful consideration led to shallow processing and short-term retention (De Ridder, 2002; Roby, 1999). L2 Learners’ Dictionary Use There are a number of factors that influence learners’ dictionary use. Research has shown that most learners do not look up words at random. Hulstijin (1993) found that advanced learners were somewhat less likely to consult a dictionary if the meaning of the unknown word was easily inferred. Moreover, studies have shown that learners tend to look up relevant words, defined in these studies as words that were needed to answer comprehension questions (Hulstijin, 1993; Laufer & Levitzky-Aviad, 2003; Peters, 2007). As will be discussed in the next section, research shows that more proficient learners use a variety of vocabulary strategies, rather than depending exclusively on dictionaries (Gu & Johnson, 1996; Hulstijin, 1993; Zhang, 2001). Several other variables influence learners’ reading and vocabulary strategies. Task is one of the most influential variables. In a translation task, for example, readers need to understand each word (Bogaards, 1998), while learners reading for general comprehension can often ignore unknown words and use their dictionary more strategically. When reading for pleasure or to build fluency, readers should not be expected to refer to a dictionary often, if at all (Hu & Nation, 2000). The type of dictionary used is another key variable. As suggested above, learners look up words more frequently when utilizing electronic or web-based dictionaries, rather than printed dictionaries (De Ridder, 2002; Koyama & Takeuchi, 2004; Roby, 1999). Other variables may include the time learners have to read, the type of word and text, learner motivation, and learning style (Hulstijin, 1993; Oxford, 2001). Selective Dictionary Use The research studies described above suggest that there are some advantages, some disadvantages, and a number of variables concerning the use of dictionaries for L2 readers. Looking up words may help learners build their receptive vocabulary and can also enable comprehension. On the other hand, it takes readers longer to read when using a dictionary, and more proficient learners benefit less, if at all, from dictionary use. Looking up words may be quicker and easier when using online or electronic dictionaries, but it can become so effortless that it may decrease vocabulary retention. Based on the studies mentioned above, it is concluded here that dictionaries should be used for learners when reading a text above their level to reach the comprehension threshold (roughly 95% coverage). Learners reading texts near or at their level should use dictionaries very rarely, if at all. Using a dictionary more than necessary could lead to an inefficient use of study time and less retention of words looked up. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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However, it still needs to be considered which lexical items should be looked up and which words can be ignored (Hulstijin, 1993). When teaching academic reading, Grabe and Stoller (2004) suggest that instructors focus students’ attention on words that are frequent and useful to acquire and words that are related to the main points of a reading passage. When coming upon an unknown word whose meaning cannot be readily inferred from context, perhaps instructors could adopt the same approach when helping learners to decide whether to consult a dictionary. First, in terms of reading comprehension, some words are clearly more important to understand than others. An unknown word in the headline or the first few sentences of a news report, for example, is obviously much more important than a word at the end of the article, which is often limited to details. In terms of vocabulary acquisition, corpus research has highlighted how infrequent most words in English are. While the most common 3,000 word families cover 90– 95% of running words used in an average text (Laufer, 1989; Nation, 1990, 2001), hundreds of thousands of less frequent words make up a tiny fraction of words used (Leech, Rayson, & Wilson, 2001). If dictionary use assists a learner in acquiring an infrequent word, it is unlikely that the learner will ever encounter the word again. On the other hand, improving learners’ knowledge of high-frequency vocabulary has been shown to lead to increased reading proficiency (Coady, Magoto, Hubbard, Graney, & Mokhtari, 1993). Research into the learning strategies of the most proficient learners supports the idea of selective dictionary use in that these learners tend to use a variety of vocabulary strategies while reading (Gu & Johnson, 1996; Hulstijin, 1993; Moir, 1996, as cited in Nation, 2001; Zhang, 2001). In Gu and Johnson, both contextual guessing and skillful use of dictionaries correlated highly with proficiency scores and vocabulary size. Moreover, selective attention was one of two metacognitive strategies that correlated significantly with proficiency. Identifiers of this strategy included that learners could sense when a word can be guessed from context, they knew when a word was essential to the passage, and they knew which words were important to learn. Though correlation does not prove causation, it is possible that the learners’ selective dictionary use may have increased their proficiency significantly compared to their peers. Hulstijin’s (1993) research supports this idea since learners with high inferencing ability scores had significantly higher vocabulary scores, but the reverse was not true. Indeed, a growing body of research shows a high correlation between proficiency and cognitive and metacognitive strategy use in all language skills, and strategy training has led to greater reading proficiency in a number of studies (Carrell, 1985; Carrell, Pharis, & Liberto, 1989; Oxford, 2001). Although the issue needs to be examined more extensively, there is considerable evidence that selective dictionary use can lead to improved reading comprehension, vocabulary development, and an efficient use of study time. Based on the literature, selective dictionary use is defined here as looking up words that cannot be readily guessed from context and that are either useful to learn or relevant to the main points of the passage or the task at hand. In addition, selective dictionary use would mean looking up enough words to enable comprehension, but using other strategies as often as possible. Research suggests that this would mean looking up enough words to enable roughly 95–98% coverage of the text. Because of the possible benefits, selective dictionary use could be promoted as a viable strategy to L2 learners. Other studies have not explicitly defined or measured selective dictionary use. Gu and Johnson’s Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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(1996) study does identify several key reading strategies, but it examines only learners’ selfreported behaviors. Research showing that learners tended to look up relevant words (Hulstijin, 1993; Laufer & Levitzky-Aviad, 2003; Peters, 2007) also did not measure learners’ behavior when reading in non-test-like, real-world settings (Bogaards, 1998). Relevant words in these studies were defined as words that were needed to answer comprehension questions, and many of these words were likely to have been looked up not while reading the passages initially but when answering postreading questions. Can language learners actually determine which words are important to the main point and which words are frequent and useful? This study examines the dictionary use of Japanese university students of English to measure just how selective they are when reading nonfiction texts for general comprehension. Method Thirty-four female university students in Japan read and summarized three texts of various genres. The participants had access to an online bilingual dictionary while reading, and the words looked up were measured and analyzed for their frequency and their relevance to the passages’ main points. Participants The participants included 17 first-year and 17 second-year students in the highest level of the university’s intensive English program. The program’s reading curriculum focused on understanding the main points of articles and guessing vocabulary from context, but not dictionary use. The participants’ scores on the paper-based Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL) ranged from 457 to 600, with a mean of 503 (median = 497, SD = 32). Materials The study involved three authentic reading passages. The first reading was a short news item (382 words), the second was a section from a book (420 words), and the third was a longer feature news story (1,120 words). The short news story reports about a factory worker who had slipped into a vat of chocolate. The book passage describes the rationale of the UN Millennium Goal to increase women’s participation in politics. The feature news story discusses Japan’s somewhat contradictory attitude on the environment and global warming. The three specific texts were chosen since they were perceived to be the kind of passages the learners might read for pleasure or in their academic studies. The three texts were also selected because they each have significantly different organization, and text type may influence dictionary use (Bogaards, 1998). As is typical of daily news stories, most of the main points of the first text could be found in the headline and first few paragraphs. The book passage followed the organization of a five-paragraph essay, with a clear thesis and topic sentences containing the main idea and the main points of the passage, respectively. Finally, the feature news story was typical of such stories in that it began with an example to hook the Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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reader. The opening example was then woven throughout the rest of the passage, which included the main points, details, and examples mixed in a seemingly unclear way. It was hypothesized that the participants would have more difficulty identifying key words to look up in this passage. Procedure To estimate the participants’ receptive knowledge of the words in the target readings, 1 week before the pretest the students were given a list of the words and they marked whether they knew the word’s meaning or not. Because of the great number of words tested in this study, testing for deeper levels of lexical knowledge was not feasible. On the day of the test, participants opened a Microsoft Word document containing the three passages. The participants were then told that they could check the definition of words while reading the passages, since the words were linked to an internet-based bilingual English-Japanese dictionary (www.alc.co.jp). When the participants clicked on a word, an internet browser window opened containing the word’s translation in Japanese and an example sentence in English. Since visible hyperlinks may increase the frequency of lookups (De Ridder, 2002), the linked words were not highlighted in any way. The participants had 1 hour and 15 minutes to read the passages and to write a summary and reaction of a few sentences for each. This task was chosen, rather than answering comprehension questions (Hulstijin, 1993; Laufer & Levitzky-Aviad, 2003; Peters, 2007) or completing a translation task (Bogaards, 1998), because this study aims to more validly reflect an authentic reading task where the reader aims to understand the main points of the passage and then forms some opinion or reaction to it. However, since learners’ ability to summarize and write a reaction does not always correlate with their understanding of the text, the learners’ comprehension of the passages could not be validly scored and was considered outside the scope of this study. When the participants were finished with the task, they printed out the document and gave it to the researcher. Since each word clicked on was automatically underscored by the Microsoft Word program as a followed link, the hard copy revealed which words were consulted in the online dictionary by each participant. Analysis To determine if the participants were using the stated descriptors of selective dictionary use, research questions were formed and analyzed in the following ways: 1. Did the participants look up enough words to enable comprehension but use other vocabulary strategies when possible? The number of the words looked up by each participant in the study was added to the total number of words marked as known in the pretest. Considering the number of times each word appeared in the passages, it was then estimated if the participants knew or looked up 95–98% of the passages’ running words. The exact percentages representing coverage are considered estimates since the participants may have sometimes looked up words marked as known in the pretest and since there is no guarantee the participants actually identified the correct dictionary definition. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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2. Did the participants tend to look up useful, high-frequency words rather than infrequent, technical words? The frequency and usefulness of each word was analyzed based on whether it was in the 2,000 level, the Academic Word List (AWL; Coxhead, 2000), or off these lists (off-list words) based on corpus data (Cobb, 1999; Heatley & Nation, 1994). Considering the vocabulary level and the academic aspirations of the participants, the 2,000-level and AWL words were considered the most useful to acquire. Therefore, the number of words looked up in the 2,000 word list or the AWL were compared to the number of off-list words looked up. In order to account for the participants’ vocabulary level, frequencies were calculated by comparing the number of words looked up by each student to the number of words marked as unknown in the pretest in each category. The variable was then analyzed using a paired, twotailed t test to determine if the participants looked up useful and high-frequency words significantly more often than off-list words. 3. Did the participants tend to look up words that are relevant to the main points of the passages, rather than the supporting details? The number of words looked up in the passages’ main points was compared with the number of words looked up in the passages’ supporting details and examples. Each word’s relevance was determined based on whether or not the word appeared in clauses rated by the researcher as being one of the main points of the passages. Again, the participants’ pretest survey was considered, and t tests were used to determine whether the participants looked up unknown words in the passages’ main points significantly more often than unknown words in the supporting details. 4. Did the participants more often look up words that are either useful words or words relevant to the main points of the passages rather than uncommon words in the supporting details of the passages? The number of words looked up that were either in the top 2,000 and AWL word lists or in the passages’ main points was compared to the number of off-list words looked up in the passages’ details and examples. Once again, the participants’ pretest vocabulary surveys were then considered, and t tests were used to measure significance. Results The Number of Words Looked Up The pretest vocabulary survey revealed that the participants did not know the meaning of an average of 67.5 of the words, which represents 4% of the total number of running words that appeared in the passages (SD = 0.01). Most of the participants previously knew the meaning of 95–98% of the running words, while just five students knew less than 95% (all of the five were Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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within 93–94.9%). Therefore, previous research suggests that most participants would need to look up few, if any, words to reach the 95%–98% mark, which is one of the descriptors of selective dictionary use used in this study. The participants varied wildly in terms of how many times they utilized the dictionary link (see Figure 1). While 2 participants looked up no words at all, 3 other participants looked up 78, 66, and 62 words. The mean number of words looked up was 29.76 (SD = 20.5, median = 25), which was 1.5% of the total number of running words. There was a weak positive correlation (r = .36), represented by the solid line in Figure 1, between the number of words marked as unknown in the pretest and the number of words looked up. In other words, many participants with a lower vocabulary used the dictionary to increase their coverage, while many of the participants with a higher vocabulary utilized the dictionary link less often. However, there were a few outliers whose dictionary use did not correlate with their vocabulary level.

Figure 1. Number of unknown words and words looked up.

Considering the number of previously known words and the number of words looked up by each participant, it is estimated that most participants (21) reached or stayed in the 95–98% range, which is indicated by the two dotted lines in Figure 1. In other words, most participants seemed to use the dictionary link enough times to comprehend the texts (the comprehension threshold discussed in previous research studies), but they used other strategies, such as ignoring unknown words or inferring their meaning, at other times. On average, the participants knew or looked up 97.4% of the words (SD = 0.02). However, while 1 participant remained slightly under 95%, 12 of the 34 participants exceeded the 98% range (though one learner previously knew this many words and looked up only three words during the test). It could therefore be concluded that roughly 1 in 3 participants relied on the dictionary perhaps to an excessive degree, instead of using other vocabulary strategies, which research suggests should have been possible. The Frequency and Usefulness of the Words Over half of the words (53%) the participants looked up in the study were relatively infrequent off-list words (see Table 1). However, considering that they already knew most of the words in Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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the high-frequency bands, the participants were actually much more likely to look up unknown high-frequency words. They looked up an average of 13.63 words in the 2,000-word list or AWL, which is 72% of the number of reported unknown words in these frequency bands (SD = 0.69). On the other hand, they looked up a mean of 15.74 off-list words, which is 34% of the total number of reported unknown off-list words (SD = 0.23). The difference between these frequencies is statistically significant (p < .01). Table 1. Frequent, useful words versus infrequent words Frequent, useful word

Infrequent word

Dictionary use

47%

53%

Unknown word looked up

72%

34%

The Context of the Words As shown in Table 2, the majority of the words (57%) the participants looked up in the study were in clauses rated by the researcher as one of the main points of the passages. By passage, 54% (news report), 64% (textbook passage), and 53% (feature story) of the words the participants looked up were in clauses related to the key points. The findings indicate that the learners did not have significantly more difficulty identifying the main points in the feature news story as hypothesized, compared to the news report or book passage. Table 2. The context of the words Word in the main points

Word in supporting details

Dictionary use

57%

43%

Unknown word looked up

68%

36%

When considering the participants’ unknown words, there was a tendency to ignore (or guess from context) many unknown words not related to the main points. They utilized the dictionary link for 36% of the number of reported unknown words that were in clauses outside the main points (SD = 0.46), compared to 68% for unknown words in the main points (SD = 0.25). This difference is significant (p < .01). Word Frequency and Context Seventy-five percent of the words looked up in the study were either frequent, useful words or words in one of the passages’ main points (see Table 3). In other words, three-fourths of the words the participants looked up in the online dictionary fit one of the two main descriptors of selective dictionary use. Table 3. Selective dictionary use

Dictionary use Unknown word looked up

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Frequent word or word in the main points 75% 59%

Infrequent word in supporting details 25% 26%

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Considering the participants’ vocabulary level, the participants were much more likely to look up unknown words that fit one or both categories. On average, they looked up one-fourth (26%) of the unknown off-list words appearing in the details or examples (SD = 0.18) and 59% of the reported number of unknown words that were either in the main points or in the more common frequency bands (SD = 0.45). This difference is statistically significant (p < .01). Discussion The findings here suggest that high-intermediate and advanced learners often use the selective dictionary use strategies described in this study. Most participants looked up enough words to reach the 95% comprehension threshold but used other strategies for the remaining unknown words. The participants tended not to focus on the infrequent technical words contained in the supporting details of the passages. On the contrary, the participants were significantly more likely to look up words that were either useful, high frequency words or words related to the main points. Three-fourths of the words the participants looked up in the study fit one of these two descriptors of selective dictionary use. Nevertheless, the findings suggest that many participants could have been more selective when considering which words to look up. One-fourth of the words consulted in the dictionary were neither relevant to the passages’ main points nor were frequent words. Moreover, when considering the participants’ vocabulary level, 1 in 3 participants looked up so many words that they exceeded the 95–98% range. As mentioned previously, research suggests that other strategies should have been possible. The participants who relied on the dictionary could have finished the task much more quickly and efficiently had they more often used other reading strategies such as guessing vocabulary from context or ignoring technical words not essential to the main points of the passages. Indeed, a few of the participants had trouble completing the task on time, though most did not. Implications The findings suggest that selective dictionary use may be an issue for some learners, though the topic should be researched much more extensively. Considering that many participants could have been more selective in their dictionary use, it may be useful to address the topic, either directly or indirectly, in reading textbooks and in the classroom. Communicative language instruction may improve the efficiency of students’ dictionary use without focusing on the issue directly. While teachers following grammar-translation methods often encourage learners to use a dictionary to decode the text, students in communicative language classes are encouraged to focus on understanding the main points and the information needed to complete tasks rather than trying to understand each word and sentence. Moreover, communicative instruction also includes practice inferring meaning from context, which may lead learners to become less dependent on their dictionary. However, communicative reading teachers may need to adjust their methods to more appropriately address the issue of selective dictionary use. First of all, rather than encouraging students not to use a dictionary, learners might be advised to use a dictionary a limited number of Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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times depending on their language level and the difficulty of the text. This would encourage students to be selective, and this study suggests that learners often do have good judgment. In postreading tasks, vocabulary strategies could be practiced more explicitly. While students are often asked to guess the meaning of words from context, a more methodologically-sound alternative would be for learners to be also given the option of ignoring the word or looking it up. The students could then note down or discuss why they looked up the words they did. Appropriate reasons could include that the word’s meaning could not be inferred and it seemed relevant or useful to learn. As long as the learner’s vocabulary is not too limited (Laufer, 1997), explicit instruction may also be useful in order to help learners identify which words are relevant to the main points. First, learners may benefit from instruction on recognizing the organization of reading passages (Carrell, 1985; Jiang & Grabe, 2007). The location of the main points can often be predicted by previewing the organization, but second language reading textbooks rarely mention where to find the main points in news articles, feature stories, and essays. As mentioned in the materials section, the news article and book passage in this study had fairly predictable organization compared to the feature story, but the participants did not look up words in the main points of these two passages any more often. Recognizing transition words could also help learners understand if a sentence is a main point, supporting detail, or example. The following excerpt from the feature story about Japan and global warming shows how transition words could have been used to distinguish examples from main points: The government’s response has been hobbled by disputes…. The economics ministry, for example [italics added], has blocked the … demands for a tax on … fuels such as [italics added] gasoline, kerosene and liquefied petroleum gas…. (Collier, 2006, p. A1) Though many participants looked up the words gasoline, kerosene, and petroleum, these terms are clearly examples of fuels. Moreover, the whole sentence itself is merely a supporting example of the lack of governmental action. Therefore, the unknown words in the second sentence could easily have been ignored. Second, though it may seem obvious, learners should be made aware that words that are repeated often in a passage tend to be either high-frequency words or words essential to the topic (Hirsh & Nation, 1992). In this study, the words vat, participation, and emissions were used several times and were key to the main points of the passages on the chocolate factory accident, women’s involvement in politics, and global warming, respectively. There are also a few guidelines that instructors could point out to students to help them identify high-frequency, useful words. However, learners (and educators) first need to be aware of how infrequent most words are and the importance of focusing on common words in the language or their specialized field. English language learners could then be informed that research shows that there is a significant negative correlation between the length of a word and its frequency (Leech et al., 2001). Examples of longer, more uncommon words that were often looked up in this study were egalitarian, hyperefficient, and photovoltaic. On the other hand, utilize was an example of a Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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high-frequency word (in the AWL) with few syllables that many participants did not look up (despite the fact that many reportedly did not know the word in the pretest). Along with the context of the word and whether the word has been noticed before, the number of syllables can serve as a rough guide for determining whether or not the word is common enough to be looked up. Limitations This was a relatively small-scale study, and there were a few limitations to the research methodology. First, as suggested before, a review of the data suggests that participants sometimes looked up words reported as known in their pretest survey. Since the data analysis relied on the pretest survey for determining the number of unknown words looked up, the frequencies reported in this study should be considered estimates of the learners’ coverage and the percentage of unknown words looked up. Future studies should either utilize a different pretest survey or the data analysis methods may need to be revised to better account for this. Second, though some words occurred several times in the passages, the data collection procedures did not allow for the recording of the number of times a word was looked up. Therefore, even if a word was looked up more than once, it was automatically recorded as having been looked up one time. Moreover, it was impossible to determine in which occurrence the word was looked up. This study should be considered an introductory study into the issue of selective dictionary use. The methods used in this study for recording the words looked up were reliable and fairly valid, especially compared to earlier studies on dictionary use in which learners were asked to mark the words they looked up. However, in future empirical studies on dictionary use, computer programs, such as the one described by Knight (1994), could be created to better record and analyze the data. Conclusion Some L2 instructors urge students to use their dictionary as much as possible while others encourage them not to use a dictionary at all. However, though the issue needs to be examined more carefully, research suggests that encouraging selective dictionary use may more efficiently improve L2 learners’ reading comprehension and vocabulary. This study defines selective dictionary use as looking up words that are either useful to learn or relevant to the passage’s main points or the reading task. In addition, for learners just below the level of the text, dictionaries should be used to enable adequate coverage of the passage (roughly 95–98% of the running words), while other strategies should be used for the remaining words. Though educators sometimes claim that learners do not use dictionaries efficiently, the findings here suggest that many high-intermediate and advanced learners are often selective when considering whether to look up a word. Nevertheless, a third of the participants in this study were judged to have perhaps used the dictionary link excessively. A quarter of the words looked up in the study were neither essential to the passages’ main points nor frequent or useful words, according to corpus research. It could be concluded that some learners might benefit from Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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instruction on selective dictionary use. Learners may need help learning to recognize a passage’s main points and evaluating the frequency and usefulness of unknown words. References Bensoussan, M., Sim, D., & Weiss, R. (1984). The effect of dictionary usage on EFL test performance compared with student and teacher attitudes and expectations. Reading in a Foreign Language, 2, 262–276. Bogaards, P. (1998). Using dictionaries: Which words are looked up by foreign language learners? In B. T. S. Atkins & K. Varantola (Eds.), Studies of dictionary use by language learners and translators (pp. 151–157). Tubingen, , Germany: Niemeyer. Carrell, P. (1985). Facilitating ESL reading by teaching text structure. TESOL Quarterly, 19, 727–752. Carrell, P., Pharis, B., & Liberto, J. (1989). Metacognitive strategy training for ESL reading. TESOL Quarterly, 23, 647–678. Cobb, T. (1999). Web vocabprofile [Computer software]. Retrieved January 10, 2007, from http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/ Coady, J., Magoto, J., Hubbard, P., Graney, J., & Mokhtari, K. (1993). High frequency vocabulary and reading proficiency in ESL readers. In T. Huckin, M. Haynes, & J. Coady (Eds.), Second language reading and vocabulary learning (pp. 3–23). Norwood, NJ: Ablex. Collier, R. (2006, April 16). Japan hot and cold on warming. San Francisco Chronicle, April 16, A1. Coxhead, A. (2000). A new academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238. De Ridder, I. (2002). Visible or invisible links: Does the highlighting of hyperlinks affect incidental vocabulary learning, text comprehension, and the reading process? Language Learning & Technology, 6, 123–146. Grabe, W., & Stoller, F. (2004). Reading for academic purposes: Guidelines for the ESL/EFL teacher. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (pp. 187–204). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Gu, Y., & Johnson, R. (1996). Vocabulary learning strategies and language learning outcomes. Language Learning, 46, 643–679. Heatley, A., & Nation, I. S. P. (1994). Range [Computer program]. Retrieved January 10, 2007, from http://www.vuw.ac.nz/lals/ Hirsh, D., & Nation, I. S. P. (1992). What vocabulary size is needed to read unsimplified texts for pleasure? Reading in a Foreign Language, 8, 689–696. Hu, M., & Nation, I. S. P. (2000). Unknown vocabulary density and reading comprehension. Reading in a Foreign Language, 13, 403–430. Hulstijin, J. H. (1993). When do foreign-language readers look up the meaning of unfamiliar words? The influence of task and learner variables. The Modern Language Journal, 77, 139–147. Jiang, X., & Grabe, W. (2007). Graphic organizers in reading instruction: Research findings and issues. Reading in a Foreign Language, 19, 34–55. Knight, S. (1994). Dictionary use while reading: The effects on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition for students of different verbal abilities. The Modern Language Journal, 78, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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285–299. Koyama, T., & Takeuchi, O. (2004). How look up frequency affects EFL learning: An empirical study on the use of handheld-electronic dictionaries. Proceedings of CLaSIC 2004, 1018– 1024. Retrieved March 5, 2008, from http://www.paccall.org/2004/2004proceedings_papers/koyama.pdf Laufer, B. (1997). The lexical plight in second language reading: Words you don’t know, words you think you know, and words you can’t guess. In J. Coady & T. Huckin (Eds.), Second Language Vocabulary Acquisition (pp. 20–34). New York, NY: Cambridge University Press. Laufer, B., & Levitzky-Aviad, T. (2003). Look up behaviour and word retention as a function of task type and word relevance. AsiaLEX Proceedings, Tokyo, Japan. Leech, G., Rayson, P., & Wilson, A. (2001). Word frequencies in written and spoken English: Based on the British National Corpus. London: Longman. Luppescu, S., & Day, R. R. (1993). Reading, dictionaries, and vocabulary learning. Language Learning, 43, 263–287. Moir, J. (1996). Task awareness and learning effectiveness: A case study of ten learner perceptions of a vocabulary learning task. Unpublished MA paper, LALS, Victoria University of Wellington, Wellington, New Zealand. Nation, I. S. P. (1990). Teaching and learning vocabulary. Rowley, MA: Newbury House. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Nation, I. S. P., & Warring, R. (1997). Vocabulary size, text coverage and word lists. In N. Schmitt & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary: Description, acquisition and pedagogy (pp. 6–19). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Oxford, R. (2001). Language learning styles and strategies. In M. Celce-Murcia (Ed.), Teaching English as a second or foreign language (3rd ed.). Boston, MA: Heinle & Heinle. Peters, E. (2007). Manipulating L2 learners’ online dictionary use and its effect on L2 word retention. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 36–58. Pulido, D. (2007). The relationship between text comprehension and second language incidental vocabulary acquisition: A matter if topic familiarity? Language Learning, 57, 155–199. Robinson, P. (2003). Attention and memory. In C. Doughty & M. H. Long (Eds.), Handbook of second language acquisition (pp. 631–678). Oxford, England: Blackwell. Roby, W. B. (1999) What’s in a gloss? Language Learning & Technology, 2, 94–101. Schmidt, R. (2001). Attention. In P. Robinson (Ed.), Cognition and second language instruction (pp. 3–32). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Summers, D. (1988). The role of dictionaries in language learning. In R. Carter & M. McCarthy (Eds.), Vocabulary and language teaching (pp. 111–125). London: Longman. Tang, G. M. (1997). Pocket electronic dictionaries for second language learning: Help or hindrance? TESL Canada Journal, 15, 39–57. Zhang, L. J. (2001). Awareness in reading: EFL students’ metacognitive knowledge of reading strategies in an acquisition-poor environment. Language Awareness, 10, 268–88. About the Author Caleb Prichard teaches EFL and applied linguistics at Ferris Women’s University in Yokohama, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Japan. He has taught for over 10 years in Japan, South Korea, and the United States. His research interests are varied but include CALL, program administration, and vocabulary development. Email: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 232–245

The effects of context on incidental vocabulary learning Stuart Webb Victoria University of Wellington New Zealand Abstract Japanese university students learning English as a foreign language (EFL) encountered 10 target words in 3 sets of 10 short contexts that were rated on the amount of information available to infer the target words’ meanings. One group of learners met the target words in contexts rated more highly than the contexts read by the other group. A surprise vocabulary test that measured recall of form, recognition of form, recall of meaning, and recognition of meaning was administered after the treatments. The results showed that the group that read the contexts containing more contextual clues had significantly higher scores on both tests of meaning. The findings indicate that the quality of the context rather than the number of encounters with target words may have a greater effect on gaining knowledge of meaning. Conversely, it is the number of encounters that will have a greater effect on knowledge of form. Keywords: incidental learning, context, vocabulary knowledge, meaning, form, orthography, repetition

Research has shown that both first language (L1) learners (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985; Shu, Anderson, & Zhang, 1995) and second language (L2) learners (Day, Omura, & Hiramatsu, 1991; Dupuy & Krashen, 1993; Hulstijn, 1992; Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989; Waring & Takaki, 2003) may incidentally gain knowledge of meaning through reading. While researchers tend to agree that incidental learning is responsible for the vast majority of L1 vocabulary learning (Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000), there is some suggestion that explicit learning of vocabulary may be responsible for most L2 vocabulary learning (Laufer, 1991, 2001; Laufer & Paribakht, 1998; Webb, 2008). However, researchers agree that incidental vocabulary learning should be encouraged and incorporated into L2 learning (see for example, Hunt & Beglar, 2005; Nation, 2001; Schmitt, 2000; Waring & Takaki, 2003). Because learners incidentally gain knowledge of words in small increments, building upon their previous gains through repeated encounters until a word is known, incidental vocabulary learning can be a relatively slow process when there are long gaps between encounters. Currently it is not clear how many encounters are needed to learn an unknown L2 word. Hulstijn, Hollander, and Greidanus (1996) found that there was little difference between encountering target words once or three times. Rott (1999) suggested that six encounters may be enough to learn a word. Horst, Cobb, and Meara (1998) suggested eight encounters are needed, Saragi, Nation, and Meister (1978) suggested 10 encounters, Webb (2007a) suggested that more http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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than 10 encounters are needed, and Waring and Takaki (2003) reported that it may take more than 20 encounters to incidentally learn the meaning of a word. Moreover, in some of the studies the number of encounters needed to learn the meaning of a word varied considerably between the target words (Horst, et al., 1998; Saragi et al., 1978). Context may be one reason the number of repetitions needed to learn individual words varies. In some sentences the meaning of an unknown word might be transparent but in others it may be opaque. Beck, McKeown, and McCaslin (1983) suggested that many contexts may be deceptive, leading learners to infer an incorrect meaning. In studies that involve reading books, there may be too many encounters for researchers to take each context into account. However, it could be expected that target words that are met repeatedly in sentences that offer some information about the meaning of a word are going to be learned before those that appear in less informative or misleading sentences. Unless context is taken into consideration, it may be difficult to make an accurate assessment of incidental vocabulary learning. This may be particularly true in L2 learning where the number and frequency of encounters with unknown words are likely to be less than in L1 learning. Context may have been the reason for the contrasting results in Rott (1999) and Hulstijn et al. (1996). In the Rott (1999) study, the texts were created with enough contextual clues for the learners to be able to infer the meaning of the target words. Whereas, in the study by Hulstijn et al., the text was authentic, and the researchers had determined that it was “extremely difficult to infer the exact meaning” of the target words from the context (p. 330). Differences between the types of contexts used in research may often account for conflicting results. This may be the case in many studies on incidental learning because a large variety of contexts have been used. For example, Herman, Anderson, Nagy, and Pearson (1987) used four different types of context in a study of incidental vocabulary learning. They used a 1,230-word passage from a text and three edited versions with varying degrees of implicit and explicit clues about the target words. Other contexts used in incidental learning of vocabulary experiments were a novel (Saragi et al., 1978), a graded reader (Horst et al., 1998), specially constructed paragraphs (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984), and narrative and expository texts of about 1,000 words (Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). Studies on learning from context have used single sentences (Dempster, 1987; Laufer & Shmueli, 1997), multiple sentences (Dempster, 1987), L2 sentences together with their L1 translations (Griffin, 1992), L1 sentences containing the L2 target vocabulary (Pickering, 1982), three sentences one of which was a definition (Gipe & Arnold, 1979), and L1 and L2 glossed passages (Laufer & Shmueli, 1997). The wide range of contexts may lead to misinterpretation of results. Would students learning vocabulary from a specially constructed passage containing many clues about a target word’s meaning learn as easily from an authentic text? Probably not (Beck et al., 1983; Herman et al. 1987). Without a clear definition of context, it seems likely that results will continue to vary between studies. The present study was carefully designed to gain insight into the effects of context on incidental vocabulary learning. Perhaps due to the length of the texts and the large number of encounters with target words, previous L2 research has provided little information about the contexts in which target words were met. Short contexts each containing a single target word were used in this study. Each context was rated on the information that could be used to infer the meanings of Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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the target words. By rating the contexts in which target words were encountered, the effects of more and less informative contexts could be compared. Method Participants The participants in this study were 50 Japanese native speakers learning English as a foreign language in four 2nd-year university classes in Fukuoka, Japan. All of the participants had studied English for a minimum of 7 years and had scored 80 percent or higher at the second 1,000-word level of Version 1 of the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, 2000). Their average raw score was 27.7/30, indicating that they had mastered that level (Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001) and should have little difficulty understanding all of the running words in the treatments. Design The experiment was conducted within one 90-minute class period. The participants were randomly assigned to two groups: experimental and comparison. Each group completed a reading comprehension task. The task involved reading three sets of 10 sentences, each sentence containing 1 of 10 target words. The target words were disguised forms that had replaced 10 L2 words. The use of disguised forms ensured that the participants would have no prior knowledge of those items. The amount of information presented in the sentences that could be used to learn the meanings of the target words varied between the two tasks. Each set of 10 sentences was presented on one page. The first page was the same for both groups. However, the second and third pages that were presented to the experimental group were rated as being more informative than those sentences presented to the comparison group. Each group was given 12 minutes to complete their treatment. Four minutes was provided to read each page. In pilot tests, 4 minutes was found to be enough time for the participants to read all of the sentences on a page. A surprise vocabulary test measuring knowledge of form and meaning was administered after the treatments. The results of the groups were then compared to determine whether the amount of information presented in the contexts had a significant effect on vocabulary learning. Target Words Six nouns and four verbs were selected as target words because nouns and verbs are the most common parts of speech found in natural text, and the 6:4 ratio approximates their proportional frequency of occurrence in language use (Kucera & Francis, 1967). Target words were chosen based on their frequency of occurrence in a selection of graded readers. The number of target words was determined during pilot studies. Factors, which were considered when establishing the number of target words, were subject fatigue and the time needed to complete the treatment and tests. To ensure that the participants had no prior knowledge of the target words, they were replaced with disguised forms. The disguised forms and their L1 meanings were as follows: ancon (hospital), cader (lunch), dangy (street), denent (remember), faddam (write), hodet (face), masco Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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(train), pacon (wear), sagod (visit), and tasper (evening). To avoid confusion with partially known or known L2 items, the spellings of the disguised forms did not always conform to common L2 spellings. While there was a small possibility that this may have affected incidental learning of form, it should not have had any influence on the learning of meaning. In interviews with learners who took part in pilot studies, they reported that they believed all of the disguised forms to be authentic L2 words despite the fact that they were likely to have had L2 knowledge of form for the original target words. This was possible because the target words represented meanings that had low-frequency L2 synonyms. For example, although the participants may have known the words hospital and write, they were unlikely to know synonyms such as sanatorium, infirmary, inscribe, and scribble. Although the learners may have known the most frequent L2 forms, they may have assumed that there were less frequent synonyms that they did not know. Because the participants in this study did not know that disguised forms had been used, the experiment should have simulated authentic vocabulary learning.1 Contexts Participants encountered target words in short contexts (see Appendix A). A context was either one or two sentences long and averaged 14 words. The contexts were presented in random order on each page. Contexts were taken from the following graded readers from the Oxford Bookworm series: The Elephant Man, Lord Jim, Agatha Christie, Chemical Secret, The Garden Party and Other Stories, and Decline and Fall. Only one sense of a target word’s meaning appeared in the context and the part of speech of each target word never changed from context to context. Extensive pilot testing was used to ascertain that participants were familiar with all of the running words in the contexts. Contexts that contained words that were unknown to any learner in the pilot tests were not used in the study. However, proper names that may not have been known to the participants such as King’s Cross and Harrogate were included in the contexts because this is typical in graded readers. In studies where it is particularly difficult to determine the effects of a variable, controlling for unknown proper nouns may provide a more accurate assessment of its effects. Order and Rating of Contexts Each sentence in the treatments was rated on the amount of information it provided about a target word’s meaning. Researchers need to take into account the fact that the meaning of unknown words may be relatively clear in some contexts while in others it may be opaque or misleading. By rating each context on the information that could be used to learn the target words, the effects of context could be isolated. One weakness of previous L2 research is that little or no information has been provided about individual contexts. This is likely due to the large number of occurrences of target words and much longer texts in those studies. The contexts were rated by two native speakers. Only contexts that were given the same rating by both native speakers were included in the study. The contexts were rated according to the following scale (adapted from Webb, 2007a): 1. Extremely unlikely that the target word can be guessed correctly. The text contains no contextual clues and may be misleading. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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2. It is unlikely that the exact meaning of the target word can be inferred. However, information in the context may lead to partial knowledge of the target word’s meaning. 3. Information in the context may make it possible to infer the meaning of the target word. However, there are a number of choices. Participants may gain partial knowledge. 4. Participants have a good chance of inferring the meaning correctly. There are few meanings that are logical apart from the correct meaning. Participants should gain at least partial knowledge. The following examples for the target words sagod (visit) and ancon (hospital) were rated from 1 (least informative) to 4 (most informative) on the scale above. 1. Her brother Edward was always with her when the King came to sagod. 2. He could read about things, and talk to his visitors, but he could not go out of the ancon by himself. He thought and played like a child. 3. “She’s ill, that’s all,” I said quickly. “We’re going to the ancon.” 4. He was not ill, and of course the beds in the ancon are for ill people. The order of the sentences was determined by their ratings. For both groups, the most informative context for each target word was the first presentation. However, the second and third encounters with the target words were different. The experimental group met the target words in the second most informative context in the second presentation and the third most informative context in the third presentation. For the comparison group, the most informative context was followed by the two least informative contexts in the second and third encounters with the target words. The context ratings for each sentence are shown in Table 1. Table 1. Ratings for each context Target word ancon (hopital) faddam (write) masco (train) pacon (wear) sagod (visit) denent (remember) dangy (street) cader (lunch) hodet (face) tasper (evening) Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

1st 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 4 4

More informative

Less informative

Encounter

Encounter

2nd 4 4 3 3 3 4 2 3 4 4

3rd 4 3 3 3 3 4 2 3 3 3

1st 4 4 4 4 4 4 3 3 4 4

2nd 2 3 3 3 1 3 2 2 2 2

3rd 2 3 2 3 1 2 1 2 2 2

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Dependent Measures After the treatments, the learners were administered four tests that measured recall of form, recognition of form, recall of meaning, and recognition of meaning.2 The tests were carefully sequenced to avoid earlier tests affecting answers to later tests. The participants were given as much time as they needed to complete the tests. Because disguised forms were used as target words, delayed post-tests were not administered. Without the possibility of further encounters with the target words in or outside of the classroom, the rate of decay of vocabulary knowledge should follow established norms (see for example, Waring & Takaki, 2003, which investigated incidental learning using disguised forms as target words). On the first test, which measured recall of form, the participants heard each target word pronounced twice and had 10 seconds to correctly write the item. Because the participants were at an intermediate level and were likely able to write a close approximation of an unknown word based on its pronunciation, any spelling mistakes were scored as incorrect. The second test was a multiple-choice test that measured recognition of form. On this test, the correct spelling of each target word was presented along with three distracters. The distracters resembled the target words both orthographically and phonetically. Subjects were required to circle the correct spelling to score correctly. The following examples are for the target words ancon and sagod. a) ancon a) sagad

b) ankon b) saggud

c) anken c) saggod

d) ancan d) sagod

On the third test, which measured recall of meaning, the participants were presented with the disguised forms and were required to write their L1 translations. Direct translations of the target words or their less frequent synonyms were scored as correct. For example, for the target word ancon (hospital) the following responses would have been scored as correct: hospital, clinic, and sanatorium. The final test was a multiple-choice test that measured recognition of meaning. On this test, each target word was presented together with the L2 word that it had replaced, and three distracters. The distracters were of the same parts of speech as the target words and had meanings that were related to the contexts read in the treatments. The following examples are for the target words ancon (hospital) and sagod (visit). ancon sagod

a) house a) buy

b) car b) listen

c) city c) visit

d) hospital d) sit

Results The descriptive statistics (means, standard deviations, and number of participants) of scores for the four dependent measures are reported in Table 2. To determine whether there were any Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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overall differences among the treatment groups, a multivariate analysis of variance (MANOVA) was performed using the scores on the four dependent measures (recall of form, recognition of form, recall of meaning, and recognition of meaning). The independent variable was the type of learning task (incidental vocabulary learning from three informative sentences and three less informative sentences). The MANOVA realized an overall statistically significant difference, F(4,45) = 4.56, p < .01, η2 = .29. Table 2. Means and standard deviations of learning conditions on dependent measures Recall of Recognition Recall of Recognition Contexts n form of form meaning of meaning 24 5.46 (2.17) 7.54 (1.96) 0.13 (0.34) 4.38 (1.74) Less informative 5.96 (1.89) 8.00 (1.30) 1.31 (1.81) 6.77 (2.45) 26 More informative Note. Maximum score = 10. Standard deviations are in parentheses.

Table 2 shows that mean scores were higher on all four measures for the participants who met the target words in the more informative contexts. Learners who encountered the target words in the more informative sentences had significantly higher scores on the tests measuring recall of meaning, F(1,49) = 9.96, p < .01, η2 = .17, and recognition of meaning, F(1,49) = 15.59, p < .001, η2 = .25. Differences between the two groups on the tests measuring recall of form, F(1,49) = 0.77, p = .384, η2 = .02, and recognition of form, F(1,49) = 0.97, p = .330, η2 = .02, were not statistically significant. Discussion The present study examined the effects of context—more and less informative—on knowledge of form and meaning. The results found context to have a significant effect on gaining knowledge of meaning. The findings support the claims by Beck et al. (1983), as well as previous L1 findings (Jenkins, Matlock, & Slocomb, 1989) suggesting that context may affect acquisition of meaning. Learners who met target words in the three most informative contexts produced significantly higher scores on both tests measuring knowledge of meaning than learners who met the target words in the most informative context, followed by the two least informative contexts. The quality of the context provides an answer to why gains in knowledge of meaning have varied from word to word (Saragi et al., 1978; Horst et al., 1998) and study to study (Horst et al.; Rott, 1999; Saragi et al., 1978; Waring & Takaki, 2003). If unknown words repeatedly appear in informative contexts, their meanings may be learned relatively quickly. However, if unknown words appear in less informative or misleading contexts, it may take learners much longer to gain knowledge of meaning. Determining the number of encounters needed to learn the meaning of a word is likely to vary from word to word. L2 words can be learned incidentally if they are met in context enough times. However, the number of times needed to learn words is likely dependent on the contexts in which they are encountered. The results showed that context had little effect on gaining knowledge of form. Both groups were able to spell more than half of the target words correctly and recognize the correct spellings of more than 75% of the items with no significant difference between the scores on each test. Since both groups encountered the target words an equal number of times, the findings indicate that it Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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may be the number of encounters rather than the quality of encounters that affects learning form. Since the difference between the contexts related only to the meaning of target words, it might be expected that knowledge of form would not be affected. However, the results contrast findings indicating that learners may ignore unknown words in uninformative contexts (Hulstijn et al., 1996). Measuring knowledge of form as well as meaning may be a means to determine whether learners make an equal effort to learn words in informative and uninformative contexts. Because the gains in knowledge of form were similar for both groups in the present study, it might be assumed that learners spend a similar amount of time trying to learn words in different types of contexts. It is important to note, however, that the incidental learning situation created in this study is not the same as incidental vocabulary learning from longer texts. Further research investigating incidental vocabulary learning in more ecologically valid contexts would be a useful follow-up to this study. The results of the present study were part of a larger study that also investigated the effects of repetition on incidental vocabulary learning (Webb, 2007a). Both studies employed the same methodology with learners meeting the same disguised forms in rated contexts. In Webb’s study, the contexts were presented from the most informative to the least informative for groups that encountered target words 1, 3, 7 and 10 times. Ten tests measuring five aspects of vocabulary knowledge were used to measure incidental learning. The three-encounter group was the same group that encountered the target words in the more informative contexts in this study. Table 3 presents Webb’s results together with the results of this study. Table 3. Means and standard deviations for incidental learning of form and meaning after meeting target words 1, 3, 7, and 10 times Number and quality of Recall of Recognition Recall of Recognition n encounters form of form meaning of meaning 1 encounter 23 4.96 6.70 0.35 5.78 1 (1.94) (1.72) (0.65) (2.09) 3 encounters 24 5.46 7.54 0.13 4.38 1, 9, 10 (2.17) (1.96) (0.34) (1.74) 3 encounters 26 5.96 8.00 1.31 6.77 1, 2, 3 (1.89) (1.30) (1.81) (2.45) 7 encounters 26 7.19 8.27 2.65 6.50 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7 (1.41) (1.51) (2.77) (2.10) 10 encounters 24 7.71 8.75 2.88 7.58 1–10 (1.94) (1.03) (2.40) (2.12) Control 22 1.35 no encounters (1.02) Notes. Encounter 1 = the most informative context; 2 = the second most informative context; and 10 = the tenth most informative context. Maximum score on the tests = 10. Standard deviations are in parentheses. Adapted from Webb (2007a).

Webb (2007a) found that learners demonstrated significant gains in vocabulary knowledge each time the number of encounters with a word increased. Table 3, however, shows that meeting target words in an informative context followed by encounters in uninformative contexts may cause backsliding to occur. Both the single-encounter and three-encounter groups met the target Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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words in the same contexts in the first encounter. When the presentations of the target words were followed by encounters in informative contexts, learners had slightly higher—although not significantly higher—scores on both tests of meaning. However, when the first presentation was followed by encounters with the target words in less informative contexts, scores on the test measuring recognition of meaning were significantly smaller (p < .05) than those of the singleencounter group in Webb’s study. The relatively tiny gains made by the group that encountered target words in the three less informative contexts in relation to the single-encounter group suggest that initial gains resulting from meeting an unknown word in one informative context may be reduced in subsequent meetings if those contexts are less informative or misleading. It is likely that meeting a partially known word in an uninformative context may lead learners to reassess their previous knowledge or forget what they had learned. However, this may depend on the amount of knowledge previously gained. It is also interesting to note that although the final three contexts encountered by the 10encounter group were rated as the least informative, the 10-encounter group had significantly higher scores than the 7-encounter group on 4 of 10 measures of vocabulary knowledge (Webb, 2007a). This suggests that there may be a knowledge threshold after which backsliding is less likely to occur. If there is indeed a knowledge threshold, determining the point at which backsliding ceases to occur would be a very useful finding. It could provide researchers with a quantifiable amount that indicates whether acquisition is likely to occur. Further research is necessary to determine which aspects of knowledge are gained from meeting an unknown word in different sequences of informative and uninformative contexts. The order of contexts in both studies always began with the most informative contexts. However, learners may initially meet unknown words in less informative contexts when reading. Meeting an unknown word in a less informative context is a very common occurrence that needs to be examined. The results have important implications for language teachers and for designers of course books and materials. Writers of graded readers need to consider the contexts in which the words that may not be known are presented. While it may not be necessary to always present target words in particularly informative contexts, words that might be unknown should not be repeatedly encountered in contexts with few contextual clues linked to the meaning of the word. Moreover, since one of the primary goals of graded readers is to help increase vocabulary learning, target vocabulary should never be presented in misleading contexts. Authors of English language course books also need to consider how the text will affect vocabulary learning. If target words are encountered in contexts that are uninformative or misleading, supplementary tasks or contexts involving those words are likely to be necessary for learners to gain knowledge of meaning. It is also important that teachers are aware of the importance of the effects of context on incidental learning. Teachers need to scan texts beforehand, consider how the context may affect learning, and judge whether target words are likely or unlikely to be learned. Supplementing examples of target words in informative contexts may notably improve vocabulary learning. However, if incidental learning is not the aim of the task, it may be beneficial for teachers to pre-teach the meaning of items that are necessary for comprehension but unlikely to be learned because of the contexts in which they occur. Nation (1982) points out that unless there is a clear definition of context in research, results may be misleading. The sizeable context effect found in this study reinforces this and indicates that a Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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better understanding of context is needed. Since there are so many different types of contexts used in incidental learning research, it is very unlikely that the results translate from one context to another. Certainly gains in knowledge are less likely to occur from reading a graded reader than from a passage created with sufficient clues to infer the meaning of unknown words. Researchers need to be aware of the effects of context and take them into consideration when comparing the results from different studies, as well as when designing their own experiments. Acknowledgments I wish to acknowledge the generous input of the following people in the evolution of this paper: Paul Nation, Jonathan Newton, and Jim Dickie from Victoria University of Wellington, and the anonymous reviewers, for their helpful comments Notes 1. One reviewer suggests that learning disguised forms for known words may have reduced the chances of correctly inferring the words in context. 2. The present study was part of a larger study that investigated the effects of repetition and context on vocabulary knowledge. The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge were discussed in Webb (2007a). It should be noted that there were 10 tests measuring knowledge of five aspects of vocabulary knowledge employed in the larger study. Because the present study relates to earlier research that has focused on meaning and form, only the first three tests measuring recall of form, recognition of form, and recall of meaning, and the 10th test measuring recognition of meaning were discussed in this article. More information on the tests can be found in Webb (2005, 2007a, 2007b, 2007c). References Beck, I. L., McKeown, M. G., & McCaslin, E. S. (1983). Vocabulary: All contexts are not created equal. Elementary School Journal, 83, 177–181. Day, R. R., Omura, C., & Hiramatsu, M. (1991). Incidental EFL vocabulary learning and reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 7, 541–551. Dempster, F. N. (1987). Effects of variable encoding and spaced presentation on vocabulary learning. Journal of Educational Psychology, 79, 162–170. Dupuy, B., & Krashen, S. D. (1993). Incidental vocabulary acquisition in French as a foreign language. Applied Language Learning, 4, 55–63. Gipe, J. P., & Arnold, R. D. (1979). Teaching vocabulary through familiar associations and contexts. Journal of Reading Behavior, 11, 282–285. Griffin, G. F. (1992). Aspects of the psychology of second language vocabulary list learning. Unpublished doctoral dissertation, University of Warwick, UK. Herman, P. A., Anderson, R. C., Nagy, W. E., & Pearson, P. D. (1987). Incidental acquisition of word meaning from expositions with varied text features. Reading Research Quarterly, Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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22, 263–284. Horst, M., Cobb, T., & Meara, P. (1998). Beyond A Clockwork Orange: Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading. Reading in a Foreign Language, 11, 207–223. Hulstijn, J. H. (1992). Retention of inferred and given word meanings: Experiments in incidental vocabulary learning. In P. Arnaud & H. Bejoint (Eds.), Vocabulary and applied linguistics (pp. 113–125). London: Macmillan. Hulstijn, J., Hollander, M., & Greidanus, T. (1996). Incidental vocabulary learning by advanced foreign language students: The influence of marginal glosses, dictionary use, and reoccurrence of unknown words. The Modern Language Journal, 80, 327–339. Hunt, A., & Beglar, D. (2005). A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17, 23–59. Jenkins, J. R., Matlock, B., & Slocomb, T. A. (1989). Two approaches to vocabulary instruction: The teaching of individual word meanings and practice in deriving word meanings from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 24, 215–235. Jenkins, J. R., Stein, M. L., & Wysocki, K. (1984). Learning vocabulary through reading. American Educational Research Journal, 21, 767–787. Kucera, H., & Francis, W. N. (1967). A computational analysis of present-day American English. Providence, RI: Brown University Press. Laufer, B. (1991). The development of L2 Lexis in the expression of the advanced learner. The Modern Language Journal, 75, 440–448. Laufer, B. (2001). Reading, word-focused activities and incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language. Prospect, 16, 44–54. Laufer, B., & Paribakht, T. S. (1998). The relationship between passive and active vocabularies: Effects of language learning context. Language Learning, 48, 365–391. Laufer, B., & Shmueli, K. (1997). Memorizing new words: Does teaching have anything to do with it? RELC Journal, 28, 89–108. Nagy, W. E., Anderson, R. C., & Herman, P. A. (1987). Learning word meanings from context during normal reading. American Educational Research Journal, 24, 237–270. Nagy, W. E., Herman, P. A., & Anderson, R. C. (1985). Learning words from context. Reading Research Quarterly, 20, 233–253. Nation, I. S. P. (1982). Beginning to learn foreign vocabulary: A review of the research. RELC Journal, 13, 14–36. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. New York: Cambridge University Press. Pickering, M. (1982). Context-free and context-dependent vocabulary learning: An experiment. System, 10, 79–83. Pitts, M., White, H., & Krashen, S. D. (1989). Acquiring second language vocabulary through reading: A replication of the Clockwork Orange study using second language acquirers. Reading in a Foreign Language, 5, 271–276. Rott, S. (1999). The effect of exposure frequency on intermediate language learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 21, 589–619. Saragi, T., Nation, I. S. P., & Meister, G. F. (1978). Vocabulary learning and reading. System, 6, 72–78. Schmitt, N. (2000). Vocabulary in language teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, N., Schmitt, D., & Clapham, C. (2001). Developing and exploring the behaviour of two Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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new versions of the Vocabulary Levels Test. Language Testing, 18, 55–88. Shu, H., Anderson, R. C., & Zhang, Z. (1995). Incidental learning of word meanings while reading: a Chinese and American cross-cultural study. Reading Research Quarterly, 30, 76–95. Waring, R., & Takaki, M. (2003). At what rate do learners learn and retain new vocabulary from reading a graded reader? Reading in a Foreign Language, 15, 1–27. Webb, S. (2005). Receptive and productive vocabulary learning: The effects of reading and writing on word knowledge. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 27, 33–52. Webb, S. (2007a). The effects of repetition on vocabulary knowledge. Applied Linguistics, 28, 46–65. Webb, S. (2007b). The effects of synonymy on vocabulary learning. Reading in a Foreign Language, 19, 120–136. Webb, S. (2007c). Learning word pairs and glossed sentences: The effects of a single sentence on vocabulary knowledge. Language Teaching Research, 11, 63–81. Webb, S. (2008). Receptive and productive vocabulary sizes of L2 learners. Studies in Second Language Acquisition, 30, 79–95. Appendix A Encounter 1 • • • • • • • • • •

He was not ill, and of course the beds in the ancon are for ill people. He can read and faddam, and he thinks a lot. And in London, hundreds of people were waiting at King’s Cross Station for the masco from Harrogate. He insisted on paconing a bright yellow sports jacket and diamond tie-pin while serving lunch. I don’t want to be rich, but I do want to come to Australia and sagod you and Mollie and my grandchildren. Don’t you denent you promised you would never leave me? After paying the driver and getting out, he suddenly realized how dark and dirty the narrow dangies were. He had cader and tea with Mrs. Walsh in the kitchen, and he felt really happy. As she stood up to see if her bag was all right, she saw her hodet in the mirror - white, with big, round eyes. Archie stayed for the rest of the afternoon, and for supper that tasper.

Encounter 2: More informative contexts • • • • • • • •

Perhaps I had a Christmas with my mother once, but I do not denent it. So John had to walk back through the dangies in the middle of the night, all wet from the sea, while we laughed at him from the car. The first time Mary and the children laughed together, John felt a big smile come onto his hodet. Time passed slowly in the ancon, where the patients played cards, and slept, and told each other stories. She was paconing a white coat with a lot of pens in the top pocket. I sagoded him every day, and talked to him. I’ve ordered some champagne and some cader for us. There are no long taspers in our New Zealand days; the sun goes down and half an hour later it’s

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night. She asked a lot of people a lot of questions and always faddamed the answers in her notebook. Agatha still only eighteen years old went to London on the masco.

Encounter 3: More informative contexts • • • • • • • • • •

Children played in the narrow dangies. On her last day, Mary and John had cader in the factory restaurant together. She remembered seeing a beautiful young girl in a hotel in Cairo when she was sagoding Egypt with Clara. We liked to talk to him, and we are all very sorry because he is dead. A lot of people are going to denent him for a long time. Their friends were paconing white clothes, with Greenworld written on them. I could not see his hodet or his body. Bob Tappin and Bob Leeming played music in the hotel each tasper, and both of them watched the quiet woman in the corner of the room and began to think. I am a doctor at the London Ancon. Your brother faddamed his name on this paper. The masco began to go more slowly. It gave a long whistle. They were coming to a town.

Encounter 2: Less informative contexts • • • • • • • • • •

They were all paconing white gloves and their hands were inside a big glass box. At the corner of the dangy she met Laurie. I did not talk to him very much at the ancon. I looked at his head and arms and legs and body very carefully. They danced together many times that tasper, and Archie told her his plans. Then a cat came to sagod me - a beautiful cat - and then a dog. Then Simon stood up to say something. “Mr Duncan,” he said. “I’ll always denent this night.” Everyone on the masco and the ship looked at him, and laughed at him. Paul found the Minister sitting alone in the garden after cader, smoking a large cigar, his big red hands folded over his large stomach, a soft hat over his eyes. “Why don’t you faddam another book?” said Archie. His hodet was red and he looked at his shoes.

Encounter 3: Less informative contexts • • • • • • • • • •

I want to read what she faddamed to her dear husband. As soon as he could walk, he left the ancon and started looking for a ship to take him back to England. After cader we sat and talked for a while. His hodet was shining, excited, happy. Her brother Edward was always with her when the King came to sagod. Perhaps this happened. Or perhaps she’s ill and can’t denent who she is. During the tasper, she talked to some people who were just back from Baghdad, in Iraq. Big white clouds over the white dangies - and sunshine everywhere. The masco left the station and rushed into the dark. I don’t know anything about art, and I haven’t met any grand people, and I don’t pacon expensive clothes, but up to now, none of that has worried me.

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About the Author Stuart Webb teaches at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington. His research interests include vocabulary acquisition, testing, and extensive reading and listening. E-mail: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 246–263

Vocabulary assistance before and during reading Stephen Alessi and Angelique Dwyer University of Iowa United States Abstract Intermediate learners of Spanish read a Spanish newspaper article with vocabulary assistance either before reading, while reading, both, or without any such assistance. Reading performance was significantly better for students receiving vocabulary assistance during reading, but not for those receiving it before reading. Reading time of the newspaper article was less for students receiving prereading vocabulary assistance, but total lesson time (the prereading time plus reading time) was more for those students. Given the particular activities of this study, a vocabulary activity before reading appears to speed up reading without affecting comprehension, while vocabulary assistance during reading appears to improve comprehension without affecting speed. Keywords: vocabulary, second language reading, prereading, hypertext glossing

Most second language (L2) readers would assert that their main obstacle to reading is their lack of vocabulary. They feel that they must frequently stop reading and look up words (whether in a dictionary, a corpus, or elsewhere) before they can continue. Even when trying to read just for the gist, they frequently give in and begin looking up what appear to be the critical words. Furthermore, when they do look up words, they often are frustrated by what they find. Translation dictionaries give only the more common translations, and they often do not make sense within the context the student is reading. Corpora are somewhat better in this regard, but they are more useful for writing than reading; and few students use them or even know what they are. Given learners’ vocabulary deficiencies and the weaknesses of translation dictionaries, many L2 researchers have investigated glossing or other hypertext techniques. Their goal is to make access to vocabulary faster and easier (to facilitate the flow of reading) and provide word meanings more tailored to the context of what the learner is currently reading. However, most teachers and researchers would agree that knowing vocabulary before reading and having vocabulary knowledge that is well developed (i.e., knowing a variety of meanings, idiomatic uses, and nuances for the vocabulary words) is much better for fluent and successful reading in the L2. For that reason language instructors and textbooks often precede a reading selection with a vocabulary list or activity that introduces new or important vocabulary. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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So there appear to be different relative advantages, some rooted in L2 reading theory and some based on logistics, for knowing vocabulary before a reading activity versus having quick access to vocabulary while reading. Knowing it ahead of time prevents interruption of the reading process and emulates reading as performed by the first language (L1) reader. Providing vocabulary assistance during reading may permit more contextually appropriate word meaning assistance and gives readers more control, because they can select just that vocabulary they do not know. The purpose of this study, therefore, was to investigate and contrast two vocabulary assistance techniques—providing a prereading vocabulary exercise versus providing a particular type of glossing (contextualized translation to the reader’s L1) during reading. One group of learners received the prereading activity (practice on the key vocabulary in a Spanish-language newspaper article), a second group received during-reading assistance (contextualized L1 translation in the form of hypertext glossing), a third group received both, and a fourth group (a control) read the newspaper article with neither form of assistance. Our two general research questions were: (a) Will vocabulary assistance (either before or during reading) improve reading comprehension? (b) Will vocabulary assistance (either before or during reading) affect reading time? Our specific null hypotheses were as follows: 1. Students receiving prereading vocabulary assistance will comprehend a Spanish newspaper article equally well (based on open-ended questions posed and answered in English) as students not receiving that assistance. 2. Students receiving during-reading vocabulary assistance will comprehend a Spanish newspaper article equally well as students not receiving that assistance. 3. Students receiving both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance will comprehend a Spanish newspaper article equally well as students receiving either no vocabulary assistance or just one type of vocabulary assistance. 4. Students receiving prereading vocabulary assistance will read a Spanish newspaper article in the same amount of time as students not receiving that assistance. 5. Students receiving during-reading vocabulary assistance will read a Spanish newspaper article in the same amount of time as students not receiving that assistance. 6. Students receiving both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance will read a Spanish newspaper article in the same amount of time as students receiving either no vocabulary assistance or just one type of vocabulary assistance. We wanted to contrast two approaches to vocabulary support (prereading versus during-reading) based on different theoretical and practical rationales. Prereading support is based on stronger theoretical foundations. Ajideh (2006, p. 3) claimed that “students are more likely to experience success with reading if they are familiar with selected vocabulary items before they begin reading” using activities like questioning, creating semantic maps, and studying word definitions. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Hunt and Begler (2005) supported lexical instruction to facilitate reading and claimed that prereading activities like highlighting vocabulary will improve lexis acquisition. Schema theory is another rationale for prereading activities. Ajideh (2006), Cook (1989), Liontas (2001), and Romero-Ghiretti et al. (2007) all contended that activation of learners’ prior knowledge and schema will facilitate reading. However, it is unclear if vocabulary introduced right before reading can be considered part of the reader’s prior knowledge in the sense that term is used by cognitive psychologists. Prior knowledge (what some researchers prefer to call knowledge of the world) is generally considered to be well-learned and well-integrated information and goes beyond mere vocabulary. Presenting vocabulary right before reading probably provides only superficial hooks into the rest of the reader’s knowledge. Even a prereading activity that goes beyond vocabulary, for example, explaining the cultural context of a reading selection, is probably not well integrated with the reader’s own cultural knowledge. On the other hand, the argument that a prereading vocabulary activity will activate relevant schemata is more sound. A prereading activity, whether it be simple vocabulary or more connected cultural information, may not create well-integrated prior knowledge, but it can bring to the reader’s mind similar (or contrasting) vocabulary or cultural information. For example, in a classic study on the effect of activating schema, Pichert and Anderson (1977) demonstrated that varying a single word in the directions to a reader (whether to take the perspective of a homebuyer or a burglar) could dramatically affect the reader’s recall of a story in which a house is described. In contrast to the more theoretical support for prereading activities, the support for duringreading activities is more empirical. Several studies have demonstrated that during-reading activities do improve reading performance (whether it be recall, comprehension, main ideas, or details). Most of these studies contrasted different types of during-reading activity. Aust, Kelley, and Roby (1993) found that students using a bilingual hypermedia dictionary looked up more words and read texts more quickly, without any comprehension decrement, than students using traditional dictionaries. Gettys, Imhof, and Kautz (2001), investigating different types of glosses, found that the type of definitions given in dictionaries was better for learning the vocabulary than the type of definitions tailored to the sentences being read, although both types were equivalent for overall reading comprehension. De Ridder (2002) compared glosses that were more or less visible (by virtue of color and other cues) and found that more visible glosses were used more by students, though they affected comprehension equally. Jacobs, Dufon, and Hong (1994) showed differences between better and poorer readers, with the former profiting more from glosses. Knight (1994) found students’ comprehension was better when they made use of translation dictionaries while reading. Ko (2005), comparing glosses given in the readers’ first versus second language, found that while the second language glosses proved superior on a quantitative measure of reading comprehension, a qualitative think-aloud measure demonstrated benefit for both types of glosses. Lomicka (1998) found that full glosses (which combined definitions, images, pronunciation help, and translations) were better than simple glosses for student inferences, and she argued that that should improve reading comprehension. Rott (2005) showed that multiple-choice glosses (presenting several word meanings the reader could select among) were significantly better than glosses showing a single definition. Finally, Roby’s (1999) literature review identified significant empirical support for glosses available while reading. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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In addition to the empirical support for during-reading activities, a practical consideration is that they accommodate individual differences better than prereading activities. For example, Taylor (2006) suggested that while first language glosses might be useful for beginning learners, only second language glosses should be used for more proficient ones, a suggestion partially confirmed by Ko’s (2005) study. The argument is that different readers come to the reading material with different prior knowledge. A prereading activity might waste the time of some readers (because they already possess the information), or be over the head of other readers (because it does not activate any knowledge or schemata) and thus only beneficial to a fraction of all readers. Furthermore, any of those readers might profit more from other vocabulary or information that the teacher or designer did not think to provide. While prereading activities usually include a small amount of new vocabulary, texts with glosses generally provide such glosses for a much larger number of words, which the reader may choose to use or to ignore. This provides accommodation to individual differences through the reader’s own selection of words. A reading selection may contain a very large number of hypertext glosses that a reader may ignore and not be distracted by at all, or use frequently, receiving contextualized help on exactly those words for which the reader wants help. Another practical advantage of during-reading assistance is that it occurs just when it is required. Prereading assistance does not occur exactly when required. Vocabulary presented before reading may be forgotten by the time the vocabulary is again encountered during the reading selection. However, no research has investigated this “just-in-time” advantage. The utility of both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance are supported by cognitive load theory (Sweller, 2005). Researchers and teachers alike claim that frequent use of a print dictionary disrupts fluent reading and should be avoided (e.g., Liontas, 2001). Cognitive load theory suggests the nature of this disruption and how to reduce it. According to that theory, human cognitive processing is limited and there are three types of load placed on a learner’s processing: intrinsic, germane, and extraneous cognitive load. Intrinsic cognitive load is due to the innate complexity of the content and is considered unavoidable. Germane cognitive load is due to relevant instructional activities or learning strategies and is considered good, that is, it facilitates learning. Extrinsic cognitive load is due to characteristics of the learning context that are not necessary for learning the content (such as navigation in a computer program) and may even interfere with it, so is considered detrimental and should be decreased as much as possible. The complexity of a Spanish text represents intrinsic cognitive load. Reading the text and mentally processing it is germane cognitive load and is the activity that primarily benefits learning. The amount of unknown or difficult vocabulary also contributes to intrinsic cognitive load while thinking about that vocabulary contributes to germane cognitive load and benefits learning as well. However, searching through a print translation dictionary contributes to extraneous cognitive load and will likely disrupt the reading process because it reduces the amount of cognitive processing available for thinking about the vocabulary and the text. Both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance should reduce the need for using a dictionary and thus reduce the extraneous cognitive load that dictionary use imposes. Furthermore, use of hypertext glosses may contribute to germane cognitive load, the reader’s processing of the text, and thus be even more beneficial to learning.

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In summary, this study investigated prereading vocabulary assistance as suggested by schemaactivation theory and cognitive load theory, and during-reading vocabulary assistance as suggested by prior empirical findings, cognitive load theory, and practical considerations such as accommodating individual differences. Given the theoretical and empirical arguments above, we expected readers receiving prereading vocabulary assistance to comprehend the Spanish newspaper article better than readers receiving no assistance because relevant schema (e.g., those relevant to railroads, the sea and poetry) would be activated and cognitive load would be reduced, permitting better processing of the text. We expected readers receiving during-reading vocabulary assistance to comprehend the Spanish newspaper article better than readers receiving no assistance as a result of reduced cognitive load and accommodation to their individual differences in vocabulary knowledge. We expected readers receiving both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance to comprehend the Spanish newspaper article better than readers in all the other treatments due to the combined effects of schema activation, cognitive load reduction, and accommodation to their individual differences. Those expectations were our alternative hypotheses. Our analyses tested the null hypotheses that there would be no differences between the treatments. Concerning reading speed, we expected readers receiving prereading vocabulary assistance to finish reading the Spanish newspaper article faster than readers receiving no assistance because they would infrequently need to look up words. We expected readers receiving during-reading vocabulary assistance to finish reading the Spanish newspaper article faster than readers receiving no assistance because they would not look up words in the dictionary and clicking to see glosses is very fast. Finally, we expected readers receiving both prereading and duringreading vocabulary assistance to finish reading the Spanish newspaper article faster than readers in all the other treatments because they would less frequently use either the dictionary or the glosses. Once again, our analyses tested the null hypotheses, that there would be no differences between the treatments. Method The study utilized a completely crossed between subjects experimental design with random assignment to treatments. The independent variables were prereading vocabulary assistance (presence or absence) and during-reading vocabulary assistance (presence or absence). The readers receiving neither type of assistance served as controls. The dependent variables were reading comprehension (assessed by open-ended questions asked and answered in English), reading time, and responses to a questionnaire. Participants The participants were 76 undergraduate students taking intermediate Spanish at a large public university in the United States. They participated in the research study at the time of and as a part of one of their regularly scheduled Spanish classes. They were not required to participate, but the activity replaced a weekly quiz. If they choose not to do the reading activity, they took their usual class quiz. If they choose to do the reading activity, they received full credit (10 points) for Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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the quiz without taking it. Materials A Spanish language newspaper article (from the online CNN en Español web site) about a group of Chilean youth participating in a tribute to the poet Neruda was embedded in a hypermedia program. Some small changes to the article were made based on the advice of a professor of Spanish. The resulting article (Appendix A) was 431 words long and divided into three pages on a computer. Page 1 had 170 words, page 2 had 145 words, and page 3 had 116 words. Students in all treatment conditions could move forward and backward among the pages freely. All students read the exact same article. The Spanish professor and several Spanish teaching assistants identified 40 vocabulary words and phrases (Appendix B) that they believed students were likely to have difficulty with or were the most critical to understanding the article. A program was constructed (the prereading vocabulary activity) that first displayed those words and phrases (exactly as seen in Appendix B) and then allowed students to practice them by typing their English meanings. This type of activity is not typical of either Spanish textbooks or classroom activities. More than the usual number of new vocabulary words were introduced, and the words were practiced to facilitate retention in working memory, something neither books nor teachers tend to do. However, experimental research studies must strike a balance between several factors, especially realism (similarity to real textbooks and classroom activities), control (treatments being equivalent except for the key experimental variables), and power (treatments being as effective as possible to increase the likelihood of producing educational benefits and statistically significant results). In this case we choose to emphasize power and introduce a strong treatment to produce the best possible learning outcome by activating schema as much as possible and reducing cognitive load as much as possible. However, we sacrificed control and realism as a result. For the same 40 vocabulary words plus 80 additional words and phrases, a hypertext gloss facility (the during-reading vocabulary assistance) was constructed. The 80 additional words included all but the most common Spanish words in the article. When the hypertext facility was active (that is, for two of the four experimental conditions), students could simply click with the mouse on a word or phrase and see in the upper-right corner of the screen an English translation of the word or phrase as it was being used in the context of the article. These glosses were invisible in the sense that they were not colored differently than the rest of the text, nor were they underlined (De Ridder, 2002). However, when the mouse cursor was pointed at them, it changed from the ordinary pointing arrow to a pointing hand. We provided glosses for a large number of words and phrases (120 of them, or a little more than one-quarter of the text) and did not want so much color and underlining in the text in that they would distract from reading. De Ridder had found that visible glosses are chosen more frequently than invisible glosses, but that visibility did not affect reading speed or comprehension significantly. We did not want to encourage students to select glosses frequently just because they were available. Rather, we wanted students to select glosses when they really needed to know the meaning of a word or phrase. More glosses were provided (120) than prereading practice words (40) because the duringreading condition precluded use of a print dictionary while the prereading condition did not. We Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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wanted students to use the glosses (and not a dictionary) but we did not want to disadvantage them with the inability to get help on words they did not know. Thus, the similarity of the prereading and during-reading treatments was compromised. In the design of this treatment we emphasized both power and realism over control. That is, a hypertext glossing facility is only likely to affect reading comprehension if it is available for all the words a reader might want help with. Additionally, the hypertext glossing techniques of most research and instructional materials do provide glossing for a large number of words. However, to accomplish both power and realism we had to sacrifice control. The during-reading assistance was provided for more words and phrases than was the prereading assistance. Given the nature of these techniques, there is no way to maximize all three: power, realism, and control. Finally, a reading comprehension assessment and a questionnaire program were created. The comprehension assessment administered five short-essay questions (Appendix C) in English and allowed students to type (also in English) what they understood about key points of the newspaper article. The questionnaire (Appendix D) asked students to rate particular features of the online reading program and their prior knowledge of the poet Neruda, a main subject of the article. Procedure Students came to the University’s foreign language computer lab at the time of their usual Spanish class. They were sent randomly to one of twenty Macintosh computers. Five computers had been programmed to run the reading-only condition, five to run the hypertext-reading condition, five to run the practice-before-reading condition, and five to run the practice-plushypertext condition. All computers were otherwise identical. Reading-only condition. All students started with a page of directions that were slightly different for each of the four conditions. In this condition they were told they could use their print Spanish-English dictionaries, which instructors had told them to bring. If students had not brought a dictionary they were provided one. They next received the three-page article with freedom to move forward or backward among the pages. The text of the article was identical for all conditions. After reading the article as long as desired, students received five short-essay questions (Appendix C) both asked and answered in English. Students could type as much as they wanted. The first four questions asked about specific aspects of the article (the train trip, Neruda’s relationship to the sea, Neruda’s house, and why Neruda was famous in Chile). The fifth question asked students to type whatever they remembered about the article. Each question was on an individual page, and all five questions were identical for the students in the four different conditions. After the fifth question, students received a one page questionnaire with four Likert-style questions. These four questions were common to all the research conditions. Students answered by clicking on their choices (strongly agree, agree, disagree, or strongly disagree). The questions included affect (whether or not they enjoyed reading online), self-report of their own behavior (how often they had to look up words), and prior knowledge (how much they knew about Neruda). After completing the questionnaire and going to the next page, the students were thanked for their participation and could leave. Hypertext-reading condition. Directions in this condition told students that they would be able to Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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click on words during the article to see their English meaning. They were asked to not use a print dictionary. They next received the same three-page article. The only difference from the readingonly condition was that 120 of the more important words or phrases could be clicked on, in which case their meaning (within the context of the article) appeared in English in the upperright corner of the screen. After the article they received the same five short-essay questions. They then received the questionnaire with the four questions common to all conditions and one additional question asking how much they liked the glossing feature. Practice-before-reading condition. Directions in this condition told students that they would begin with an activity introducing the article’s critical vocabulary. They were told (like the reading-only condition) that they could use a print Spanish-English dictionary while reading. They next received a page showing the 40 critical vocabulary words and phrases and their English meanings. The meanings given were identical to what appeared as glosses for the students who received glosses. After that page students received a practice activity in which each of the words was presented and they were required to type the English meaning. If answered correctly, a word was not asked again. If answered incorrectly, a word was repeated three items later. If a word was answered incorrectly during the last two items of the practice activity, some of the other words (which had been correctly answered on previous occasions) were used to pad the list. After the 40 words were correctly answered, students received the same three-page article as for the other conditions. They did not receive hypertext glosses. After the article they received the same five short-essay questions as the other conditions. They next received the questionnaire with the four questions common to all conditions and one additional question about how much they thought the vocabulary practice helped them in reading the article. Practice-plus-hypertext condition. Directions in this condition told students they would begin with an activity introducing the article’s critical vocabulary and that they would be able to click on words during the article to see their English meaning. They were asked to not use a print dictionary. They received the vocabulary display page and practice activity as in the practicebefore-reading condition followed by the same three-page article. Like the hypertext-reading condition, the 120 identified words and phrases could be clicked to see glosses. After the article they received the same five short-essay questions as all the other conditions. They then received the questionnaire with the four questions common to all conditions and two additional questions about how much they liked the hypertext feature (the same as was given to students in the hypertext-reading condition) and how much they thought the vocabulary practice helped them in reading the article (the same as was given to students in the practice-before-reading condition). Data Analysis Online data recording and retrieval. While students worked, the program recorded all their activities in a formatted text file. Every line of this file included a time stamp and a description of the activity (e.g., entering or leaving a page of the article). Events recorded included starting and ending the program, starting and ending the vocabulary list, starting and ending the prereading practice activity, each practice item presented and the answer given by the student, starting and ending each page of the article, each hypertext (glossed) word clicked upon, words clicked upon which did not have glosses, starting and ending each essay question, the typed answer given to each essay question, starting and ending the questionnaire, and the choice Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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clicked for each questionnaire item (including changing one’s mind and clicking a new choice). In addition to the above event data, each text file recorded the experimental condition and the number of the computer used by the student. Nothing identifying the student (name or university ID number) was stored. The text files were formatted allowing them to be retrieved by a word processor (to print and grade the typed essay answers), a spreadsheet (to read times and other objective data for analysis), and a preprocessing program created by the researchers to prepare the data for the primary statistical analysis using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS). Preanalysis processing included, for example, counting the number of hypertext clicks and summing the total time spent reading. Objective data preparation. The spreadsheet and preprocessing program generated a file with objective information for each participant including their condition, time in various parts of the activity, number of appropriate and inappropriate hypertext clicks, and final questionnaire choices. Reading performance test scoring. For each of the five essay questions a scoring key was created. The scoring key identified the primary correct idea units (those present in the article) and possible incorrect idea units (those reflecting misunderstanding or mistranslation of idea units in the article). The first four essay questions (on specific topics) had 4–7 correct idea units and the same 14 incorrect idea units, which had been compiled during a prior reading of all the students’ responses. The fifth essay question (which asked students to type anything they could remember) had a longer list of 35 correct idea units and the same 14 incorrect idea units. These keys were used to score each student’s essay questions, assigning each student a number correct and a number incorrect for each of the five questions. Both researchers (the authors) performed blind scoring of all responses by all students and discussed score differences so as to come to agreement. These numbers, plus the total correct and incorrect, were added to the objective data file. The data were analyzed with a univariate analysis of variance, using SPSS. Results Reading Performance A completely crossed 2 × 2 (Glossing During Reading for the First Factor × Prereading Practice for the Second Factor) analysis of variance was performed on the total number of correct idea units given (across all five questions). Reading-only students had a mean of 10.35 idea units (n = 23, SD = 6.7), hypertext-reading students had a mean of 15.53 idea units (n = 19, SD = 5.41), practice-before-reading students had a mean of 10.0 idea units (n = 16, SD = 5.38), and practiceplus-hypertext students had a mean of 13.06 idea units (n = 18, SD = 6.73). The main factor of glossing was significant, F(1, 72) = 8.39, MS = 316.58, p < .005, indicating that students who were able to click on words for their meaning performed significantly better. Neither the main factor of prereading practice nor the interaction of the two factors was significant for this dependent variable. Thus, Null Hypothesis 2 was rejected, but Null Hypotheses 1 and 3 were not. During-reading vocabulary assistance appeared to be the most beneficial treatment with regard to reading comprehension.

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The same analysis was performed on the five essay questions individually. Three of the five questions (1, 3, and 5) were significant at better than the .05 level for the main effect of hypertext glossing, with students receiving hypertext glossing performing better. For students who received glossing, we performed a Pearson Correlation between the number of times students looked up word meanings (that is, clicked on words) and the total number of idea units reported. The correlation (r = .305) was not significant at the .05 level, but was close to it (n = 37, p = .066). This suggests, albeit tentatively, that the more students looked up words, the more they understood about the article. Study Time The same 2 × 2 analysis of variance was performed on the time spent reading the article and the combined time spent both practicing the vocabulary before reading and then reading the article. For reading the article alone, reading-only students spent a mean of 653 seconds reading the article (n = 23, SD = 394), hypertext-reading students spent a mean of 631 seconds reading the article (n = 19, SD = 202), practice-before-reading students spent a mean of 385 seconds reading the article (n = 16, SD = 212), and practice-plus-hypertext students spent a mean of 371 seconds reading the article (n = 18, SD = 191). The main factor of prereading practice was significant, F(1, 72) = 17.165, MS = 1,296,224, p < .001, indicating that students who had done the prereading practice read the article significantly faster. Neither the main factor of glossing nor the interaction of the two factors was significant for this dependent variable. Thus, Null Hypothesis 4 was rejected, but Null Hypotheses 5 and 6 were not. Prereading assistance appeared to be the most beneficial treatment with regard to article reading time. However, the importance of this result is tempered by the next analysis. For the time spent in both the prereading activity plus reading the article the results were the opposite. Reading-only students spent a mean of 653 seconds overall (n = 23, SD = 394), and hypertext-reading students spent a mean of 631 seconds overall (n = 19, SD = 202). Practicebefore-reading students spent a mean of 1,345 seconds overall (n = 16, SD = 305), and practiceplus-hypertext students spent a mean of 1,245 seconds overall (n = 18, SD = 369). The main factor of prereading practice was significant, F(1, 72) = 73.122, MS = 7,981,458, p < .001, indicating that students who had done the prereading practice spent significantly more time in the combination of prereading and reading activities. Neither the main factor of glossing nor the interaction of the two factors was significant for this dependent variable. Questionnaire Responses On the first question, difficulty of the article, all students in all conditions found the article moderately difficult (M = 2.45 on a 1–4 Likert scale). On the second question, how much they had to look up vocabulary words (whether online or offline), all students in all conditions did so moderately (M = 2.11 on a 1–4 Likert scale). On the third question, how much they liked the online vocabulary help (hypertext glossing), which was only asked of students who received glossing, the students who only received Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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glossing liked it significantly more (M = 1.05, n = 19, SD = .23) than students who received both glossing and prereading practice (M = 1.94, n = 18, SD = .94) on a 1–4 Likert scale, F(1, 35) = 16.191, MS = 7.351, p < .001. On the fourth question, how much they thought the prereading vocabulary activity helped them, which was only asked of students who received that prereading activity, all students (whether they received glossing or not) thought it helped moderately (M = 2.0 on a 1–4 Likert scale). On the fifth question, comparing the interactive reading to reading a regular book, there was a significant main effect for glossing and a significant interaction. Control students had a mean of 2.35 on a 1–4 Likert scale (n = 23, SD = .775), hypertext-reading students had a mean of 1.42 (n = 19, SD = .838), practice-before-reading students had a mean of 1.94 (n = 16, SD = .443), and practice-plus-hypertext students had a mean of 1.72 (n = 18, SD = .895). The main effect for glossing was significant, F(1, 72) = 10.342, MS = 6.09, p < .003. The interaction was significant, F(1, 72) = 4.014, MS = 2.364, p < .05. Overall, students receiving hypertext glossing liked online reading more than students who did not receive glossing. The significant interaction was produced because that effect (favoring hypertext glossing) was much more pronounced for students who did not have the prereading vocabulary practice. Students who did receive the prereading vocabulary practice had a much smaller effect for hypertext glossing. That is, they only liked having it a little more than not having it. On the sixth question, prior familiarity with the poet Neruda, all students in all groups were equally unfamiliar with him (M = 3.5 on a 1–4 Likert scale). We had chosen a topic we hoped and expected students would not have prior knowledge of, and this confirmed our expectation. Discussion Comparing the two techniques in this study, prereading vocabulary assistance (the practice activity) and during-reading vocabulary assistance (hypertext glossing), the latter was clearly more effective. The hypertext glossing had significant positive impact on reading performance even though participants did not have access to regular dictionaries, and without significantly affecting the time to read. On the other hand, the prereading assistance showed mixed results. It did appear to shorten reading time without affecting reading performance significantly, which would itself seem good; but that is only true if we measure reading time of the article alone. If we include the time spent studying the vocabulary, the total time in the lesson is significantly increased by the prereading activity. On the one hand, reading itself may be a little more efficient, but on the other hand overall study time is less efficient, requiring more time without improved comprehension. A concern is that the condition that combined both prereading and during-reading vocabulary assistance demonstrated slightly worse reading performance (though it was not a significant difference) than the condition with during-reading vocabulary assistance alone. One should not overinterpret a nonsignificant difference, but what might account for this if the difference is real (that is, if it were to be shown significant with a greater number of participants)? One possibility Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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is that the combination of two types of vocabulary assistance imposed too much cognitive load and thus detracted from the cognitive processing available for reading comprehension. This particular prereading vocabulary exercise was considerably more effortful than just looking at new vocabulary words or being told a little about the context, both of which are more common prereading activities in second language classrooms and textbooks. Students who had the prereading practice might have been growing weary and becoming eager to finish the entire activity. That is supported by the fact that overall time (prereading and reading) was slightly less for the condition with both types of assistance than for the condition with just prereading assistance (although that contrast was not significant either). It is also supported by the responses to the fourth questionnaire item. Students who only received hypertext glossing liked it much more than students who received both hypertext glossing and the prereading activity. The greater benefit of the during-reading vocabulary assistance (hypertext glossing) is also supported by the data from the fifth questionnaire item. In that question, students were asked to compare online reading to regular books. Students who received hypertext glossing rated online reading better than regular books significantly more than students who did not receive hypertext glossing, and students who only received hypertext glossing rated online reading the best of them all, as evidenced by the interaction. Theoretical Implications The contention of schema theory that prereading activities activate learners’ relevant schemata (background knowledge relevant to the reading selection) is not supported by our results. Schema theory would predict a benefit for reading comprehension and not for time. Quite the opposite was found. The prereading activity did not improve reading performance, it only reduced reading time and only if we do not count the prereading activity itself as part of the reading time. One might maintain, however, that our particular prereading activity emphasized vocabulary practice in a way that is less likely to activate schemata than, for example, providing some cultural context for the reading selection or presenting vocabulary that activates learners’ own cultural knowledge in a way relevant to that of the reading selection. In contrast to the lack of support for schema activation through prereading activities, our results do support and add to findings of the practical effects of during-reading vocabulary assistance (e.g., Taylor, 2006), the effect of cognitive-load reduction (Sweller, 2005) and are consistent with several studies (De Ridder, 2002; Ko, 2005; Lomicka, 1998) providing empirical evidence that hypertext glossing facilitates L2 reading. Practical Implications For teachers and designers of instructional materials we have both good news and bad news. During-reading support may be more effective than prereading support, but it is currently more difficult to implement. Prereading activities (a list of vocabulary, a cultural orientation given orally) can be easily created and delivered by teachers and can be used for any type of reading material, whether it is in a book or on a computer. In contrast, during-reading activities such as hypertext glossing are only practical when reading Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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on a computer, and they demand a level of technical development (such as creating a glossing utility and connecting it to appropriate vocabulary) that most teachers would find difficult. During-reading vocabulary assistance clearly finds more support in research studies, but its practical application is dependent on two things. First, more reading materials must become available online. Second, programs must be developed that generate hypertext vocabulary assistance automatically for any electronic text. We are on a good trajectory for the first to occur. More and more reading material is available online. That is not the same, however, as students reading the material online. Many readers still prefer to print electronic texts and read them on paper, which obviates hypertext support. Although academic texts are quickly going electronic, the movement of students toward being comfortable with reading on line is occurring a little more slowly. That may change (i.e., students may be much more willing to read on line) if online texts provide beneficial features that paper texts do not. More students will be willing to read online texts (rather than print them) if they get additional benefits not available with the print materials. There is also progress towards programs that automatically provide hypertext support in electronic texts. Providing glosses with basic word translation is fairly easy, but there will be greater benefit in programs that can automatically generate the context-sensitive support most hypertext glossing programs provide. That will require more intelligent programming that incorporates some degree of language understanding, enough to determine context and thus select and present glosses that are truly helpful to readers. Limitations of the Study In the Method section we discussed the need to balance realism, control, and statistical power. In one instance we choose to compromise realism (the prereading activity is much longer and more intensive than most textbook or classroom prereading activities) to benefit power. In another instance we choose to compromise control (providing bilingual dictionaries only to the students who did not receive glossing) to benefit realism. However, the first instance turned out to compromise not only realism but also control. The data indicate that students spent considerably more time in the conditions with prereading assistance. That confuses the issue of whether reading was really more efficient (equal learning in less time) or not. Furthermore, the effort required to complete the prereading vocabulary practice may have caused fatigue and, subsequently, diminished reading effort and performance. Perhaps just presenting our vocabulary list would have been equally effective. That would be a worthwhile follow up study. Not only would it be less time consuming and less likely to fatigue students, but it would be more like the prereading activities of real textbooks and classrooms. Conclusion This study contrasted prereading vocabulary assistance (presenting and practicing new vocabulary) and during-reading vocabulary assistance (hypertext glosses). During-reading assistance proved more valuable as it significantly improved reading comprehension and students liked that assistance the most. The effect of prereading assistance was mixed. If one Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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only considers the time to read the article, prereading assistance significantly decreased reading time without affecting comprehension. On the other hand, if we consider the combined time of both the prereading activity plus reading the article, prereading assistance significantly increased the time, thus lowering overall efficiency. The greatest benefit will likely accrue from combining glossing and automated processing of text. Because hypertext glossing is clearly effective (as demonstrated not only in this study but many others) and students like it, techniques for automatically generating hypertext glosses for arbitrary L2 texts would be very beneficial. Software development towards that goal would be welcomed by L2 learners as well as effective in improving their reading comprehension. References Ajideh, P. (2006). Schema-theory based considerations on pre-reading activities in ESP textbooks. The Asian EFL Journal Teaching Articles, 16, 1–19. Aust, R., Kelley, M. J., & Roby, W. (1993). The use of hyper-reference and conventional dictionaries. Educational Technology Research and Development, 41(4), 63–73. Cook, G. (1989). Discourse (Language teaching: A scheme for teacher education). Oxford, England: Oxford University Press. De Ridder, I. (2002). Visible or invisible links: Does the highlighting of hyperlinks affect incidental vocabulary learning, text comprehension, and the reading process? Language Learning & Technology, 6, 123–146. Gettys, S., Imhof, L. A., & Kautz, J. O. (2001). Computer-assisted reading: The effect of glossing format on comprehension and vocabulary retention. Foreign Language Annals, 34, 91–106. Hunt, A., & Beglar, D. (2005). A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17, 23–59. Jacobs, G. M., Dufon, P., & Hong, F. C. (1994). L1 and L2 vocabulary glosses in L2 reading passages: Their effectiveness for increasing comprehension and vocabulary knowledge. Journal of Research in Reading, 17, 19–28. Knight, S. (1994). Dictionary use while reading: The effects on comprehension and vocabulary acquisition for students of different verbal abilities. The Modern Language Journal, 78, 285–299. Ko, M. H. (2005). Glosses, comprehension, and strategy use. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17, 125–143. Liontas, J. I. (2001). Reading and multimedia annotations: Going beyond bells and whistles, hot links and pop-up windows. IALL Journal of Language Learning Technologies, 33(1), 53– 78. Lomicka, L. L. (1998). “To gloss or not to gloss”: An investigation of reading comprehension online. Language Learning & Technology, 1, 41–50. Pichert, J. W., & Anderson, R. C. (1977). Taking different perspectives on a story. Journal of Educational Psychology, 69, 309–315. Roby, W. B. (1999). “What’s in a gloss?” Language Learning & Technology, 2, 94–101. Romero-Ghiretti, G., White, V., Berg, B., Quintana, D. R., Grayson, B. L., & Weng, M. (2007). Research and theory driven insights: Ten suggestions for L2 reading instruction. The Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Reading Matrix, 7(3), 44–54. Rott, S. (2005). Processing glosses: A qualitative exploration of how form-meaning connections are established and strengthened. Reading in a Foreign Language, 17, 95–124. Sweller, J. (2005). Implications of cognitive load theory for multimedia learning. In R. E. Mayer (Ed.), The Cambridge handbook of multimedia learning (pp. 19–30). Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Taylor, A. (2006). Factors associated with glossing: Comments on Ko (2005). Reading in a Foreign Language, 18, 72–73. Appendix A The following three screen shots show the three pages of the article. The third page also demonstrates the appearance of a hypertext gloss, in this case for the word suelo in the second to last line. The first and second pages have a small letter D in the upper-right corner, indicating to the researchers that those students are allowed use of print dictionaries. The student who received glosses (the third page) was not allowed use of a print dictionary.

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Appendix B The screen shot below shows the forty Spanish words presented and practiced in the prereading vocabulary activity.

Appendix C Below are the five short-essay questions given to students after reading. Questions were displayed one per computer page and students typed their answers in English. Why was the trip done on a train? What was Neruda’s relationship to the sea? Describe Neruda’s house on Isla Negra. Why is Neruda revered in Chile? Please type a summary of the newspaper article.

Appendix D The screen shot below shows the questionnaire. Items 1, 2, 5 and 6 were seen by students in all conditions. Item 3 was only seen by students receiving during-reading hypertext assistance. Item 4 was only seen by students receiving prereading vocabulary practice. This particular screen, with all six items, was seen by students in the practice-plus-hypertext condition. Strongly agree was scored as 1, agree as 2, disagree as Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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3, and strongly disagree as 4.

About the Authors Stephen Alessi is an associate professor of Educational Psychology at the University of Iowa. His teaching and research emphasize the application of cognitive learning theory to the design of educational software and online instruction. He is coauthor (with Stanley Trollip) of Multimedia for Learning: Methods and Development. For further information, see www.stevealessi.com E-mail: [email protected] Angelique Dwyer is a PhD candidate in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at the University of Iowa. Her doctoral dissertation is on female performers of Greater Mexico and identity politics within a transnational context. Her research engages current work in border studies, performance studies, and identity studies. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 264–268

Reviewed work: Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context. (2009). Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (Series Ed.). New York: Oxford University Press. Pp. 744. ISBN: 9780194416122. $28.95

Reviewed by

Averil Coxhead, Margaret Gari, and Matella Urakowi Massey University New Zealand http://www.oup.com

The Inside Reading: The Academic Word List in Context series comprises four textbooks with CDs and four instructor packs with test-making software. The series editor is Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman. The series is attractively presented and focuses on the connection between reading and learning academic vocabulary, in this case the Academic Word List (AWL; Coxhead, 2000). The AWL is a list of 570 word families that occur with reasonable frequency across a broad range of academic subjects, such as biology, history, and accounting. The list is useful for English for Academic Purposes (EAP) students and is divided into 10 sublists, with the 60 most frequent families of the list in Sublist 1, the next most frequent in Sublist 2, and so on. For more on the AWL, go to http://language.massey.ac.nz/staff/awl/index.shtml or see Coxhead (2000, 2006) or Nation (2001). Inside Reading integrates findings from studies on second language reading (e.g., Carrell, Devine, & Eskey, 1988; Koda, 2005), vocabulary (Coxhead, 2000; Nation, 2001; Laufer, 2005; Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002), and second language reading and vocabulary combined (Laufer, 1992) into carefully presented and well-organised units of work. The introductory unit for teachers at the beginning of each book clearly discusses and illustrates connections between applied linguistics research findings, teachers, learners, and the series. The readings provide useful contexts for the target vocabulary with a slant mostly towards U.S. topics.

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The series is organised logically and follows similar approaches even though each book has a different author: Book 1 is written by Arline Burgmeier, Book 2 by Lawrence Zwier, Book 3 by Bruce Rubin, and Book 4 by Kent Richmond. Each unit contains two readings and follows roughly the same organisation: introduction of target words, self-rating of current levels of knowledge of these words, prereading questions, a reading of approximately two pages, reading comprehension, a reading strategy, and word and sentence level vocabulary work. The second reading is also followed by a discussion of the content of the readings, and then a list of related topics for writing and/or discussion. Some words from the readings are glossed, but the principles behind the selection of the glossed words are not clear. We also noticed that the reading strategies sometimes changed order in some units to allow for different strategies to be practised. For example, Unit 4 of Book 2 has a prereading strategy for the second reading. Another activity—making an outline of a reading that highlights the main points and details—in the same unit requires students to find an example of an outline on the Internet rather than providing an example in the text. Both these activities needed explanations—for the change in the first instance and the need to find an online outline (rather than in the book itself) in the second. The range of reading strategies, including skimming, scanning, predicting, reading graphs and tables, identifying definitions, and finding main ideas, is quite wide and appears in different books within the series. For example, previewing is found in Books 1, 2, and 3, whereas skimming occurs in all four books. According to the Unit Tour, which explains the organisation and purpose of the contents of the units in the books, “readings [in the series] represent a variety of genres: newspapers, magazines, websites, press releases, encyclopedias, and books” (p. xi). We thought that the series provided a wide range of very interesting topics, such as readings about child prodigies in Book 2, debates in literature, such as whether Shakespeare penned his own plays, in Book 2, and stories of migrants to the US in Book 3. High interest readings are important to us because we are writing this review as EAP students and an EAP lecturer. For each of these topics there was also a solid amount of reading appropriate to the levels. The readings are comprehensible and are surrounded by plenty of white space, which is easy on the eyes. Pictures and illustrations that are relevant to the readings are included in the units. We were concerned that at times the texts were not clearly referenced and did not seem to be very representative of academic reading at the undergraduate level, at least from our experience in a New Zealand university context. For example, there were 13 AWL words in the first reading in Unit 10, Book 1, out of approximately 800 words. We analysed the first two paragraphs of this reading and found that out of the 177 running words, 8 were from the AWL. This figure means that the number of AWL words in the text is approximately 5 every 100 words. This number contrasts with Coxhead’s (2000) finding that the AWL covered roughly 10% of the words in a corpus of 3,500,000 running words of written academic English. That is, roughly 10 AWL words occur every 100 words. In addition, long noun phrases that seem to characterise academic writing (Coxhead & Byrd, 2007) do not appear often in the readings. Here is an example from the reading mentioned earlier in this paragraph (the bolding represents the first occurrence of an AWL target word in the reading): For more of human history, humans have had to live with the body that nature gave them. They lacked the knowledge to improve eyes that couldn’t see clearly, or help ears that Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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couldn’t hear. Such disabilities were more than an inconvenience for early humans; they were a threat to their existence. A person with impaired vision might not be able to hunt or work with tools, for example. Over time, the incentive to survive led people to develop devices that would fix the errors in their own bodies (Burgmeier, 2009, p. 128). We understand that the conflict between providing high interest readings that can provide both lexical instruction and practice for reading strategies can be difficult to manage. The primary aim of connecting reading and vocabulary is well achieved in this series, however. The words of the AWL are approached in a serious and well principled way. Each 14 page unit presents 15 words from the AWL and the words are practised and recycled. In Unit 4 of Book 2, for example, protocol is a target word and is presented at least 20 times: once in a list, twice in reading texts, six times in a meaning-based exercise, three times in a collocation exercise, three times in explanations, twice in rubrics, and once each in exercises such as choosing the odd word out in a group of words, a reading comprehension question, and a sentence level vocabulary task. Another target word in the same unit, accumulate, occurs eight times in various ways. The vocabulary is treated very carefully within the units and students are encouraged to work on different aspects of knowing a word, both at word and sentence level. The books also encourage learners to consult their dictionaries. The authors focused on Nation’s (2001, p. 29) description of lexical knowledge, that is form, meaning, and use, and made these concepts come alive through clear examples and plenty of practice. It is clear that Zimmerman’s (2008) new book, Word Knowledge, informed the development of this series, as did her earlier work on the benefits of reading and interactive vocabulary instruction (Zimmerman, 1997) and learner knowledge about derivative word forms (Schmitt & Zimmerman, 2002). The end-of-unit reflection on what the students know about the target word compared to what they knew before is very helpful. The AWL words are listed alphabetically at the end of each book, with the AWL sublist number listed next to each word along with the corresponding book and unit number. We felt this index would be very helpful for students and teachers, but a comparison across the books shows there is little repetition of words between units and books. Also, the reasons for the ordering of the words across the books are not obvious. For example, we noted that notwithstanding from Sublist 10 of the AWL is a target word in Book 2, but research and require from Sublist 1 (the most frequent 60 words of the AWL) appear in Book 4. The final sections of each unit provide writing and discussion activities, from online research projects through to writing prompts. We were not sure what the teacher and the students should do with the target vocabulary at this point. For example, Unit 7 on page 98 of Book 1 asks us to “think about all of the fast-food restaurants you have visited. In what ways are they the same? What are some differences?” Perhaps we missed the point of the activity and were looking for more guidance than we needed at this late stage in the unit. We all liked the CDs from the student books. We found them easy to work with and thought that students would enjoy doing some self-study on a computer. The presentation and quality were extremely professional. The CDs allow students to focus on the AWL words in different ways through gapfills and reflection on the words and their uses. These exercises were helpful for learning, although in some places in the world, such as Papua New Guinea, where two of the authors of this review work, access to computers can be limited. Very helpfully, the instructor’s Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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pack CD includes an answer key and a test generator. Teachers can customise the test questions to their class by choosing from a range of questions on target lexis and readings. This innovative use of technology would be interesting to explore with several teachers working in different classes to see if they selected similar or different questions from the CD for their classes. Overall, we found that this series met its aims in supporting teachers and learners to develop their knowledge and understanding of the connection between reading and vocabulary. We would recommend Inside Reading to students and teachers working in classrooms, especially in the U.S. context. In particular, we felt it would be most suitable for students who are at the beginning of their preparation for undergraduate studies. References Burgmeier, A. (2009). Inside reading: The academic word list in context (Book 1). Cheryl Boyd Zimmerman (Series Ed.). New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Carrell, P., Devine, J., & Eskey, D. (1988). Interactive approaches to second language reading. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Coxhead, A. (2000). An academic word list. TESOL Quarterly, 34, 213–238. Coxhead, A. (2006). Essentials of teaching academic vocabulary. Boston, MA: Heinle. Coxhead, A., & Byrd, P. (2007). Preparing writing teachers to teach the vocabulary and grammar of academic prose. Journal of Second Language Writing, 16, 129–147. Koda, K. (2005). Insights into second language reading. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Laufer, B. (1992). Reading in a foreign language: How does L2 lexical knowledge interact with the reader’s general academic ability? Journal of Research in Reading, 15, 95–103. Laufer, B. (2005). Instructed second language vocabulary learning: The fault in the ‘default hypothesis’. In A. Housen & M. Pierar (Eds.), Investigations in instructed second language acquisition (pp 286–303). New York, NY: Mouton de Gruyter. Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. Schmitt, N., & Zimmerman, C. B. (2002). Derivative word forms: What do learners know? TESOL Quarterly, 36, 145–171. Zimmerman, C. B. (1997). Do reading and interactive vocabulary instruction make a difference? An empirical study. TESOL Quarterly, 31, 121–140. Zimmerman, C. B. (2008). Word knowledge. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. About the Reviewers Averil Coxhead is a lecturer in English for Academic Purposes and Applied Linguistics in the School of Language Studies, Massey University, New Zealand. E-mail: [email protected]

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Margaret Gari is a Rural Development Officer with the Department of Agriculture, Livestock, & Fisheries in Papua New Guinea. She is undertaking study in Agribusiness at Massey University. E-mail: [email protected] Matella Urakowi is a Registered Nurse and Health and Community Development Trainer in Papua New Guinea. She is undertaking Health Science study at Massey University. E-mail: [email protected]

Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 269–272

Reviewed work: Academic Reading (5th ed.). (2004). Kathleen T. McWhorter. Boston, MA: Pearson Longman. Pp. 540. ISBN 0321104242. $68.00

Reviewed by

Kyae-Sung Park University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa United States

http://www.pearsoned.com/

Academic Reading encompasses general learning and reading strategies and critical thinking skills, which are essential for college students to be successful in academics. The most notable feature of its content is a focus on adapting those skills and strategies to field-specific demands in six academic disciplines: social sciences, business, humanities and the arts, mathematics, natural sciences, and technical and applied fields. The book is presented in four units: Fundamental Reading Strategies (Part 1, chapters 1–3), Critical Reading Strategies (Part 2, chapters 4–6), Academic Reading Strategies (Part 3, chapters 7–12), and Strategies for Specific Disciplines (Part 4, chapters 13–18). The sequence of the content is based on the author’s adoption of Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive skills. This taxonomy classifies the required learning and reading skills and strategies for students from lower- to higher-level skills and from general learning and reading skills to more specific ones. Within such a framework, the fundamental reading strategies at a lower level, outlined in the first part of the book, deal with the recognition and recall of specific facts such as identifying main ideas and supporting details and recognizing words using context clues and word parts. Moving from the basic reading skills to the more complex thinking level, the second part (critical reading strategies) includes evaluating the author’s message, techniques, and arguments. The third part is concerned with higher-level academic reading skills required in research and study as well as http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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general ones: recognizing patterns of academic thought, identifying textbook formats and features, reading graphics, searching and evaluating online sources, using writing as a vehicle of learning, and evaluating and synthesizing research materials. The final part provides students with opportunities to practice what they have learned from the previous parts of the text by applying the skills and strategies to their course work. Among the many virtues of the book are a variety of features that aid students in learning more efficiently. Each chapter commences with a list of summarized learning objectives, explicitly addressing the goals to be achieved in the chapter. End-of-chapter summaries help students to review and refresh their memories about the content. The book also makes it possible for students to review what they learn throughout the text by pulling study tips together in an appendix showing factors of academic success at the end of the last chapter. Along with an endof-book glossary, all these features enhance the effectiveness of the text by allowing students to conveniently access a summary of information that is scattered throughout the text. The most prominent feature of the book is that it encourages students to familiarize themselves with the use of electronic sources by providing web activities and website links: “multimedia activities” introduces two online activities at the end of each chapter, and “multimedia applications” contains a list of useful curriculum-specific websites in the six disciplines at the end of each chapter in Part 4. These two kinds of follow-up activities guide students to apply the skills they learned in each chapter, which reinforces their learning and extends their knowledge through supplementary materials that are accessible electronically. In addition, they allow students to read authentic materials that are current and regularly updated on the Internet, making up for the limitations of materials in print form that soon become outdated. Other valuable features of the book are the ample and varied reading selections and exercises, which make it an effective resource. It contains a wide variety of reading passages excerpted from authentic college textbooks and relevant academic sources. Note that in the 5th edition, a great deal of the original out-of-date materials have been replaced with materials published in the early 2000s. The lengths of the passages vary from one paragraph to several pages according to the purposes and type of activities. Within-chapter passages are tailored to lengths appropriate to the student’s purpose in practicing the reading and study skills presented in the chapter. Three- to five-page end-of-chapter reading selections, each accompanied by a vocabulary learning task, questions for both simple comprehension skills and higher-order critical thinking skills, and a task for applying strategies are suitable ways for students to integrate all of the reading and learning skills that they encounter in the chapter. Exercises throughout the book comprise various types of activities, such as pair work and group work, which facilitate collaborative learning as well as individual work. Students can interact with each other as they apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate the skills and strategies they learn in a chapter, while also individually accessing the reading and initiating their comprehension of the passages and problems. In addition, the exercises allow diverse ways of responding, from written to oral forms and from closed to open answers, encouraging students to interact with the author and text by predicting, questioning, and analyzing concepts and also with peers by discussing, comparing, and evaluating each others’ ideas.

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As such, the book primarily takes an interactive approach, focusing on the interaction between readers as well as between the reader and the author or text. This approach serves as an underlying theoretical basis. Concurrently, the notion of schema is assumed to be crucial in reading and learning: students are encouraged to build their knowledge in their own course work step by step. For example, the text familiarizes students with the common academic patterns of thought prevalent in the six academic disciplines and directs them to the field-specific texts that illustrate these patterns. By laying out reading and learning skills consistently in sequence from the lower level to the higher level and repeating an identical chapter format, the organization of the textbook reinforces students’ systematic learning and provides predictability. In addition, the book emphasizes the role of writing as a vehicle of reading and learning, devoting an entire chapter to the subject of using writing for reading and learning. Despite all the positive values of the book, it has some limitations. First, although its target audience is college students, presumably freshmen, and its purpose is to improve their reading skills specifically in academic disciplines, the book does not necessarily have to include purely academically oriented reading selections throughout. Such a selection can cause difficulties in maintaining students’ focus and decrease their motivation for and interest in reading. Also, in dealing with vocabulary and other fundamental skills in Part 2, the book focuses on the receptive level of vocabulary learning through reading. Given that the book views reading and writing as an interactive process, however, readers would expect it to delve into strategies to develop vocabulary in terms of depth as well as breadth at a productive level. In addition, except for the end-of-reading selections accompanied by a brief vocabulary review, the other parts of the book do not consider vocabulary learning. This gap could be filled by adding some relevant and meaningful activities for vocabulary learning throughout. In addition to the lack of sufficient vocabulary learning skills and exercises, grammar is notably not dealt with in this book. Possibly, the author did not see a need to emphasize the role of syntactic structure in reading or the audience is expected to be native speakers of English, who have already reached a level of proficiency that requires no further grammar instruction. Finally, some skills could be rearranged to increase the efficiency of learning; for example, reading rate in chapter 2 could be combined with skimming and scanning in chapter 12. McWhorter’s Academic Reading explicitly presents skills and strategies of academia, not only for reading but also for general learning, that are in harmony with a wealth of reading selections and exercises and a variety of learning features and activities. Although its organization is in part controversial, on the whole, it serves as a useful guidebook for both native and advanced nonnative English-speaking college students who need to prepare for the challenge of university study and ultimate success in the academic world. About the Reviewer Kyae-Sung Park is a PhD student in the Department of Second Language Studies at the University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa. She has been teaching ESL reading and writing at the English Language Institute. Her principal research interests are formal approaches to first and second

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language acquisition within the generative grammar framework. E-mail: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 273–277

Reviewed work: Teaching Second Language Reading. (2007). Thom Hudson. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Pp. 350. ISBN 9780194422833. $26.75

Reviewed by

Sue Ollerhead Macquarie University Australia

http://www.oup.com

Teaching Second Language Reading by Thom Hudson purports, according to the back-cover description, to be “a useful handbook for both beginning and experienced teachers who want to improve their practical strategies in teaching second language reading and their understanding of the reading process.” During my career as a teacher of English as a foreign language to students ranging from elementary to university level, I would certainly have rejoiced at the discovery of such a book. I would have been particularly attracted to the claim on the back cover that the book would explore in detail the myriad approaches, strategies, and methods used to teach reading. From a classroom teacher’s point of view, it would have seemed that at last I was being provided with a veritable manual on how to tackle the very complex and challenging task for second language teachers, experienced or otherwise, of teaching reading. Unfortunately, the publisher’s blurb is at odds with the core content of the book. The reader encounters not so much a “handbook” (to use the actual term in the blurb) brimming with practical hints and evidence of what works in second language reading classrooms, but rather something akin to an extensive literature review of research studies conducted on multiple aspects of the reading process. http://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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In order to gain a more accurate sense of the book’s contents, one would be better off starting at the back, where a perusal of the bibliography reveals 38 pages of cited sources, 471 entries, to be exact. This, in my opinion, is where the true significance of the book lies: for in analysing, condensing, and collating decades’ worth of reading research studies, Hudson gives readers a chronological overview of the development of reading research, thereby enabling them to identify the emergence and growth of key research trends in the field. The studies cited range from approaches as diverse as Carroll’s (1964, p. 62) bottom-up view of reading as “the activity of reconstructing … a reasonable spoken message from a printed text” to the new literacy approaches that view the act of reading as an inherently social practice embedded in specific contexts, discourses, and positions (Street, 1993; Prinsloo & Breier, 1996). That is not to say that the book does not attempt to address instructional issues. Hudson does present implications for instruction in response to the different research findings. However, these are made explicit only in chapters relating to strategies and metacognitive skills (chapter 5), formal schema (chapter 7), and the relationship between reading and writing (chapter 10). Also, the instructional implications are often inconclusive in nature, such as “several studies at different levels of instruction have indicated that first language instruction in text structure can be effective in teaching discourse organisation” (p. 192). Otherwise, readers are left to sift through the summaries and conclusions of each chapter to identify any significant suggestions for classroom practice. While this may well be a function of the book’s design and organisation of content, it could be argued that a book marketed as a tool to help teachers to reflect on and improve their teaching methods would be enhanced by foregrounding the implications for instruction that may be drawn from the relevant research. In the same vein, the discussion activities and questions at the end of each chapter, while useful in inviting readers to reflect on their own reading activities and their comprehension of the research studies presented, seem to bear little relevance to concrete classroom practice. For example, at the end of chapter 8 on genre and contrastive rhetoric, the reader is asked, “How does Swales relate the six defining characteristics to be sufficient for identifying people as members of discourse communities to the five criterial observations about genres?” (p. 225). This question seems to have little if any link to the act of teaching reading; a task relating to the application of genre theory and contrastive rhetoric in a typical second language reading classroom would prove more practical for most teachers or teacher trainers. Hudson structures the book in a way that reflects his view that reading skills can be broadly categorised into word-attack skills (decoding skills), comprehension skills, fluency skills, and critical reading skills. He takes as his point of departure a discussion of the salient issues surrounding second language reading, which comprises a description of the reading process and summarises the key prerequisites for effective reading. In my opinion, this is the most engaging chapter, where the reader is invited to interact with various text types to explore the numerous formats, tasks, and goals involved in the complex act of reading. Hudson proceeds with a chronological summary of the development of models of first language reading, affording readers a useful framework for the content of the chapters to follow. In chapter 3, he examines the core issues in second language reading and discusses several second Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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language reading models. He goes on to emphasise the significant differences between first and second language readers, which are crucial to understanding the influence of factors such as first language literacy and age on second language reading performance (p. 290). In chapter 4, the author critically challenges the conventional view of reading skills as being hierarchically ordered and discrete, putting forward numerous research studies that lend weight to the theory that reading skills are initiated and applied during the act of reading and are heavily influenced by factors such as text purpose and content (p. 79). In the ensuing chapter on strategies and metacognitive skills, Hudson makes the helpful distinction between strategies as representing either a type of “repair action” (p. 293) or a more subconscious action, such as monitoring and regulation. He cites numerous studies that indicate the benefits of the explicit teaching of strategies and metacognitive skills to students, yet stresses the need to examine such training in context as exemplars of strategy use, rather than presenting them as dislocated lists of strategy types to be tried out on texts that have little significance to students. Chapters 6 and 7 deal respectively with content and formal schema. In chapter 6, Hudson underscores the importance of the teacher’s role in understanding the cultural background of second language students in order to develop an insight into how this can affect the way in which they extract meaning from a text. Chapter 7 includes a useful and thorough summary of the different types of methodology used to teach text structure. This leads well into the ensuing chapter (chapter 8), which presents an extended discussion of the various teaching methods that have been used to focus on text genre and contrastive rhetoric. The subject of vocabulary (chapter 9) is approached from three different angles, affording the reader a comprehensive understanding of its role in second language reading. Hudson addresses in some detail the “breadth and depth” dimensions of vocabulary knowledge (p. 235) before going on to cite research studies that explore the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. He then proceeds to explain how, although students can learn new vocabulary both intentionally and incidentally, incidental acquisition requires the learner to experience many different instances of the word; tools such as dictionaries and marginal glosses play a useful role in this regard. Chapter 10, which discusses the relationships between reading and writing, advocates the combining of reading and writing in the teaching of literacy. This, according to the author, prevents artificial distinctions being made between the two skills and affords the second language student more “cross-learning opportunities” as well as serving to develop critical thinking skills (p. 288). Chapter 11 ties all of the abovementioned issues together in an extended discussion, which helps the reader to retain an overall perspective of the core issues in second language reading research. The book is helpful in the way in which it addresses the ambiguity and complexity of terms relating to the teaching of reading. The distinctions, which some may consider inconsequential,

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are subtle and potentially confusing, and it is refreshing to encounter an author who tackles them directly, as can be seen in his discussion of the term skills: There is a need to recognise how the term skill is used in multiple ways. The term skills, subskills, processing strategies, ability, and Stanovich’s (1980) term, ‘‘knowledge sources’’, are terms used variably in the applied linguistics and language teaching literature. The distinctions in usage can depend upon whether the term is used to refer to a language component or to an individual reader’s ability to perform. (p. 78) Unfortunately, the sheer breadth and scope of research included by Hudson comes in general at the expense of interesting and engaging details pertaining to the individual studies he cites. Where these details are included, they prove to be relevant and illustrative, such as his account of research into how the respective personal knowledge and cultural background of white and African-American eighth grade students in the United Sates affected their interpretation of a text that dealt with an incidence of violence at a school (p. 144). As with much literature on reading, Hudson’s position with regard to the teaching of learners with very low levels of literacy appears, at times, contradictory. While advocating against the use of synthetic syllabi, saying that activities that isolate and teach unitary skills are problematic in that they fail to take into account the complex nature of reading acts, Hudson goes on to underscore Gordon’s (1982) assertion that readers need to develop core reading competencies in order to become effective readers. These comprise discrete “prerequisites,” such as the names of letters, consonants, plurals, root words, and vowels (p. 292). Understandably, the issue of teaching low-literate adults is a multifaceted one, a detailed explication of which perhaps lies outside of the scope of this book, yet a clear description from the author on where he stands in this regard would have been helpful in the light of increasing numbers of such students emerging in second language classrooms around the world. It must be acknowledged that Hudson does not attempt to shy away from the complexities of the issues surrounding the process of second language reading in order to present a more coherent read for his audience. This allows him to illustrate how the process of reading involves the coordination of a number of factors, such as grapheme recognition, phonological representation, syntactic structure, background knowledge, processing strategies, text structure understanding, vocabulary, and context. The confounding, complex and ultimately very human science of reading is perhaps best encapsulated in Hudson’s somewhat desultory conclusion that “we are left knowing that there is no magic bullet, no single explanation for what teachers can do to ensure that their students learn to read in a second or foreign language” (p. 297). There can be no doubt that anyone navigating the complex and often conflicting body of literature available on reading research will find Hudson’s comprehensive documentation and lucid explanations of research methodology and findings extremely valuable. However, it is questionable whether teachers or teacher trainers seeking concrete and direct guidance on teaching strategies and methods would find this a useful handbook. Ultimately, for this reader, the book fails to bridge the gap between theory and practice.

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References Carroll, J. B. (1964). Language and thought. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. Gordon, W.M. (1982). The reading curriculum: a reference guide to criterion-based skill development in Grades K-8. New York: Praeger. Hudson, T. (2007). Teaching second language reading. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Prinsloo, M., & Breier, M. (Eds.). (1996). The social uses of literacy: Theory and practice in contemporary South Africa. Amsterdam: John Benjamins; and Johannesburg: SACHED Books. Stanovich, K. E. (1980). Toward an interactive-compensatory model of individual differences in the development of reading fluency. Reading Research Quarterly, 16, 32–71. Street, B.V. (1993). Cross-cultural approaches to literacy. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. About the Reviewer Sue Ollerhead is a PhD student in Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University. She has an MA in Linguistics from Stellenbosch University, South Africa, and an MEd (TESOL) (Merit) from the University of Sydney, Australia. Her main interests are second language acquisition, language in education, and adult literacy. E-mail: [email protected]

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Reading in a Foreign Language ISSN 1539-0578

October 2008, Volume 20, No. 2 pp. 278–286

Readings on L2 reading: Publications in other venues 2007–2008 Cindy Brantmeier and Tracy Van Bishop, Editors Washington University in St. Louis United States This feature offers an archive of articles and books published in other venues during the past year and serves as a valuable tool to readers of Reading in a Foreign Language (RFL). The Articles section treats any topic within the scope of RFL and second language reading. Articles are organized by topic and are listed in alphabetical order. This section includes titles of the articles as well as brief summaries. One additional section includes a list of dissertations that treat second language reading. The editors of this feature attempted to include all related articles that appear in other venues. However, undoubtedly, this list is not exhaustive. Articles Course Design Rivas de White, E., & Payne, M. (2008). Using sustained silent reading in the language classroom. The Language Educator, 3(3), 54–56. This article describes one high school Spanish teacher’s program of including sustained silent reading (SSR) in the classroom. The authors contend that the program has been a success by creating more excitement about reading and the language itself, and leading to authentic improvement. Students involved in the program use more vocabulary and advanced grammar structures in their writing, and 90% of them affirm that the tests and exams were easier for them after participating in the SSR program. Individual Reader Differences Brady, E. C., & Kritsonis, W. A. (2008). Targeting reading fluency for ESL students: A research based and practical application. The Lamar University Electronic Journal of Student Research, 7, 1–6. In this article the authors correlate research in ESL reading and adult education reading instruction to practical strategies used to teach fluency in a second-grade ESL reading class. The exercises for each story or play begin with learning vocabulary and emphasize repeated reading over the next 4 days. The 5th day focuses entirely on extending the story through writing exercises. The authors conclude that the strategies used in the class effectively employ researchhttp://nflrc.hawaii.edu/rfl

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based principles. Harrison, G., & Krol, L. (2007). Relationship between L1 and L2 word-level reading and phonological processing in adults. Journal of Research in Reading, 30, 379–393. This investigation examines associations among word-level and phonological processing skills of 32 adults learning ESL who are L1 speakers of Mandarin Chinese. The authors also explored the identification of potential students who may have English reading difficulties. Findings indicated that phonological processing skills can be assessed in students’ L2 to predict L2 reading performance and that it may be possible for ESL instructors in adult language centers to predict and attend to L2 reading difficulties. The authors cite prior literature on explicit and intensive instruction on the phonological aspects of reading into ESL instruction. Lexis Golkar, M., & Yamini, M. (2007). Vocabulary, proficiency and reading comprehension. The Reading Matrix, 7(3), 88–112. In an attempt to empirically prove the reliability and viability of the Vocabulary Levels Tests, Golkar and Yamini administered the Vocabulary Levels Test, the Productive Version of the Vocabulary Levels Test, and the TOEFL test to 76 Iranian students. Their conclusion is that these tests are, indeed, dependable and can be useful resources for language teachers as well as second language acquisition teachers. The results for one research question (“What is the relationship between learners’ passive and active vocabularies and their reading comprehension ability?”) indicate that active vocabulary is more highly correlated with reading comprehension than passive vocabulary. Hamada, M., & Koda, K. (2008). Influence of first language orthographic experience on second language decoding and word learning. Language Learning, 58, 1–31. With native Korean and Chinese speakers learning English, the authors conducted two experiments to examine the influence of L1 orthographic experience on both L2 decoding and word learning. The findings of the first experiment demonstrated that L1 orthographic background does affect L2 decoding efficiency, and consequently the second experiment examined whether L2 decoding efficiency positively impacts learning and retention of newly introduced L2 words. The authors offer a detailed and highly exhaustive literature review. Overall results suggested that print processing experiences in both L1 and L2 jointly form decoding skills and that decoding efficiency enhances intentional word learning in the L2 (p. 24). In conclusion, the authors offer connections between findings and practical implications for decoding and word learning. Min, H.-T. (2008). EFL vocabulary acquisition and retention: Reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities and narrow reading. Language Learning, 58, 73–115. The aim of this study was to determine the effects of reading plus vocabulary-enhancement (RV) activities on English as a foreign language (EFL) learners’ vocabulary acquisition and long-term Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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retention. The participants, 50 male Chinese EFL speakers at a senior high school in Taiwan, were divided into two groups: One received instruction using RV methodology, and the other was instructed using narrow reading (NR). The researcher concludes that the more effective and efficient approach for the EFL teacher who wants to enhance students’ receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition and long-term retention is to teach reading plus focused vocabulary exercises. Metacognition Lawrence, L. J. (2007). Cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies revisited: Implications for instruction. The Reading Matrix, 7(3), 55–63. This article reviews research on cognitive and metacognitive reading strategies. The author includes a table that outlines prior research on reading strategies of bilingual students and describes the populations studied as well as results. The synthesis of studies includes elementary grade students as well as university level students. A detailed discussion of each reviewed investigation is offered. The author’s examination of prior research emphasizes the differences between cognitive and metacognitive strategies with investigations that utilized both monolingual and bilingual participants. Finally, specific approaches to strategy instruction are detailed. Practical Implications (Methods and Materials) Avalos, M. A., Plasencia A., Chavez, C., & Rascón, J. (2007). Modified guided reading: Gateway to English as a second language and literacy learning. The Reading Teacher, 61, 318–329. The authors assert that by modifying the guided-reading instructional model, teachers can provide additional language-learning opportunities for English-language learners (ELLs). They outline the theoretical framework for modified guided reading (MGR), describe its components, present a sample lesson, and reveal the results of a small sample study. The modifications focus on clarifying features of the text, such as difficult vocabulary, figurative language, complex syntax, and culturally specific information, which native speakers may implicitly understand but could cause difficulty for ELLs. The authors maintain that each time they have implemented MGR in their classrooms, their students have achieved reading gains. Gibson, S. (2008). Reading aloud: A useful learning tool? ELT Journal, 62, 29–36. The author challenges prior assertions that reading aloud (RA) is not an effective practice. She begins the article with a review of arguments that oppose reading aloud in classrooms, and then balances the assertions with benefits of using RA. She includes details of how to effectively use RA for diagnostic purposes, pronunciation, prosody, anxiety, and writing. She then offers a detailed description of RA as it is effectively used with ESL students from various countries. The author concludes with a strong statement about how instructors should reconsider the negative perceptions of RA in the classroom.

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Kalia, V. (2007). Assessing the role of book reading practices in Indian bilingual children’s English language and literacy development. Early Childhood Education Journal, 35, 149– 153. With 24 bilingual children from schools in Bangalore, India, the study examines the roles of Indian bilingual parents’ book reading practices and associates these practices to the development of oral language and literacy skills in English. Findings revealed correlational links among oral language skills (complex syntax and narrative complexity) and exposure to book reading. Findings also indicated positive associations between concepts about print and exposure to book reading. This investigation holds important practical implications for both preschool teachers and parents in India. Memom, R., & Badger, R. (2007). Purposeful change? Changing the teaching of reading in a regional university in Pakistan. System, 35, 551–565. This article details the changes and outcomes for a new way of teaching reading in a regional university of Pakistan. The article explains what happens in the traditional classroom, and also what takes place in the classroom according to the innovative strategies approach (Bamford & Day, 1998). Results show that, with the strategies approach, the reading courses are more sophisticated in their structure as they allow students to approach and interact with the reading materials in different ways. Also, in this new approach, the instructor serves as a facilitator of activities, which contrast the traditional, teacher-centered approach to reading. In the end, the new style supports reading, but the authors discuss the limitation—a lack of evidence for improved reading skills. Future research could address this issue. Ranker, J. (2007). Using comic books as read-alouds: Insights on reading instruction from an English as a second language classroom. The Reading Teacher, 61, 296–305. In this article Ranker details three lessons in which a teacher uses comic books as read-aloud texts in her first-grade ESL classroom. In the first lesson, the teacher uses a Spider-Man comic to teach students to recognize a central problem and resolution in narrative structure. In the second, Hulk and Wild Girl help the students become aware of the gendered representations of the characters and help the teacher incorporate critical media literacy into her reading curriculum. In the final lesson, the teacher creates her own comic and instructs the students in distinguishing between narration and dialogue. Tilfarlioglu, F. Y., & Basaran, S. (2007). Enhancing reading comprehension through task-based writing activities: An experimental study. The Reading Matrix, 7(3), 134–152. In this experimental study, the authors’ goal was to provide evidence that task-based writing activities positively affect reading comprehension for students of English as a foreign language. The study included two groups of 28 students in their 1st year at a university in Turkey. The control group was taught using only traditional methods while the experimental group received additional task-based instruction. The results show significant gains in reading comprehension for the experimental group, thus providing a theoretical validation for those who advocate the use of task-based learning in the foreign language classroom. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Tran, A. (2007). A learning-center vocabulary-reading activity for English-language learners. The Clearing House, 81(2), 61–62. In this brief article, Tran suggests a reading activity for English-language learners that proposes to maximize the use of class time and encourage students to take responsibility for their own learning. The activity combines vocabulary learning, cooperative learning, and extensive reading. Reading and Technology Absalom, M., & Rizzi, A. (2008). Comparing the outcomes of online listening versus online textbased tasks in university level Italian L2 study. ReCall, 20(1), 55–66. In this exploratory study, the authors compare the results of online listening and online textbased tasks and conclude that the former encourage an integrative and deep approach to learning, while the latter promote a surface approach to learning. Fourteen students of Italian were divided into two groups with different tasks: a listening group and a text-based group. The listening group became engaged with the topics and language and applied a variety of learning strategies to the task; however, the text-based group tended to treat the text superficially, skimming for answers and often misunderstanding the text. The authors readily admit that the small sample is a major limitation of their study and make a case for additional research to further scrutinize the cross-modality effects of online listening. Cobb, T. (2007). Computing the vocabulary demands of L2 reading. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 38–63. The author provides a strong case for the contributions of linguistic computing to L2 reading instruction. He makes the following claim grounded in data-driven evidence: Free or wide reading alone is not a sufficient source of lexical knowledge for L2 reading. The author offers solutions to this issue with suggestions for computer processing that links and increases the supply of vocabulary input that is available to the learner. Cobb offers detailed descriptions of instructional implications for the use of both books and computers in the teaching of L2 reading. He provides detailed examples of how to link texts to speech, use a group lexical database, and incorporate postreading vocabulary activities. Cobb, T. (2008). Commentary: Response to McQuillan and Krashen (2008). Language Learning & Technology, 12, 109–114. In this article Cobb responds to the critique by McQuillan and Krashen of his 2007 article cited above. His primary disagreement with his critics is that the reading rate research they cite in their article is inappropriately applied to the circumstances described by Cobb. His original statements relate to ESL and EFL students, in their 1st years at an English-speaking university, who need to reach a 3,000-level vocabulary in order to facilitate their education. Dissimilarly, the numbers provided by McQuillan and Krashen are taken from studies of participant groups with significant prior experience in Canada or the United States, or from studies whose texts are considerably below the 3,000 word level. Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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Huang, H. -T., & Liou, H. -C. (2007). Vocabulary learning in an automated graded reading program. Language Learning & Technology, 11(3), 64–82. With the intent of building vocabulary, the authors created a 12-week online English extensive reading program for a group of 38 Chinese-speaking EFL college students. They began with a corpus of 5,008 authentic texts dealing with issues in Taiwan and eventually limited the corpus to 16 texts, each with a minimum of 95% known word coverage. They developed a syllabus called Textgrader, which they used to sequence the texts from easiest to most difficult based on a series of research-based criteria and four word lists. The study shows measurable vocabulary learning for all 38 participants; however, the authors found a high level of reliance on reading habits and strategies learned in high school and associated with intensive reading. The authors determine that for constructive vocabulary acquisition the online extensive reading syllabus can effectively function as a link between explicit teaching and implicit learning. Lan, Y. -J., Sung, Y. -T., & Chang, K. -E. (2007). A mobile-device-supported peer-assisted learning system for collaborative early EFL reading. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 130–151. With 26 third-grade students of EFL in Taiwan, the present investigation included two different studies. The first study examined collaborative learning for EFL reading in a classroom. Results indicated serious flaws and weaknesses in this technique. The second study examined how a mobile-device-supported peer-assisted learning (MPAL) system was created and utilized in order to address the issues involved with collaborative learning. A very descriptive and detailed analysis revealed that MPAL does indeed enhance collaboration in elementary school level EFL readers, and MPAL also improves issues concerning motivation of the learners. Lin, H., & Chen, T. (2007). Reading authentic EFL text using visualization and advance organizers in a multimedia learning environment. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 83106. Driven by theories from cognitive psychology in support of the use of multimedia to facilitate L2 learners’ reading comprehension, the investigation examines the effects of advance organizers and visualizations on comprehension. With 115 intermediate EFL learners in Taiwan, findings indicated that animations are more effective than static visuals in only one of four tests. However, animation that included a question with an advance organizer had a marginal effect with four treatments for reading comprehension. The authors include a very detailed and useful description of how to include static visuals and dynamic visuals as represented via animation in order to improve L2 reading comprehension. McQuillan, J., & Krashen, S. D. (2008). Commentary: Can free reading take you all the way? A response to Cobb (2007). Language Learning & Technology, 12, 104–108. The authors examine and critique Cobb’s (2007) assertion that free reading does not provide sufficient opportunities for L2 readers to achieve high levels of lexical acquisition, and they point out the following two problems with this claim: (a) The amount of reading that Cobb Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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proposes as optimistic is the opposite, that is, it is “pessimistic” in the extreme; (b) free reading across different genres can give a reader the necessary vocabulary for adult-level fluency. The authors contend that Cobb’s data indeed show how powerful free reading can be, even at minimal levels. Murphy, P. (2007). Reading comprehension exercises online: The effects of feedback, proficiency and interaction. Language Learning & Technology, 11, 107–129. With Japanese students from upper and lower levels of English proficiency, the author describes an online version of a reading program that embraces an interactionist view of second language acquisition. Quantitative analysis revealed that interaction between type of feedback and manner of study (either individual or pair work) was significant for comprehension as assessed via multiple choice questions. Learners achieved higher scores on a comprehension task when in pairs and when provided with elaborative feedback. Additionally, findings showed that elaborative feedback positively effected quality interaction. The author provides detailed descriptions of elaborate feedback and manners of study. The Reading Process Erten, I. H., & Karakas, M. (2007). Understanding the divergent influences of reading activities on the comprehension of short stories. The Reading Matrix, 7(3), 113–133. This study reaffirms the necessity of using a variety of reading activities to promote the comprehension of a text by students of a foreign language. The researchers examined two types of reading comprehension, literal comprehension and evaluation, with two groups of 3rd-year university students in Turkey. One group made use of activities such as previewing, scanning, skimming, clarifying, and drawing conclusions, which led to a greater literal comprehension of the short story. The second group used activities such as brainstorming, reciprocal teaching, inferring, thinking aloud, and discussion, and scored significantly higher on evaluative comprehension. The authors state that the study should be considered tentative and limited in scope because it did not monitor variables that might have biased the results, yet they conclude that reading teachers must carefully and purposefully select reading activities according to their desired outcome. Testing and Assessment Fraser, C. A. (2007). Reading rate in L1 Mandarin Chinese and L2 English across five reading tasks. The Modern Language Journal, 91, 372–394. With native Chinese speakers learning English, this investigation examined a phenomenon not yet widely examined in L2 reading: L1 and L2 reading rates and task performance across five tasks (scanning, skimming, normal reading, learning, memorizing). Through a thorough and detailed literature review, the author offers compelling support from past L1 and L2 research as motivation for the current study. Findings indicate some decrease in L2 scores on three tasks (scanning, skimming, memorizing) and on all L1 tasks. Additionally, results showed that L2 proficiency was not a predictor of L2 reading rate but was a predictor of L2 performance on two Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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tasks (learning, memorizing). The author provides strong support for future studies of this nature. Dissertations Treating L2 Reading Ballard, T. Y. (2007). The effect of audio self-modeling on the reading fluency, comprehension, vocabulary and reading level of first and second grade students who are at-risk in reading. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 68, 929. Goodman, N. E. (2007). Word-reading strategies: English-speaking first graders learning Hebrew as a second language. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 68, 931. Lee, C. N. (2007). Supporting English learning in the family: An ethnographic case study of a young Korean-English learner. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section C: Worldwide. 68, 20–21. Lowdermilk, C. (2007). The impact of language acquisition on second language reading fluency. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 68, 1386. Yoshida, M. (2007). The effects of task, text, and proficiency on second language reading. Dissertation Abstracts International, Section A: The Humanities and Social Sciences. 68, 869. About the Editors Cindy Brantmeier is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics and Spanish at Washington University in St. Louis. She is Director of the proposed Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics, Co-Director of the Graduate Certificate in Language Instruction, Director of Teacher Training, and Director of the Undergraduate Program in Applied Linguistics. She also oversees the technology-based exams for language program assessment and placement. Dr. Brantmeier has published articles concerning interacting variables in adult second language reading, language research methodology, testing and assessment, and other related areas in journals such as The Modern Language Journal, System, Foreign Language Annals, and Reading in a Foreign Language among others. She is also Editor of several volumes and a book on adult foreign language reading. Tracy Van Bishop is Lecturer in Spanish and Applied Linguistics at Washington University in St. Louis, where he teaches both language level courses in Spanish as well as graduate courses in Applied Linguistics. He is Coordinator of Advanced Spanish Grammar and Composition II and oversees summer placement of incoming Spanish students. Dr. Bishop has published works on the Baladro del sabio Merlín, and his recent research involves computer assisted textual analysis and foreign language pedagogy, particularly the teaching of reading strategies. Dr. Bishop has also been Assistant Professor and Coordinator of Language Instruction at Hofstra University where he directed and supervised all aspects of elementary and intermediate Spanish language instruction and created and administered the Spanish proficiency exam for Secondary Education Reading in a Foreign Language 20(2)

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majors. Additionally, he was Language Lecturer and Coordinator of Intensive Spanish Courses at NYU where he taught courses in language, literature, and Spanish culture. RFL readers are encouraged to send to Dr. Brantmeier titles of appropriate articles. Please include all relevant information (e.g., author[s], journal, date of publication) and, if possible, a brief summary. Send to: [email protected]

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