This study compares the relative effectiveness of reading and writing sentences for the incidental acquisition of new vocabulary in a second language. It also examines if recall varies according to the concreteness of target words. Participants were 203 French-speaking intermediate and advanced English as second language (ESL) learners, tested for incidental acquisition of 16 rare concrete, or abstract L2 words. Immediate and delayed cued recall was used to assess acquisition. Results from immediate recall show superior recall for writing tasks over reading tasks, and for concrete words over abstract words. However, delayed recall scores suggest that this superiority disappears over time.Given its implications for teaching, a subject that has sparked interest is the comparative effectiveness of reading 1 and writing in the acquisition and retention of words in a second language (L2). Opinions differ regarding which individual activity is more likely to promote the retention of a new word by the learner: Is it reading a word in context or writing that word in a sentence? Unlike reading, which offers external input, writing is a language generating task, thus it does not allow for encountering new words. Therefore, the question of the relative efficiency of reading versus writing must be addressed regarding new words recently encountered by-or presented to-the L2 learner.

No abstract

Nous décrivons dans cet article les étapes d’élaboration et de validation de trois échelles de mesure, soit les attitudes envers la lecture en français langue première (L1), la motivation à lire en anglais langue seconde (L2) et l’anxiété à devoir lire en L2. À dessein d’en vérifier la validité, ces échelles ont été administrées à 102 universitaires. Ces participants ont aussi complété des mesures de compétence en lecture. La fidélité temporelle a été testée au moyen de la méthode test-retest auprès d’un autre groupe de 83 universitaires. Les résultats permettent d’avancer que ces instruments possèdent des qualités psychométriques satisfaisantes. D’autres analyses montrent que les variables étudiées sont corrélées avec une mesure de compréhension en lecture, en L1 et en L2. Des implications en lien avec l’acte de lire sont évoquées, notamment en ce qui touche l’apprentissage via Internet qui, sans contredit, commande la lecture.

Abstract English teachers use the Sentence Verification Technique (Royer et al., 1979) to determine the readability of written material for their classes. This process requires students to read short passages from a book, followed by isolated sentences. These sentences can be either identical or different from the original passages, in their meaning as well as in their form. For each sentence, students must indicate whether or not its content corresponds to that of the original passage. This paper reports on the design and assessment of an SVT test created for measuring reading comprehension ability, based on four English texts. The instrument was administered to 171 adult English learners, of various levels of English proficiency. The data were analyzed using both traditional psychometric methods and the Rasch model. Results indicate that the test shows high internal consistency, that it respects the basic assumptions behind the Rasch model, and that it is in the recommended range of difficulty for that technique.