Frequency in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Research: An Undefined Concept and Some Consequences

Reynolds, Barry Lee; Wible, David

doi:10.1002/tesq.197

Cited by 37 publications

(27 citation statements)

References 15 publications

(22 reference statements)

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“…In the present study, the frequency of exposure to the new words was controlled to one occurrence. Since we know from previous research that one exposure is generally regarded as “insufficient” for incidental word learning in most cases [7, 9, 10, 12, 15, 69, 70]), but participants in the current study might have discussed the target words thereby increasing exposure. This lends credibility to the argument that metacognitive prompts training could be effective in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…However, the alternative—direct teaching of vocabulary—may be problematic because many teachers may not know where to begin to help learners independently engage in word learning [11]. Moreover, most incidental vocabulary learning studies that show such negligible gains in vocabulary knowledge are those that do not provide learners any instruction other than telling learners to read [12]. While pioneering studies were aimed confirming a hypothesis that incidental learning through reading was possible for L2 learners the same as first language speakers [13, 14]), in recent years the field has begun asking more nuanced pedagogically-oriented critical questions [15].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Effects of individual and group metacognitive prompts on EFL reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning

Teng

Reynolds²

2019

PLoS ONE

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Recent research has highlighted the value of providing metacognitive guidance for learning English in a small group setting. This study investigated the effects that the presence or absence of metacognitive prompts for group or individual learning could have on reading comprehension and the incidental learning of vocabulary through reading. A total of 171 university students were randomly assigned to four treatment conditions: collaborative learning with metacognitive prompts, collaborative learning without metacognitive prompts, individual learning with metacognitive prompts, and individual learning without metacognitive prompts. Results indicated that after the treatment, learners in the collaborative learning with metacognitive prompts group outperformed the other groups on both reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning assessments. In addition, the vocabulary knowledge acquired by students in the collaborative learning with metacognitive prompts group was highest for meaning recognition, followed by form recognition, meaning recall, and finally form recall. These findings highlight the importance of training students’ self-regulated learning and suggest that the use of metacognitive prompts in a group setting is an effective means to boost EFL reading comprehension and the incidental vocabulary learning for Chinese university students. Pedagogical implications of these and other nuanced findings are discussed.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Effects of individual and group metacognitive prompts on EFL reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning

Teng

Reynolds²

2019

PLoS ONE

Self Cite

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“…Some applied linguistics studies operationalised word frequency (also) as the frequency of occurrence of a word in a learner's classroom input or instruction materials (e.g., Demetriou 2017;Vidal 2003) and in the input they receive from other sources (e.g., reading outside the classroom, watching videos) (e.g., Horst et al 1998;Peters and Webb 2018) because a frequent word in a native speaker corpus is not necessarily encountered frequently by a foreign language learner. Although both studies using a corpus-based and those using an L2-input based definition of word frequency vary in whether word frequency is that of a word form (whereby the frequencies of distinct word forms, such as learn and learns, will be counted separately), lemma (whereby the frequencies of the root form and of all its inflected forms will be added up), or word family (whereby the frequencies of the root form, all its inflected forms and any derived forms will be added up), most studies indicate that the more frequent a word is, the more likely it is to be learned (Reynolds and Wible 2014). Studies which do not suggest a positive relationship between lexical frequency and lexical learning (e.g., Macis and Schmitt 2017; Pellicer-Sánchez 2017; Szudarski and Carter 2016) indicate that vocabulary learning is the result of the interplay of various factors, some of which may override or moderate the role of lexical frequency.…”

Section: The Role Of Word Frequency In English Vocabulary Learningmentioning

confidence: 99%

Spanish L1 EFL learners’ recognition knowledge of English academic vocabulary: The role of cognateness, word frequency and length

Urdaniz

Skoufaki

2019

Applied Linguistics Review

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Academic vocabulary knowledge predicts students’ academic achievement across educational levels. English academic vocabulary knowledge is especially valuable because English is used in academia worldwide. Therefore, examining the factors that can predict English academic vocabulary knowledge can inform pedagogy, thus indirectly boosting students’ chances of academic success around the world. This study examines the extent to which cognateness, word frequency and length predict the ability of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners who have Spanish as their first language (L1) to recognise written English academic words. 38 Spanish L1 university students’ recognition knowledge of English cognates was measured via a Yes/No test containing words sampled from the most frequent 1,000 lemmas of the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner and Davies 2014). 34 participants’ data were retained in the final analysis, a multiple regression with item facility (IF) as the outcome variable and word frequency, cognateness and word length as predictors. Most of the IF variance is explained by word frequency, followed by cognateness and finally a frequency by cognateness interaction whereby word frequency is more predictive of IF for non-cognates than cognates. These findings indicate that academic cognate-word awareness raising activities can be worthwhile. Implications for research and pedagogy are discussed.

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“…The difference in word difficulty between the target and nontarget words was investigated by measuring word frequency and word length (Willis & Ohashi, 2012). Word frequency was operationalized as the lemma frequency in the British National Corpus (Ellis, 2002(Ellis, , 2012Reynolds & Wible, 2014). Using an independent samples' t test, it was confirmed that there was no significant difference in word frequency between the target and nontarget words, t(158) ¼ .901, p ¼ .369.…”

Section: Vocabulary Testsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This organizational format could help them look up the words more quickly. In addition, the organizational format could be dependent on the frequency of recurrences of the same word presented in the e-learning context (Reynolds & Wible, 2014). Instruction in this format first showed the students how to find the lemma and word family of a target word in dictionaries.…”

Section: Organizational Formats For Making a Vocabulary Notebookmentioning

confidence: 99%

Facilitating Vocabulary Note Taking on Computers Through the Deep Processing Strategy

Liu

Huang

Chien

2017

Journal of Educational Computing Research

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The recording of words in a vocabulary notebook is regarded as a plausible and efficient method for learners, since they can organize and manage the individual words they wish to acquire. The wide appeal of portable computers has resulted in a rapid increase in taking notes via computers across college campuses. Although computers can increase transcription speed when students take notes, they are also detrimental to learning, because students tend to mindlessly transcribe results, resulting in shallow processing. To resolve the issue, in this study, an associationbased strategy is introduced to assist learners in compiling vocabulary notebooks. To assess the strategy, an experiment was conducted to investigate the effects of the proposed nonlinear associations note-taking method with respect to the traditional linear outline method. The results show that both strategies could increase vocabulary retention; however, the associations format was significantly better than the outline format. In addition, through a deep analysis of both types of note-taking processes, we also found that students using the associations note-taking method developed more meaningful word association styles (e.g., linking words that had similar contexts) in composing their notes than students using the outline notetaking method. When examining how learners with different cognitive styles took the notes, the results showed that learner performance depends on cognitive style,

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Frequency in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Research: An Undefined Concept and Some Consequences

Cited by 37 publications

References 15 publications

Effects of individual and group metacognitive prompts on EFL reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning

Effects of individual and group metacognitive prompts on EFL reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary learning

Spanish L1 EFL learners’ recognition knowledge of English academic vocabulary: The role of cognateness, word frequency and length

Facilitating Vocabulary Note Taking on Computers Through the Deep Processing Strategy

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