Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language

Abstract

It is widely agreed that much second language vocabulary learning occurs incidentally while the learner is engaged in extensive reading. After a decade of intensive research, however, the incidental learning of vocabulary is still not fully understood, and many questions remain unsettled. Key unresolved issues include the actual mechanism of incidental acquisition, the type and size of vocabulary needed for accurate guessing, the degree of exposure to a word needed for successful acquisition, the efficacy of different word-guessing strategies, the value of teaching explicit guessing strategies, the influence of different kinds of reading texts, the effects of input modification, and, more generally, the problems with incidental learning. This article briefly surveys the empirical research that has been done on these issues in recent years.

Comparing the Effects of L1 and L2 Definition on Incidental Vocabulary Learning through Listening to Stories

“…therefore, encouraging learners to read and listen extensively can provide them with great opportunities and ample input the is necessary for vocabulary learning. According to Huckin and Coady (1999) except for the first few thousand most common words, L2 vocabulary learning predominantly happens through extensive reading with guessing of the unknown words. This process is incidental learning of vocabulary for the acquisition of new words and is the by-product of reading.…”

Teaching and Learning Vocabulary through Reading as a Social Practice in Saudi Universities

“…Qian, 1996;File & Adams, 2010), using L1 and L2 in teaching vocabulary (e.g. Latsanyphone & Bouangeune, 2009;Webb, 2007), and teaching vocabulary through reading (e.g. Paribakht & Wesche, 1997;Sonbul & Schmitt, 2010).…”

“…Reading plays a key role in increasing learners' vocabulary, and that is according to comparisons of large corpora which showed that written texts are richer in lexis than spoken ones (Horst, 2005). It has been suggested that two activities (vocabulary learning and reading) occurring simultaneously create a 'pedagogically efficient' approach (Huckin & Coady, 1999), which could help learners achieve autonomy, motivation and pleasure to learn, while also providing them with vocabulary in context (Thornbury, 2002).…”

The Effects of Context Richness and Different Task-demands on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention

“…However, according to Huckin (1999), the simple extensive reading for meaning does not lead automatically to the acquisition of vocabulary. Since incidental acquisition is a complex psychological process, there are kinds of factors that can influence the effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition to different extent, such as the individual's English reading proficiency, the topic of reading materials, the frequency of the target words in reading, reading purposes, the vocabulary size, students' ability of guessing words, different reading tasks and different context, etc.…”