While the study of serious games has received due attention, few studies have investigated their potentials of simultaneously offering a route to both content and language acquisition. Understanding the interdisciplinary educational affordance of serious game play is significant, as it might provide game designers and teachers with insight into…

This study measures the threshold level of depth of word knowledge in L2 incidental learning and reading comprehension. I administered the Word Associates Test (WAT; Read, 2004) to measure depth of word knowledge. Based on participants' scores on the WAT, they were divided into three proficiency groups: high proficiency (HP), intermediate…

As increasing numbers of foreign language programs have employed multimedia into their curricula, the importance of ways and means to optimize the students' language learning through multimedia has been emphasized. While multimedia with on-screen text in the target language is extensively adopted by foreign language learners, there is no study of…

One of the more rapidly advancing subfields of second language acquisition research is Digital-game based language learning (DGBLL) and many studies have found that Commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) games can have a positive effect on vocabulary acquisition. COTS games are specifically made for entertainment purposes, while serious games, which…

An emerging body of research examines language learning of young children from experiences with digital storybooks, but little is known about the ways in which specific components of digital storybooks, including interactive elements, may influence language learning. The purpose of the study was to examine the incidental word learning and story…

This study investigated vocabulary coverage and the number of encounters of low-frequency vocabulary in television programs. Eighty-eight television programs consisting of 264,384 running words were categorized according to genre. Television shows were classified as either British or American and then put into the following genres: news, drama,…

This experimental study evaluated the effectiveness of direct teaching of new vocabulary items in reading passages. The study compared vocabulary learning under a reading only condition (incidental learning) to learning that is aided by direct communication of word meanings (explicit learning). Three levels of vocabulary knowledge (form recall,…

This study was intended to determine whether or not the genre of a reading text affects the incidental vocabulary acquisition of L2 learners while reading. To this aim, 40 Iranian EFL students whose vocabulary knowledge was within a limited range (already determined by Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test) were divided into two groups of 20 each for…

This analysis evaluates the receptive tests of targeted lexical knowledge in the written medium, which are typically used in empirical research into lexical acquisition from reading foreign/second language texts. Apart from the types of second language cues or prompts, and the language of the responses, the main issues revolve around: (a) the…