Dataset Information

The Role of Repeated Exposure to Multimodal Input in Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary.

ABSTRACT: Prior research has reported incidental vocabulary acquisition with complete beginners in a foreign language (FL), within 8 exposures to auditory and written FL word forms presented with a picture depicting their meaning. However, important questions remain about whether acquisition occurs with fewer exposures to FL words in a multimodal situation and whether there is a repeated exposure effect. Here we report a study where the number of exposures to FL words in an incidental learning phase varied between 2, 4, 6, and 8 exposures. Following the incidental learning phase, participants completed an explicit learning task where they learned to recognize written translation equivalents of auditory FL word forms, half of which had occurred in the incidental learning phase. The results showed that participants performed better on the words they had previously been exposed to, and that this incidental learning effect occurred from as little as 2 exposures to the multimodal stimuli. In addition, repeated exposure to the stimuli was found to have a larger impact on learning during the first few exposures and decrease thereafter, suggesting that the effects of repeated exposure on vocabulary acquisition are not necessarily constant.

SUBMITTER: Bisson MJ

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4277705 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Dec

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

ACCESS DATA

Publications

The Role of Repeated Exposure to Multimodal Input in Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary.

Bisson Marie-Josée MJ van Heuven Walter J B WJ Conklin Kathy K Tunney Richard J RJ

Language learning 20141015 4

Prior research has reported incidental vocabulary acquisition with complete beginners in a foreign language (FL), within 8 exposures to auditory and written FL word forms presented with a picture depicting their meaning. However, important questions remain about whether acquisition occurs with fewer exposures to FL words in a multimodal situation and whether there is a repeated exposure effect. Here we report a study where the number of exposures to FL words in an incidental learning phase varie ...[more]

PMID: 25558094

Similar Datasets

Project description:Some proponents of higher education English as a medium of instruction (EMI) have suggested listening to English lectures provides students the opportunity to incidentally acquire unknown words. A case study was designed to examine this assumption. First, the lexical profiles of 27 Introduction to English Language Teaching first-year undergraduate course lectures were computed to determine how many words students need to know for comprehension. Then an incoming year-1 undergraduate student with an English vocabulary size of 7,500 word families and mastery of the most frequent 3,000 word families listened to these lectures across 13.5 weeks with the purpose of measuring incidental acquisition gains of three aspects of word knowledge for ten targeted words. Lastly, the student's perceptions about listening to EMI lectures and potentials for this listening inducing incidental acquisition of word knowledge were gathered through a semi-structured interview. The lexical profiling of the entire corpus showed students need knowledge of the most frequent 4,000 English word families plus proper nouns and marginal words for 98% lexical coverage; however, some lectures present students with a more substantial lexical burden than the lectures overall. The student made the most gains in receptive meaning, followed by receptive form, and finally productive meaning. Content analysis of the interview transcript found seven themes representing the student's perception about listening to EMI lectures and their potential for inducing incidental vocabulary acquisition. While the student found listening to the EMI lectures challenging, he perceived the process as useful in preparing for university studies and a career as a secondary English teacher. The student perceived attention, topic, existing vocabulary knowledge, lecturer's native language, and lack of interaction with the lecturer to have moderated incidental learning of vocabulary through listening to English lectures. These results indicate a need to confirm whether incoming students' vocabulary knowledge meet the lexical demands of the EMI lectures given in the Macau context. Furthermore, pedagogical training on teacher talk strategies and orientation training for incoming students should both be provided to ensure students are receiving high quality instruction.

Project description:IntroductionUniversities in non-Anglophone countries are increasingly implementing English as the medium of instruction (EMI) lectures. There seems to be an assumption that students' performance on standardized English examinations can be equated with the lexical knowledge needed to comprehend EMI lectures regardless of discipline. For unknown words students encounter, it is assumed that they can be picked up through listening to these lectures. This potential for students to acquire unknown words incidentally while listening to these lectures has yet to be fully explored.MethodsThis study addresses the potential of students incidentally acquiring vocabulary from listening to EMI lectures through corpus analyses of computer science lectures at one public university in Macau. Taking into consideration frequency, range, and lecturer explanation, corpus analyses of the transcripts of 28 computer science lectures (40 h 36 min) were conducted to determine the lexical knowledge needed for students to comprehend the lectures. The potential number of words these students could acquire through listening to the lectures was also uncovered through further analyses.ResultsResults showed that L2 students need to have receptive knowledge of the most frequent 3,000 word families plus proper nouns and marginal words to reach beyond 95% lexical coverage. To reach 98% lexical coverage, 5,000 word families are needed. Considering frequency, range, and teacher explanation, we concluded that 30 new words could reasonably be incidentally acquired after listening to the 28 lectures.DiscussionThese results indicate a need for EMI lecturers to consider the lexical knowledge of students and whether additional pedagogical techniques (i.e., vocabulary explanation) should be employed in content classrooms when lectures are delivered in English, especially for specialized fields such as computer science. Our results also draw attention to the importance of field specific vocabulary and the potential pitfalls of using blanket English language admissions criteria when admitting students to different academic programs.

Dataset Information

The Role of Repeated Exposure to Multimodal Input in Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary.

Publications

The Role of Repeated Exposure to Multimodal Input in Incidental Acquisition of Foreign Language Vocabulary.

Similar Datasets

OmicsDI is part of the ELIXIR infrastructure

Tweets