Transcript Laufer: do learners acquire most vocabulary through reading?

Vocabulary Acquisition in a Second Language:
Do Learners Really Acquire Most Vocabulary by
Reading? Some Empirical Evidence
Batia Laufer
1.
Reading is the major source of vocabulary
acquisition in L2:
a. the ‘noticing’ assumption
b. the ‘guessing ability’ assumption
c. the ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption
d. the ‘cumulative gain’ assumption

Is reading indeed the main source of L2 vocabulary
growth, particularly in an instructed language learning
context?

Reading as much as possible in and outside the classroom.
1.The noticing assumption:

When encountering an unfamiliar word, the reader
notices it as a word s/he doesn’t know.
2. The ‘guessing ability ’ assumption:
When noticing an unfamiliar word
the learner decides
to infer or guess the meaning from context
3. The ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption:

having guessed a new word


the learner may
subsequently retain it
4. The ‘cumulative gain’ assumption:
Additional encounters with a word will
increase the probability of retaining it.
What is the optimal number of encounters
needed for retaining a word?
Counter Argument:
The noticing assumption:

Do L2 learners understand how much they don’t
understand?

L2 learners will not necessarily recognize or notice
unfamiliar words as unfamiliar or new.


Learners who understand the overall message of the text do
not need to pay attention to the precise meanings of individual
words.
learners’ unawareness of an unfamiliar word because it is
confused with another word.
 adapt adopt
 comprehensive comprehensible
 counsel council
 embrace embarrass
Counter Argument: the ‘guessing’ assumption:
Can L2 readers infer the meaning of unknown
words from context?
When the word is noticed as unfamiliar the reader
may try to infer the meaning from context…
Yet…

not all contexts provide clues.

some can be misleading.

sometimes clues are ignored

clues may appear in words which themselves are
unknown to the learner and therefore unusable
 The
ability to infer unfamiliar words
from context is
not the same for L1 and L2.
Counter argument: the ‘guessing-retention link’ assumption.
Do L2 learners retain the words they guess?

quick and easy guessing works against retention of the guessed
words.

No correlation between

correct guessing retention.

The more often a word is correctly guessed the less often it is
remembered.

“words guessed with some difficulty will be remembered
better since difficulty leads to processing effort …”

Words which can be guessed with ease, without
interfering with reading will indeed be guessed.

The problem is that most of them
will not be retained.
Counter argument: the ‘cumulative gain’ assumption
How much do learners need to ‘pick up’ a word?

When learning from context occurs, it is usually a
cumulative process.

10 exposures to a word are necessary before the learner
can recall or recognize the meaning of a word.

How much reading has to be done to ensure the 10
repetitions of the new vocabulary?

Is it realistic to expect L2 learners to read the necessary
amount of text?
For the cumulative effect to take place…
…it is not enough to see a new word 10 times. The word
should be encountered before it is forgotten.

Conditions need to be fulfilled when encountering.

Understanding 95%-98% of the text.

Noticing the new words 10 times.

Attempting to guess the words –successfully.

Then new words will have the chance to be
learnt after 10 exposures

Nation & Wang (1999)
Reading needs to be done at an
intensive rate of around one to two books per
week.

Can such a flood of reading be implemented in a
classroom context? …..(unrealistic)
What leads to higher vocabulary gains:
Reading or word-focused activities?

Saying that some vocabulary is clearly acquired
through reading, is not the same as saying “that
reading is the most effective method of vocabulary
learning.”

Several studies compared reading with additional
tasks to ‘incidental vocabulary acquisition.’
‘incidental vocabulary acquisition’ and
‘intentional vocabulary acquisition’

Incidental vocabulary acquisition – learning words
‘by the way,’ rather than through a specific vocabulary
learning task.

Intentional acquisition – A vocabulary activity that
deliberately aims at lexical items being stored in
memory. (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001 and Hulstijn 2001.)
Report on studies
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Paribakht and Wensche (1997) ‘Reading plus’ and ‘reading only’ conditions.
‘Reading plus’ learners ‘acquired significantly more words.’

Luppescu and Day (1993) – Students who used dictionaries while reading
remembered new words better than those who did not use one at all.

Knight (1994) Compared students who read a given text using an
electronic dictionary to look up new words to those who read the same
text without and ‘tried to guess some words from context.’ The students
with the dictionaries learnt more words.
Studies contd….

Laufer (2002) –
Retention of ten unknown words
One group of students was given a text with ten unknown words glossed
in the margin. The second group was given a text with ten unknown words
but without a glossary and used electronic dictionaries.
Short-term and long-term retention was better among the dictionary
users.

Cho and Krashen (1994)
Studied four subjects. The two subjects who used dictionaries consistently
acquired more vocabulary than the two who just read.
Conclusion of studies.

It seems that reading plus another activity' ‘involving
words is more effective than reading only.’

Most experiments compare reading with a ‘wordfocused activity.’ (passive output – looking up word)
my interpretation.
Three experiments conducted by Laufer.

The following experiments compared reading
with a ‘word- focused task.’(active output –
doing something with the word)
my interpretation.
Three experiments in which…

Vocabulary gains from reading were compared with
gains from:
 word focused tasks
 completing given sentences
 writing original sentences
 incorporating words in a composition.
Experiment 1.
Experiment 1

Involved 60 EFL university students in parallel classes.

Group 1 was given a reading comprehension task with ten
target words glossed in Hebrew.

Group 2 was asked to write original sentences with 10
target words.

The results showed that group 2 had significantly higher
scores in both immediate and delayed tests.
Experiment 2.

Involved 82 advanced University EFL learners in two parallel
classes.

Group 1 was given a reading comprehension as in the first
experiment.

Group 2 was asked to write a composition using 10 target
words.

The results showed that group 2 ‘recalled significantly more
word meanings than the reading group.’
Experiment 3

Involved 90 high school learners in the 10th grade (aged
16) in three parallel classes. Each class was assigned a
different task, but with the same ten target words.

The ‘reading’ group was given a text from a 10th grade
reader. The pupils were allowed to look up unknown
words in a bilingual dictionary.
Experiment 3 contd…

The ‘sentence writing’ group received the ten target words
written on a piece of paper together with its translation and
part of speech.

The ‘sentence completion’ group received ten sentences
written by the researcher and a list of the target words. The
students looked up the meanings of the words in a bilingual
dictionary and had to use one target word to complete each
sentence.
Results

There were significant differences between the three groups in
the ‘delayed’ test. The ‘reading’ group fared the worse while the
‘sentence completion’ group achieved the highest scores.
Discussion of experiments.

Aim :- Vocabulary learning through reading compared
with vocabulary learning through a productive task.

The three experiments showed that if a learner does
something with a word, for example write a sentence
with it or use it in a composition, s/he has a much better
chance of retaining and remembering its meaning – more
so than merely noticing it and looking it up in the
dictionary.
Discussion contd…

The evidence from the 60 minute word-focused
experiments show that the students recalled a similar
number of words to those ‘picked up’ by students reading
books in studies done on extensive reading.

It seems that ‘word-focused activities may be more
effective and less time consuming for vocabulary learning.’
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In word-focused tasks the learner has to notice the
word and understand it before s/he can use it.
Conclusions
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Reading can sometimes be a source for learning new
vocabulary.
It can help expand knowledge of known words.
It can reinforce memory of words not yet fixed in
learners lexicon.
However it is unlikely to be the ‘best source of
vocabulary acquisition.’
Word-focused activities are absolutely essential to
building a learner’s lexical knowledge.
Our conclusions.

A need for more dictionary work to be done in class.

Need to be aware of objectives – reading has its place but
so does vocabulary. One does not have to be at the
expense of the other.

Perhaps in view of the findings there is a place for more
semi-extensive reading with word-focused tasks.
More conclusions…
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‘Declarative and procedural knowledge’ – if we want
reading to become automatic then we have to provide
more opportunities for word-focused tasks.