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Incidental vocabulary acquisition from readingonly and reading-while-

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 Innovation in Language Learning and Teaching

ISSN: 1750-1229 (Print) 1750-1237 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rill20

Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading-

only and reading-while-listening: a multi-
dimensional approach

Feng Teng

To cite this article: Feng Teng (2016): Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading-only and
reading-while-listening: a multi-dimensional approach, Innovation in Language Learning and
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 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING, 2016
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17501229.2016.1203328

Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading-only and

reading-while-listening: a multi-dimensional approach
Feng Teng
Department of English, Nanning University, Nanning, Guangxi, People’s Republic of China

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This study compared the effects of the reading-while-listening condition Received 18 April 2016
and the reading-only condition on English as a foreign language (EFL) Accepted 14 June 2016
learners’ acquisition of the four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge:
KEYWORDS
form recognition, grammar recognition, meaning recall, and collocation
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Vocabulary knowledge;
recognition. Accordingly, 24 words within four frequency groups were incidental vocabulary
selected and total 60 Chinese EFL students were enrolled. The results acquisition; reading; reading-
revealed that new words could be learned incidentally in both while-listening; collocation
conditions. However, more words were learned in the reading-while-
listening condition. A significant effect of word exposure frequency on
incidental vocabulary gains was observed for acquisition of word form
and grammar, but no significant effect was found for acquisition of
meaning and collocation. Although the reading-while-listening condition
was more effective for incidental vocabulary acquisition than the
reading-only condition, it appeared that for these two conditions to be a
valuable source for incidental vocabulary acquisition, both word
exposure frequency and elaborate word processing were needed.

Introduction
Incidental vocabulary acquisition promotes the vocabulary growth among students by avoiding
direct focus on word learning activity, in such a way that the vocabulary growth becomes a positive
‘by-product’ of the process of accomplishing other goals (Laufer 2003; Richards and Schmidt 2002).
However, there are several studies that indicate the incidentally acquired word knowledge from
intensive reading could be limited (Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt 2010; Teng 2014a; Waring and
Takaki 2003). Therefore, continuous research going on with an aim to make this approach more effec-
tive for non-native speakers by certain other means, such as extensive reading (Grabe and Stoller
1997; Kweon and Kim 2008; Pigada and Schmitt 2006; Song and Sardegna 2014; Teng 2015; Webb
and Chang 2014), listening (Van Zealand and Schmitt 2013; Vidal 2011), and reading-while-listening
(Brown, Waring, and Donkaewbua 2008).
Among the studies conducted to measure incidental vocabulary gains, those evaluating the
effects of reading-while-listening for students who learn English as a foreign language (EFL) are
limited. In addition, the earlier studies on reading-while-listening focused only on recognition of
form and meaning. In the opinion of Nation (2001) knowing a word implies more than merely
knowing its form and meaning; it is a complex process with multiple dimensions of vocabulary knowl-
edge, such as grammar and collocations. As a result, there is a gap in the understanding of incidental
vocabulary acquisition through reading-while-listening.
The present study aimed to compare the effects of reading-only and reading-while-listening
on incidental vocabulary acquisition with a particular focus on word exposure frequency, which

CONTACT Feng Teng tengfeng@uni.canberra.edu.au

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
 2 F. TENG

affects the acquisition of words (Horst 2005). A multi-dimensional approach was used to
measure the different types of vocabulary knowledge (word form and meaning, grammatical
functions, and collocation). Thus, we would argue the present study breaks new ground in
that it explores the frequency of word occurrence during reading-only and reading-while-listen-
ing activities and measures the multiple types of word knowledge other than simply the form
and meaning.

Literature review
Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading
Several studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading have shown that reading facili-
tates the incidental acquisition of vocabulary knowledge. For example, Song and Sardegna (2014)
divided 24 secondary school EFL students into two groups. One group received enhanced reading
instruction, while another group did not. Pre-tests and posttests were administered to measure
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the development of target words. Results revealed that the group of students who received
reading instruction improved from a mean score of 53.67 to 67.59. The group of students who did
not receive reading instruction only improved from 52.83 to 53.67. The responses of the students
given by retrospective interviews revealed the factors that affected their incidental acquisition of
English vocabulary. One of the factors noted was the frequent encounters of unknown words in
meaningful contexts. This suggests that word exposure frequency is a main factor in incidental voca-
bulary learning, and it is an issue worth investigating further (Webb and Chang 2012). Independently,
Webb (2007a) examined the effects of repetition (1, 3, 7, and 10 encounters) on vocabulary knowl-
edge. Frequently used words appeared in authentic reading texts were replaced by pseudowords.
Results showed that the gain in the knowledge was greater for at least one aspect of knowledge
each time by increasing the repetition. In a similar vein, Chen and Truscott (2010) also explored inci-
dental vocabulary learning through reading. Different from Webb’s (2007a) work, their study used
actual English words. Results revealed that scores consistently increased with number of exposures.
However, only partial vocabulary knowledge was acquired. Moreover, repetition increased the acqui-
sition of productive knowledge more than receptive knowledge. These results reinforced Webb’s
(2007a) research findings.
Teng (2014a) explored the incidental learning of 30 substituted pseudowords within 5 groups of
frequency levels in reading of a graded reader, Love or Money. Three tests (form recognition, meaning
recall, and word usage) were administered. The results revealed that all word knowledge types were
acquired in 68.3% instances for the words that occurred more than 14 times, which was a substantial
improvement. For the words introduced only once, the acquired form recognition was 8.3%, meaning
recognition was 5%, and usage was 3.3%. This study concords with that of Pellicer-Sánchez and
Schmitt (2010), which found that meaning recognition requires more exposures than form recog-
nition, but contradicts Waring and Takaki’s (2003) claim that meaning recognition requires fewer
exposures than form recognition. Teng (2016) expanded research in this area. He selected 15
target words and allocated within 3 frequency groups. The four types of the test, recall of form, rec-
ognition of form, recall of meaning, and recognition of meaning, were administered to measure stu-
dents’ ability in building the form-meaning link. Immediate posttests were administered for assessing
vocabulary development. Results revealed that new words could be learned incidentally in reading.
The most easily acquired vocabulary knowledge was recognition of form, followed by recognition of
meaning, recall of meaning, and recall of form.
The results of the aforementioned studies revealed that learners benefit from learning vocabulary
knowledge through reading, and more exposures to words help them move toward mastery of the
word’s form-meaning link. However, the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition is claimed to be
complex and incremental (Schmitt 2010); therefore, further research from the perspective of word
exposure frequency is needed.
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 3

Incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading-while-listening and how it compares to

that achieved from reading?
Brown, Waring, and Donkaewbua (2008) explored incidental vocabulary acquisition from reading-
while-listening, and compared the gains with those achieved through reading and listening. The
knowledge gain of the 28 target words within four frequency groups was measured with two
meaning recognition tests: a multiple-choice recognition test and a meaning-by-translation test.
One week after the experiment, the learners from the reading condition scored 12.55 (44.8%) for
the multiple-choice recognition test and 4.1 (14.6%) for the meaning-by-translation test. Learners
from the listening condition scored 8.2 (29.2%) for the multiple-choice recognition test and 0.55
(1.9%) for the meaning-by-translation test. The learners from the reading-while-listening condition
scored 13.32 (47.5%) for the multiple-choice recognition test and 4.38 (15.6%) for the meaning-by-
translation test. Three months later, when the learners were tested with a multiple-choice recognition
test, the meaning of only one of the 28 items introduced in the reading condition was retained.
Overall, gain from the reading-while-listening condition was significantly higher than that from the
reading-only condition, and this was further higher than the listening-only condition. In addition,
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the vocabulary knowledge gained from the reading-while-listening condition was also retained
better than that from reading or listening only. An effect of frequency occurrence (2–3, 7–9, 10–
13, and 15–20 occurrences) was found in all the three conditions. More repetitions were needed
in listening (15–20) and reading (10–13) than reading-while-listening (7–9) for a substantive improve-
ment in incidental learning. Similarly, Webb, Newton, and Chang (2013) also showed the positive
effects of reading-while-listening. Their results showed that collocations could be learned incidentally
through reading-while-listening to a graded reader, and that the number of encounters with the
target words had a positive effect on learning.
The abovementioned studies indicate that reading-while-listening has a more pronounced effect
than reading alone. This may be because aural-written verification is more likely to facilitate learners
developing auditory discrimination skills, refine word recognition, and gain awareness of a form-
meaning link. As such, reading-while-listening helps learners retain the integrity of the original
texts, which leads to better vocabulary gains. On the other hand, in reading-only condition, learners
tend to break sentences into incoherent parts while reading, which not only breaks the integrity of
the written texts, but may also lead to a failure in understanding.

Gaps in the literature

Incidental vocabulary acquisition is more complex than revealed by tests of form and meaning. The
assessment of vocabulary knowledge acquisition is difficult as there might be a failure to notice gramma-
tical functions, collocation, and so on. Therefore, a multi-dimensional approach of measuring more than
one aspect of a word should be implied to reveal even the smallest increment in vocabulary acquisition.
This is the rationale behind the current study. A comparison of the effects of the reading-while-lis-
tening condition and the reading-only condition on EFL learners’ acquisition of the four dimensions of
vocabulary knowledge – form recognition, grammar recognition, meaning recall, and collocation rec-
ognition – might reveal new insights. This study attempted to avoid many of the methodological con-
straints and tried to reveal a more complete picture of the incidental vocabulary gains from the two
conditions (reading-only and reading-while-listening) through the use of multi-dimensional tests
administered immediately after the study. To this end, the following research questions are addressed:

(1) To what degree are the four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge gained in each input
condition?
(2) In which condition the participants acquire more vocabulary knowledge: reading-while-listening
or reading?
(3) To what degree is the acquisition of these four dimensions of word knowledge affected by fre-
quency of word occurrence in the two conditions?
 4 F. TENG

Method
Participants
A total of 60 participants were selected from four parallel classes majoring in marketing from a uni-
versity in China. They were second year university EFL students, and had learned English for seven
years. They were native Chinese speakers, and none had studied in a country where English is the
official language. The original number of the participants was 106; of them, 60 were selected
based on a single criterion that all of them must have similar proficiency in vocabulary.
Nation and Beglar’s (2007) vocabulary size test (VST) was employed in this study. The 14,000
version was adopted in the present study. This version contains 140 multiple-choice items, with 10
items from each 1000 word level. A learner’s total score needs to be multiplied by 100 to get his/
her total receptive vocabulary size. VST is used to measure learners’ written receptive vocabulary
size in English. It measures knowledge of written word form, the form-meaning connection, and to
a smaller degree concept knowledge. The reliability of this test has been established earlier
(Beglar 2010). Given the participants’ language proficiency, 50 items of the VST were tested. The par-
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ticipants’ vocabulary acquisition up to and including the 5000 word level was measured.
The average score of the selected learners was 38.04, which means they had an average vocabu-
lary size of 3804 words (Nation and Beglar 2007). The participants were randomly assigned to two
groups: reading group (n = 30) or reading-while-listening group (n = 30). There was no significant
difference between the two groups in terms of their average scores on the VST (reading group:
37.75 out of 50; reading-while-listening group: 38.34 out of 50, p = .87). This also means that the par-
ticipants had a sufficiently large written receptive vocabulary size to read a text written with the 2000
most frequent words.

Reading materials
Graded readers, which are written to include the most frequent words and simplified language struc-
tures, are proposed as an important source of learning vocabulary for EFL learners (Hill 2013). There
are various versions of graded readers, so choosing an appropriate one is important. Five potential
books were typed into the computer program RANGE (Heatley, Nation, and Coxhead 2002), which
is useful for providing a lexical profile of the text. It can also be used to find the coverage of a text
using word lists. The Love of a King (Dainty 2007), a level 2 graded reader for elementary learners pub-
lished by Oxford University Press, was chosen after a thorough evaluation of the data by using RANGE.
This is a love story about a king who is willing to sacrifice everything in order to get married with his
lover. According to the researcher’s teaching experience, students prefer to read stories because they
are interesting and do not require background knowledge to contemplate the text. As revealed by
the RANGE analysis, the book contains 6029 tokens (running words) and 568 word families (word
types). In addition, this book has a good spread of words at different frequency levels, for which
91.41% of the words in this graded reader are in the first 1000 word list, and 4.21% are in the
second 1000 word list. Previous studies have indicated that at least 95% of running words should
be known to learners for achieving adequate comprehension (Van Zealand and Schmitt 2012,
2013). Judged from the participants’ VST results as noted above, it can be stated that the learners
in this study did not encounter any great lexical barriers while reading this story.

Target items
The desired level of word density of less than 5% of unfamiliar words in this book was confirmed in
two ways. First, only 3.4% of the target items (24 target items in total) were replaced by pseudowords.
While addressing the third research question (to what degree is the acquisition of the word knowl-
edge affected by frequency of word occurrence?), the target words were organized into four fre-
quency groups according to the number of the encounters that the participants had with each
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 5

word (occurring 1–2 times, 4–5 times, 9–10 times, and 14–16 times). This was done so that each fre-
quency group could provide enough words for a meaning analysis. Six items in each frequency group
were selected: two nouns, two verbs, and two adjectives, as these are the most common parts of
speech found in natural text (Webb 2005). The original intention was to include all parts of speech
in the study; however, the test battery included testing of the grammatical component. Since this
hinders such possibility, prepositions and adverbs were not included because prepositions function
as a single part and adverbs would give away the grammatical function (e.g. -ly).
Second, this graded reader was analyzed by vocabulary profile, a program available on the Com-
pleat Lexical Tutor Website (Cobb, n.d.). It was assured that most of the words were within the 2000
word list level. Only 31 words were at the 3000 word list level, while 11 words were at the 4000 word
list level, and 4 were at the 5000 word list level. As the participants in the current study had undoubt-
edly mastered the 2000 word level, it could be assumed with confidence that the participants had
attained a lexical coverage of 95%, even though they may not understand the 45 words belonging
to the 3000, 4000, and 5000 word levels. This may be the best assumption that could be made
without having the participants read the text before the study and asking them to underline any
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unknown word.
The next issue was how to present the target words in a context of the surrounding text. The best
solution, as mentioned in Waring and Takaki (2003), was to replace these words with pseudowords.
The other option was that these words could have been replaced with synonyms, but this method
was not chosen because some participants might already know the meaning of the synonyms. More-
over, it was difficult to find a synonym for every target word, and as an alternate, we chose pseudo-
words. All items were replaced with pseudowords from the ARC database (Rastle, Harrington, and
Coltheart 2002). A complete list of the target words is presented in Appendix 1.

Measurement instruments
The types of the word knowledge of the target items were measured with four tests, as described
below:

Test 1 Form recognition

The knowledge of word form was measured with a multiple-choice recognition test. This receptive
test format was considered appropriate because it measures the type of knowledge needed for
reading, i.e. to understand a given word, learners need to recognize its form and distinguish it
from other word forms.
Previous studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition, which employed a multiple-choice recog-
nition test, have generally used distractors that are quite similar in form to the target item (Chen
and Truscott 2010; Webb 2007b). This study also used the same approach. This is because choosing
a correct answer in the context requires a higher level of knowledge when the distractors are similar
to the target words.

Test 2 Grammar recognition

The knowledge of grammatical functions among the participants was also measured with a multiple-
choice recognition test. The participants were given three sentences containing the target word, one
of which was correct. Since the subsequent test measured the knowledge of meaning, the sentences
used in this test did not reveal any aspect of the target word’s meaning.
This format was considered appropriate in view of the following two facts: first, the part of speech
is a closed system. In this regard, multiple-choice is a suitable format to offer only a few possibilities
for the learners to choose from. Second, this test measures the knowledge necessary for reading, i.e.
to understand a word in context, learners need to figure out what part of speech it is.
 6 F. TENG

Test 3 Meaning recall

The knowledge of meaning was measured with a recall test. This format was different from the form
and grammar tests that measure recognition. It was considered appropriate as it measures the type of
knowledge needed for reading, i.e. to understand a word’s meaning while reading – a learner should
be able to recall (rather than recognize) that meaning after recognizing the form.
Participants were presented with all 24 target items on paper and asked to write down anything
they knew about their meaning. This included a translation into English, a synonym, an explanation,
or anything else that could demonstrate their knowledge. As a few pilot tests showed that presenting
the target items in isolation was too difficult for the learners, it was decided to present the target
items in sentence contexts. These sentences were the same as those used in the grammar test.

Test 4 Recognition of collocation

Herein, collocation refers to the regular co-occurrence of words within a given span demonstrating a
statistical strength of co-occurrence (Webb, Newton, and Chang 2013). The ability of the participants
to recognize the form of collocation was also measured by a multiple-choice format, for which the
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learners were required to select the right collocation among five options provided (the correct col-
location, three distracters, and an ‘I don’t know’ option). The distracters had the same word class
and were all semantically related to the content of the story. This was done to make the discrimi-
nation only possible when learners could recognize the collocation. This test was considered appro-
priate because knowing a word also involves the other words with those it typically occurs.
Furthermore, the knowledge of collocations is one of the key components of using a word. This
test by using pseudowords to assess learners’ ability in recognizing the form of the collocation
was adopted from a recent study (Pellicer-Sánchez 2015).
A typical example of each of the four tests is given in Appendix 2. The validity of the tests had been
established by Webb (2007a). The order of the four tests was as follows: form recognition test,
grammar recognition test, meaning recall test, and collocation recognition test. This was done so
that earlier tests do not have any effect on the answers to the later tests. To minimize guessing,
the participants were encouraged to choose ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I don’t remember’ options if they
did not know the answer. Each test was on one page. The learners were not allowed to read the
story while taking the tests.

Scoring system
The answers were scored as either correct (one point) or incorrect (zero points), except for the
meaning recall test, for which correct answers were given one point and a word with an acceptable
answer received half point. A joint meeting between two independently experienced raters was held
to reach upon a consensus on possible acceptable answers. They then rated the tests independently.
In case of differences between their opinions, a third independently trained rater was called upon. In
this case, the score of the controversial items was determined by the majority opinion. In terms of
meaning recall items, there were 60 different opinions among the total 1440 responses. Thus
there was 96% inter-rater agreement. The discrepancies were resolved with the help of a third rater.

Procedure
The book to be read by the participants was prepared by the author. A native speaker of English was
invited to read aloud this book for the learners in the reading-while-listening condition. The reading
speed was approximately 90 words/min. The time for the reading-while-listening group was about 70
min and the reading time for the learners in the reading group was also set as 70 min. All the par-
ticipants were intimated that the reading materials include some unknown words, and they were
required to try to comprehend the text. After the treatment, all the participants were required to
finish ten multiple-choice comprehension questions without having the book at their disposal. The
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 7

average score of these questions was relatively high (7.5 out of 10, S. D. = 1.56). This was taken as an
indication that they had paid attention to the input. In addition, there were no participants with very
low comprehension scores (the lowest score is 7). Thus, no participants were excluded from the study.
The time to complete the 10 multiple-choice comprehension questions was 10 min. The time for fin-
ishing the four tests measuring various aspects of vocabulary knowledge was 40 min. The participants
were not informed about any test. Thus, this study could be taken as an incidental one (Hulstijn 2013).
Overall, all the stages of the experiment were completed in one session with 70 min allocated for
reading or reading-while-listening, 10 min for an immediate comprehension test, and 40 min for the 4
subsequent vocabulary tests. Thus, the whole experiment lasted for approximately 120 min. The time
set for each part was determined by a pilot study conducted with some other students with similar
background and vocabulary proficiency.

Data analysis
Since the data were not normally distributed, ANOVA could not be performed. To answer the pro-
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posed research questions, the scores of the four dependent measures were submitted to Friedman
tests. Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed to determine the advantage of the reading-while-
listening condition over the read-only condition, as well as the relative performance on the four tests.

Results
The first research question addresses the extent of incidental learning of the four dimensions of word
knowledge gained in each input condition. The results of descriptive statistics are presented in
Table 1, and graphically in Figure 1.
The test results of form recognition for reading-while-listening indicated that 15.7 out of the 24
words were learned (65.4%). The gain in form recognition in the reading-only condition was similarly
impressive at 12.7 (52.9%). The form recognition gains were better than that reported by Brown,
Waring, and Donkaewbua (2008), wherein the gains made in reading-while-listening and reading-
only condition were 48% and 45%, respectively. The grammar test results in the current study
show that 10.4 of the 24 words were learned in the reading-while-listening condition (43.3%), and
8.2 in the reading-only condition (34.1%). The mean scores for the meaning recall test were: 7.3
(30.4%) for reading-while-listening condition and 4.1(17%) for reading-only condition. The mean
scores for the collocation recognition test were: 4.8 (20%) for reading-while-listening condition
and 3.1 (12.9%) for reading-only condition.
Four Friedman tests were then performed to compare the scores of form, grammar, meaning, and
collocation for the posttests. Statistically significant differences were observed in the four dimensions
of word knowledge in the reading-only condition for the posttests (χ 2 (2, n = 10) 67.542, p < .001).
Similarly, statistically significant differences were detected in the four dimensions of word knowledge
in the reading-while-listening condition for the posttests (χ 2 (2, n = 10) 70.615, p < .001). The effect
sizes can be said to be large on the basis of Cohen’s (1988) criteria and medium large on the basis
of Plonsky and Oswald’s (2014) recently suggested more conservative criteria. Therefore, it can be
inferred that learners encounter different levels of difficulties in learning the four types of word
knowledge.

Table 1. Descriptive statistics of the four posttests in the two conditions.

Condition Form Grammar Meaning Collocation
Reading-only 12.7 8.2 4.1 3.1
(1.52) (2.12) (3.29) (3.05)
Reading-while-listening 15.7 10.4 7.3 4.8
(1.62) (2.01) (2.97) (3.25)
Note: Standard deviations are in parentheses. Max. = 24
 8 F. TENG
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Figure 1. Overall mean scores for the four tests by the two conditions.

Post-hoc analyses with Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed with Bonferroni correction
applied (p < .005). This will help determine which type of word knowledge is learned first. A relative
account of the participants’ performance for the four types of word knowledge for the reading-while-
listening condition is presented in Table 2 and for reading-only condition is presented in Table 3.
Table 2 reveals that the posttest scores for form recognition in the reading-while-listening con-
dition were significantly higher than grammar (Z = −4.149, p < .05), meaning (Z = −4.342, p < .05),
and collocation (Z = −4.318, p < .05). The scores for grammar were significantly higher than
meaning (Z = −4.215, p < .05) and collocation (Z = −4.320, p < .05). However, scores for meaning
were not significantly different from collocation (Z = −2.235, p > .05).
The results can be summarized as follows:
*Reading-while-listening condition Form > grammar > meaning = collocation (‘>’ means a more
substantial learning)
Table 3 reveals that the scores for form recognition for the immediate posttest in the reading-only
condition were significantly higher than grammar (Z = −3.794, p < .05), meaning (Z = −4.228, p < .05),
and collocation (Z = −4.231, p < .05). The scores for grammar were significantly higher than meaning
(Z = −3.779, p < .05) and collocation (Z = −4.045, p < .05). However, the scores for meaning were not
significantly different from collocation (Z = −2.640, p > .05).
The results can be summarized as follows:
*Reading-only condition Form > grammar > meaning = collocation (‘>’ means a more substantial
learning)
To answer the second research question – whether the participants gain more vocabulary knowl-
edge from reading-while-listening than reading? – Wilcoxon signed rank tests were performed to

Table 2. Wilcoxon results of measuring the relative performance on the four dimensions (reading-while-listening condition).
Reading-while-listening
Form Grammar Meaning Collocation
Form – Z = −4.149* Z = −4.342* Z = −4.318*
Grammar Z = −4.149* – Z = −4.215* Z = −4.320*
Meaning Z = −4.342* Z = −4.215* – Z = −2.235
Collocation Z = −4.318* Z = −4.320* Z = −2.235 –
Note: *p < .05.
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 9

Table 3. Wilcoxon results of measuring the relative performance on the four dimensions (reading-only condition).
Reading-only
Form Grammar Meaning Collocation
Form – Z = −3.794* Z = −4.228* Z = −4.231*
Grammar Z = −3.794* – Z = −3.779* Z = −4.045*
Meaning Z = −4.228* Z = −3.779* – Z = −2.640
Collocation Z = −4.231* Z = −4.045* Z = −2.640 –
Note: *p < .05.

Table 4. The number of correct items in each frequency group (reading-only condition).
Frequency Form Grammar Meaning Collocation
1–2 times (max. = 6) 2 0.6 0.6 0.4
(33.3%) (10%) (10%) (6.6%)
4–5 times (max. = 6) 2.7 0.7 0.9 0.6
(45%) (11.6%) (16%) (10%)
9–10 times (max. = 6) 3.5 1.7 1.4 1.1
(58.3%) (28.3%) (23.3%) (18.3%)
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14–16 times (max. = 6) 4.5 2.0 1.3 1.0

(75%) (33.3%) (21.7%) (16.7%)

compare the gain made in the two conditions for each test type. The difference between the reading-
only and reading-while-listening conditions were significant for all four test types (p < .05), with large
effect sizes according to Cohen’s (1988) criteria and medium large according to Plonsky and Oswald’s
(2014) criteria. This outcome reveals that the participants in the reading-while-listening condition
outperformed those in the reading-only condition in learning of the four dimensions of vocabulary
knowledge. This also suggests that it is far more difficult to pick up words from reading-only than
from the reading-while-listening condition.
To answer the third research question – how the four word knowledge dimensions are affected by
frequency of word occurrence, we calculated the mean number of correct answers that the partici-
pants from each input condition gave in each frequency group (occurring 1–2 times, 4–5 times, 9–10
times, and 14–16 times). The data for reading-only condition are presented in Table 4, and the graphi-
cal results in Figure 2.
The data in Table 4 show that the words encountered more frequently are more likely to be
known. While for the gains made for meaning and collocation in the frequency group (14–16

Figure 2. Percentages of correct scores on the posttests by frequency of occurrence (reading-only condition).
 10 F. TENG

Table 5. The number of correct items in each frequency group (reading-while-listening condition).
Frequency Form Grammar Meaning Collocation
1–2 times (max. = 6) 2.6 1.8 0.9 0.8
(43.3%) (30%) (15%) (13.3%)
4–5 times (max. = 6) 3.3 1.7 1.1 0.8
(55%) (28.3%) (18.3%) (13.3%)
9–10 times (max. = 6) 4.2 2.9 2.0 1.3
(70%) (48.3%) (33.3%) (21.7%)
14–16 times (max. = 6) 5.4 4.0 3.0 1.7
(90%) (66.7%) (50%) (28.3%)

times), some unexpected results were obtained. For example, the mean score of the meaning test in
the frequency group was 1.3. This was slightly lower than the mean score of 1.4 in the frequency
group (9–10 times). Likewise, the mean score of collocation test in this frequency group (14–16
times) was 1.0. This was slightly lower than a mean score of 1.1 in the frequency group (9–10
times). The data for reading-while-listening condition are presented in Table 5 and the graphical
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results are in Figure 3.

The Friedman Test was performed to compare the gains made in different frequency groups. On
the test of form recognition, the reading-only condition showed a significant effect of frequency: χ 2
(2, n = 10) 17.211, p < .001. The reading-while-listening condition also showed a significant effect of
frequency: χ 2 (2, n = 10) 16.345, p < .001. The Wilcoxon signed rank test was used to compare the
median of the two frequency variables. The results of the form recognition tests are given in Table 6.
As depicted in Table 6, the participants in the reading-only condition did not show any significant
difference in form recognition scores for the items that occurred 1–2 times and 4–5 times (p > .05);
while the participants in the two conditions scored significantly better for the items that occurred
14–16 times than those that occurred 9–10 times (p < .05). They also performed significantly better
for the items that occurred 9–10 times than those that occurred 4–5 times (p < .05). On the other
hand, the participants from the reading-while-listening condition performed significantly better for
the items that occurred 4–5 times than those that occurred 1–2 times (p < .05). This is evident that
the participants in the reading-while-listening condition needed less word exposure frequency to
achieve a substantial improvement in the incidental learning of word form knowledge.
Table 7 shows that the knowledge for grammar was significantly higher for items that occurred 9–
10 times than the items that occurred 4–5 times in both conditions (p < .05). The knowledge of
grammar was significantly higher for the items that occurred 9–10 times than those that occurred

Figure 3. Percentages of correct scores on the posttests by frequency of occurrence (reading-while-listening condition).
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 11

Table 6. Wilcoxon results for form recognition test for each frequency group by input condition.
Condition 14–16 vs. 9–10 14–16 vs. 4–5 14–16 vs. 1–2 9–10 vs. 4–5 9–10 vs. 1–2 4–5 vs. 1–2
Reading-only Z = 2.232* Z = −2.562* Z = −2.954* Z = −2.070* Z = −2.452* Z = −1.181
Reading-while-listening Z = −2.226* Z = −2.456* Z = −2.841* Z = −2.207* Z = −2.371* Z = −2.001*
*p < .05.

Table 7. Wilcoxon results for grammar test for each frequency group by input condition.
Condition 14–16 vs. 9–10 14–16 vs. 4–5 14–16 vs. 1–2 9–10 vs. 4–5 9–10 vs. 1–2 4–5 vs. 1–2
Reading-only Z = −1.832 Z = −2.562* Z = −2.854* Z = −2.214* Z = −2.232* Z = −2.121*
Reading-while-listening Z = −1.854 Z = −2.456* Z = −2.841* Z = −2.207* Z = −2.371* Z = −2.001*
*p < .05.

1–2 times (p < .05), as well as for items that occurred 4–5 times than items that occurred 1–2 times (p
< .05). There was no significant difference between the knowledge of the items that occurred 9–10
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times and those that occurred 14–16 times in both conditions (p > .05). Therefore, it can be inferred
that both conditions provide similar frequency effects on the incidental learning of grammar
knowledge.
We encountered some unexpected results for the meaning and collocation. The knowledge of
meaning on the immediate test for the reading-only condition was not significantly affected by fre-
quency (χ 2 (2, n = 10) 5.357, p > .05). Similar results were also found in the reading-while-listening
condition (χ 2 (2, n = 10) 13.661, p > .05). Likewise, the knowledge of collocation on the posttest for
the reading-only condition was not significantly affected by frequency (χ 2 (2, n = 10) 11.488, p
> .05). In a similar vein, the same results were also found in the reading-while-listening condition
(χ 2 (2, n = 10) 11.108, p > .05). This is evident that although learners achieved higher scores for the
items that occurred more times, the frequency effect was not significant.

Discussion and conclusion

This study has shown that, to some extent, the reading-only and reading-while-listening conditions
serve as a source of incidental vocabulary acquisition. Learners primarily develop ability to recognize
the form, followed by the grammar pattern and meaning, which is a reminiscent finding of the
research on incidental vocabulary acquisition (Chen and Truscott 2010; Pellicer-Sánchez and
Schmitt 2010; Van Zealand and Schmitt 2013; Waring and Takaki 2003; Webb 2007b). However,
the previous studies did not address the knowledge of collocation. The results showed that the
most difficult type of vocabulary knowledge for the students to acquire is collocation. For
example, the learners in the reading-only condition could match an appropriate collocation only
for two words after reading a repetition rich and simplified text. Thus, the current study empirically
proves that learning collocation is more difficult than learning form, grammar, and meaning. This
observation concords with that made by Webb, Newton, and Chang (2013); who found that the inci-
dental acquisition of collocation is contingent upon the repetitions. However, this contradicts a
recent study by González Fernández and Schmitt (2015). Their study revealed that Spanish learners
of English know a substantial number of collocations. Though one difference need to be noticed that
the participants in their study were advanced L2 learners, while the participants in the present study
had only reached 3000 word level. As proposed by González Fernández and Schmitt (2015), the
knowledge of the collocations correlates with word list (.45). In other words, when a learner has a
higher word level, he/she may know more collocations.
The present study also sheds some light on the effects of word frequency on incidental vocabulary
acquisition. The results showed that there is a clear relationship between the acquisition of the two
dimensions of word knowledge (form and grammar) and word exposure frequency. For example,
immediately after the reading-only condition, there was a substantial advantage for the 9–10
 12 F. TENG

times word occurrence over the 4–5 times occurrence in the acquisition of form and grammar. More-
over, the participants in the reading-while-listening condition showed a substantial improvement on
learning word forms in the items that occurred 4–5 times. For learning grammar, they demonstrated
substantial learning for the items that occurred 9–10 times. This finding is in line with Rott’s (2007)
study, which suggests that if words are not encountered a sufficient number of times, then substan-
tial word knowledge would not be acquired. For an efficient incidental learning of new words
encountered while reading graded readers, an exposure of 20 times or even higher may be
needed (Waring and Takaki 2003). Although the precise number has not been concluded in the
present study, it is clearly evidenced that building memory of the word form can be achieved inci-
dentally from reading or reading-while-listening input. This is the first step in developing a form-
meaning link. Thus, the two input conditions can certainly be considered beneficial in this respect.
Finally, the majority of the students in reading-while-listening condition for a graded reader with
95% of lexical coverage gained a better word learning than the reading-only condition. This might be
explained on the basis of the fact that the necessity of having to segment or chunk the reading
material was done by the teacher while reading aloud. This might allow the students to have
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more working memory space to comprehend the content more correctly and effectively. Therefore,
the learners, equipped with this, made better deductions of the meaning of the unknown target
words. In contrast, although reading-only condition allows learners to go on with their own pace,
they seem to encounter more difficulties in deducting the meaning of unknown words. This concords
with what Amer (1997) and Brown, Waring, and Donkaewbua (2008) found in their studies.
The present study proposes some pedagogical implications. The first one is that teachers should
pay attention to word frequency. As Peters (2014) stated, an increase in frequency results in higher
recall scores of the target items to be learned. Although we do not have sufficient data to pinpoint
the precise number of word occurrences that a learner will need to master full word knowledge, the
current study adds to our understanding that EFL learners need more word exposures for effective
incidental word learning.
The second pedagogical implication is that EFL learners should be provided with opportunities
and guidance on how to infer word meaning from context. This is an essential strategy for promoting
lexical acquisition and important both for coping with and learning unfamiliar words (Schmitt 2010;
Teng 2014b). Therefore, if learners do a lot of reading, there will be a substantial enrichment of par-
tially known words as well as the establishment of certain new words in their lexicons.
The third implication for classroom instructions concerns with the elaboration of word processing.
This is necessary for establishing certain new words in learners’ lexicon. Previous studies have shown
that there are equal effects for word exposure frequency and elaboration of word processing in initial
word learning (Eckerth and Tavokoli 2012; Laufer and Rozovski-Roitblat 2011).
The final implication drawn from the current study is that the addition that teacher is reading
aloud for learners has a significant effect. This was reflected by their corresponding success rates
on the tests. It seems, therefore, that such gains made in the reading-while-listening condition are
worthy for teachers’ consideration.

Limitations and future directions

There were several limitations in the current study. The first was that only Chinese EFL students were
involved. Thus, these findings of word knowledge learning and retention should be taken as indica-
tive rather than conclusive.
Second, the context in which learners could guess the word meaning was not fully controlled,
which might have yielded variance. This may be explained as why some participants in the
reading-only condition could not guess the meaning more successfully for the items that occurred
14–16 times than the items that occurred 9–10 times.
Finally, the current study did not measure the effects of elaborate word processing, which is also
an important factor in incidental vocabulary acquisition (Eckerth and Tavokoli 2012). Future studies
 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 13

on improving learners’ incidental vocabulary gains by comparing the effects of word exposure fre-
quency and elaborate word processing are suggested.

Acknowledgements
The author would like to express his thanks to the two anonymous reviewers, who provided very constructive comments
on this article, and to all the students and teachers for their participation and suggestions. Many thanks also go to Jeremy
Jones from University of Canberra for giving comments on the initial draft.

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
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Feng Teng is a language teacher educator at the Department of English, Nanning University, China. He is interested in
doing research on vocabulary studies, listening, and speaking. His recent publications appeared in TESL-EJ and TESL
Reporter.

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 INNOVATION IN LANGUAGE LEARNING AND TEACHING 15

Appendix 1

A list of target words.

Original word Word class Substituted word

24 test items 6 items (1–2 times) Weak Adj. breat
Warm Adj. wenchy
To walk Verb To trepe
To wear Verb To pook
Truth Noun grike
Teacher Noun Blondor
6 items (4–5 times) Black Adj. Pamful
Alone Adj. Ponely
To forget Verb To frait
To remember Verb To recate
Newspaper Noun Nunce
World Noun wight
6 items (9–10 times) Happy Adj. Sobby
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Small Adj. spitful

To say Verb To vook
To leave Verb To glabe
Father Noun Fruiser
Night Noun Grath
6 items (14–16 times) Young Adj. Wour
New Adj. mulse
To live Verb To wod
To like Verb To deese
Life Noun Troice
Love Noun Zine

Appendix 2. Four dependent measures (1 item out of 24).

Test 1 Form recognition

Directions: In this test, please circle the correctly spelled word forms, which appeared with three distracters and one
option stating ‘I don’t remember any of these.’
A. breat B. breet C. bleet D. bret E. I don’t remember any of these
Test 2 Grammar recognition
Directions: Each target item was presented with three short sentences illustrating how its adjective, verb, and noun
form could be used in context. Please select one correct sentence or the ‘I don’t know’ option if you are not sure.
breat
A. You’re very breat.
B. He is a breat.
C. He breated.
D. I don’t know
Test 3 Recall of word meaning
Directions: Please write down the appropriate meaning for the italic words.
You are very breat. _________ □I don’t know
Test 4 Collocation recognition
Directions: Please select the best answer from five options, one of which was a frequent collocate of the target word.
breat A. love B. child C. point D. friend E. I don’t know

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