incidental vocab learning - hulstijn

8/6/2019 Incidental Vocab Learning - Hulstijn

http://slidepdf.com/reader/full/incidental-vocab-learning-hulstijn 1/15

Incidental Vocabulary Learning by

Advanced Foreign Language Students: The

Influence of Marginal Glosses, DictionaryUse, and Reoccurrence of Unknown Words

y Jan H. Hulstijn, Merel Hollander & Tine Greidanus, (1996), The Modern Language Journal , 80, iii



Section 1-Introductiony Extensive (2L) reading is good for vocabulary acquisition.

(Brown, 1994; Grabe,1991; Nation, 1990; Swaffar, Aens, & Byrnes, 1991)

y As (1L) reading leads to (1L) vocabulary growth.(Sternberg, 1987; Nagy, Anderson,& Herman,1987)

y It has been shown that advanced (2L) learners have a largereceptive vocabulary knowledge.

y This knowledge cannot have been learned by intentionallearning.

y Thus, Many words are acquired during listening and reading when the learners aim is to comprehend the meaning ratherthan to learn new words.(incidental learning)

y I ncidental learning is defined as spontaneous learning withoutintention.



y But, many readers fail to learn the meaning of unknown words

encountered in texts for one or several of the following reasons: Learners fail to notice the presence of unfamiliar words or claim of knowing it.

They notice the presence of unfamiliar words but they ignore them.

They pay attention to the meaning and Ignore the form.

They make erroneous inferences, so learn words incorrectly.

When they have a dictionary, they do not look up all unknown words, especially for longtext.

the number of unknown words occurrence.

y Some factors might promote incidental vocabulary learning: Inferred meanings are better than given meaning, but sometimes the meaning is inferred

incorrectly.

Readers tend to pay more attention to words which are considered to be relevant to

understand than irrelevant words. Using a dictionary has positive effects on incidental vocabulary learning.

Marginal glosses help to understand the text.

If the meaning of unknown words are given in the (1L), it will be more effective than (2L).

Words occurring frequently in a text are more likely to be acquired than words occurringonly once .



y 78 Dutch first-year university students of French read aFrench short story under three conditions:

1. Marginal Glosses (MG).L1 translation of target, unfamiliar words are provided.

2. Dictionary (D).Free bilingual dictionary can be used.

3. Control (C).

No marginal glosses nor dictionary, infer meaning or ignore fromtext.

y After reading, students were tested for their receptiveknowledge of the 16 target words.

Section 2-In this study:



2 hypotheses:y Retention of the meaning of unfamiliar target words

will be higher in the MG than in the D condition, and

the lowest in the C condition.y Retention of the exact meaning of unfamiliar target

words, MG students will profit most fromreoccurrence, C student will profit least; D student will

profit moderately.



Testing materials:y Recognition and Recall test.

Recognize the 16 isolated target words from the list, and translate

themy Measure preknowledge of the target words.

Show the part-of-speech of the target words, and asked if they knowthese words before

y Provide the meaning of target words again.

Translate the 16 target words again, but given in the context from thea few lines taken from the original text



Section 3 - Conclusionsy Summary of the articles review of the incidental

learning testing findings, discussion of those findings

and recommendations for teachers



Some general conclusions reached about incidentallearning from the testing were:



Some general conclusions reached about incidentallearning from the testing were:1. As predicted in Hypothesis 2 of the article, the frequency of the

appearance of target words in the text impacted on the retention of wordmeanings, but only exact word meanings, not exact plus partial wordmeanings.





2. This would, therefore, not affect the Marginal Glosses (MG) group becausethey were already given the exact meanings of target words.






3. Dictionary (D) group, who actively sought the meaning of F3 target wordsby consulting the dictionary were therefore expected to and did, in fact gain from the greater appearance frequency of target words because they were motivated to discover their meaning due to perceived relevance,(Hulstijn, 1996, 335)







4. While students in the D group referred to their dictionaries for only 12%of the target words in the main test, post-testing revealed that their

retention was likely to be superior to that of the MG group.







4. While students in the D group referred to their dictionaries for only 12%of the target words in the main test, post-testing revealed that their

retention was likely to be superior to that of the MG group.5. The provision of marginal glosses did aid students incidental vocabulary learning. The MG groups retention scores were twice as good or betterthan the D groups. However, it is pointed out that these figures might bemisleading in terms of the type of test taken (T1 the Reading test is abetter measure of incidental learning than T3, a test with contextual cuesprovided, for instance) and in terms of the quality of that retention.



Recommendations

Several points, relevant to teachers and material developers, about the impact of

the use marginal glosses and dictionaries on incidental learning were discovered

during the course of the research, according to the authors.

The most important of these led to the recommendation that since it has been

demonstrated that incidental learning plays a vital role in L2 learners vocabulary

acquisition, extensive reading should always be encouraged.

However, the authors go on to say that reading for global meaning alone is

insufficient; a wide range of elaborating activities are necessary to enhance

students reading experience in as many ways as possible, thereby nourishing the

incidental vocabulary learning process in particular, and L2 language acquisitiongenerally.



Section 4- CommentsThe review group found the report to be impressively thorough in its

methodology and itsattention to detail, especially with regard to the use of controls. The subsequent

data set

produced is therefore almost certainly reliable.

However, it was felt that further research into the subject is essential, as indeed isacknowledged by the authors. Some examples of further possible areas of

research, with theintention of extending the rather narrow scope of the original, include:1. Due to the differences between French and English learning, this test might

not be as adequate for English as it works for French.2. It should consider lower level learners, as those learners may not be able to

adopt the method well.3. Marginal glosses and dictionaries should used to test incidental vocabulary

learning of both higher and lower level L2 English learners.

incidental vocab learning - hulstijn

Documents