There has been a great deal of interest in second language vocabulary studies regarding the potential of reading as a source of incidental vocabulary learning. More recently, several studies have also focused on comparing reading with other input modes, such as listening, or reading-while-listening. Among these studies there are two -- Brown et…

Purpose: Cross-situational statistical learning is one mechanism by which typically developing toddlers map words to referents. Yet, this type of statistical learning has been found less efficient in children with developmental language disorder (DLD). The purpose of this article is to evaluate cross-situational statistical learning in very young…

To identify effective methods for boosting incidental vocabulary learning, this study examines the impacts of two tools--bimodal presentation (BP) and lexical elaboration (LE)--on vocabulary acquisition through repeated encounters with target words during meaning-focused reading. In a quiet and comfortable place conducive to full concentration on…

Vocabulary is an important foundation for reading skills. Dual-route cascaded model believes that when form-sound correspondence is irregular, phonetic decoding is a necessary but not sufficient condition for word acquisition. Lexical access in syllabic scripts involves a morphological-phonetic-semantic approach, where phonological decoding is…

With only about a third of students in US public schools achieving the NAEP Proficient level, many educators believe students are not getting enough reading practice. However, how much reading practice is enough? This study quantifies the relationship between the amount of book reading and the expected number of words learned. We collected 45…

Incidental acquisition of vocabulary has been extensively studied by many researchers through various media, such as employing reading comprehension. However, there is a dearth of studies that focus on the contribution of listening to the incidental acquisition of vocabulary. The current study aims to fill this gap. This study explored the effect…

Knowledge of academic words, academic formulas and general formulas is essential for second language learners, but resources for incidental learning of these lexical items are very limited, especially in English as a Foreign Language contexts. This study employed a corpus-driven approach to examine the potential of online news for incidental…

This paper investigates the effects of watching an entire season of a French series with the streaming service Netflix in an out-of-classroom context. University Dutch-speaking low- to high-intermediate learners of French were divided into two groups: a control group who only took the tests (N = 37) and a treatment group (N = 65). Learners in the…

Second language (L2) grammar learning is difficult. Two frameworks--the psycholinguistic lexical bottleneck hypothesis and the neurocognitive declarative/procedural model--predict that faster L2 lexical processing should facilitate L2 incidental grammar learning. We tested these predictions in a pretest-posttest syntactic adaptation study of…

This longitudinal mixed-method study investigated effects of the reading-while-listening mode on the incidental learning of two dimensions of vocabulary knowledge, namely receptive knowledge and productive knowledge, in a Chinese EFL classroom context. Additionally, EFL learners' attitudes toward the reading-while-listening mode of incidental…

Retrieval practice of isolated words (e.g., with flashcards) enhances foreign vocabulary learning. However, vocabulary is often encountered in context. We investigated whether retrieval opportunities also enhance contextualized word learning. In two within-subjects experiments, participants encoded 24 foreign words and then read a story to further…

Learning vocabulary is a central but yet complex aspect of learning a language. Hence, researchers stress the importance of facilitating vocabulary development via a structured approach to target words and recycling. While teaching materials have the potential to provide this structure to all students in a classroom, few studies have investigated…

This multisite study replicates Webb, Newton, and Chang's (2013) study on the effect of repetition on incidental learning of multiword units (MWUs). Even though more researchers have started to investigate MWUs, most data have been collected from university students. Furthermore, the large effect of MWU repetition on learning reported by Webb…

Aim: From the perspective of cognitive load theory, the present study examined the relative effectiveness of the sequential use of L1 and bilingual subtitles on incidental English vocabulary learning. Methods: A total of 162 upper-intermediate Chinese learners of English as a foreign language watched an English clip in one of 4 subtitling…

One of the major challenges for any L2 teacher is to integrate vocabulary components into a course. Determining what words to select in order to satisfy the goals of the course and what instructional methodology best suits the purpose of vocabulary learning are not easy tasks. Even more difficult is dealing with the formulaic terminology of a…