The process of learning to read is more difficult for English language learners (ELLs) because they are often learning a new language as they are trying to learn to read. Learning irregular/high-frequency words (sight words) may be especially challenging for ELL students. Limited research exists on the effects of interventions designed to help ELL…

This study analyzes four English synonyms -- clear, obvious, apparent, and evident -- concentrating on meanings, distribution across genre, collocations, and semantic preference and prosody. The data were drawn from learner's dictionaries and the Corpus of the Contemporary American English (COCA). It was discovered that the four synonyms share the…

It is widely perceived that vocabulary learning is essential in second and foreign language acquisition. Vocabulary learning beliefs (VLB) and vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) are factors that affect both second language acquisition (SLA) and first language acquisition (FLA). This study investigated the vocabulary learning beliefs and…

Narrow reading has the potential to reduce vocabulary load and to provide rich opportunities for developing collocation knowledge, but these benefits rely on narrow reading increasing lexical repetition within a text. Hence, interest in narrow reading has been limited by the relatively small lexical effect of narrowing reading by topic (Nation,…

This study aimed to examine incidental learning of multiword expressions (MWEs) from bilingual captioned videos among language minority students. The participants consisted of 403 language minority university students enrolled in the Preparatory Year Programme (PYP) in the Southern part of China. The study evaluated participants' vocabulary…

Knowledge of multi-word units (MWUs) helps facilitate communicative fluency, and research on them has gained more and more attention in recent years concerning teaching methods and designing materials for second language (L2) acquisition. Incidental and intentional vocabulary learning are two dominant approaches to acquiring MWUs. In lexical…

This study shed light on the effects of four modes of vocabulary instruction, i.e., extended audio glossing, lexical inferencing, lexical translation, and frequency manipulation of input on the learning of lexical collocations by Iranian intermediate EFL learners. In so doing, 80 L1 Persian EFL students were divided into four 20-participant…

There has been little research investigating how mode of input affects incidental vocabulary learning, and no study examining how it affects the learning of multiword items. The aim of this study was to investigate incidental learning of L2 collocations in three different modes: reading, listening, and reading while listening. One hundred…

Emergentist, usage-based L2 research has witnessed that emphasizing formulaic sequences as entry points in meaning-based instructional contexts contributes to the development of linguistic comprehension and production. Related studies have thus far striven to find the most effective methods of highlighting these word strings. This study explored…

The present study explores lexical collocations and their relation to speaking proficiency of Taiwanese EFL college students learning English for academic purposes (i.e., EAP). The data is obtained from 92 English majors at a national university of science and technology in southern Taiwan. The results show that: (a) direct collocation instruction…

This study examines the effects of monologic and dialogic task sequences on incidental vocabulary learning among 115 students in four intact classes of a Chinese vocational high school. Twenty vocabulary items including words, phrases and fixed expressions ranging from high to low frequency levels were targeted. Students were required to complete…

Lexical meaning, as an important and essential aspect of the word, has long attracted the attention of scholars, who, in trying to know its nature, have sometimes mystified it by seeing it as an inexplicable thing and sometimes simplified it, equating it with the function of the word, with the concept, even with the "reali" itself that…

This research was prompted by the phenomenon of binge-watching Korean television series (K-drama) amongst college students in Taiwan, where English as a foreign language (EFL) is a required course. The researcher-teacher sought to create a pedagogically useful list of the frequent semantically non-compositional multi-word expressions (MWEs) for…

Knowledge of vocabulary is essential for learners of any language, and unfortunately, it has become clear recently the learners of English in a variety of contexts have not scored well on vocabulary tests. Low scores are problematic for language use and success in general, but they cause particular problems when it comes to the vocabulary needed…

Over the past two decades, the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) has become a popular buzzword in the field of Second Language Acquisition (SLA). Although applications of the ILH can improve students' learning of productive vocabulary, this effect appears to be transitory. Students' learning of productive vocabulary often fades over time, as shown…