2018 年 4 月 中国应用语言学（英文） Apr.

2018
第 41 卷 第 2 期 Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol. 41 No. 2

Comparing the Effects of Listening Input

and Reading Input on EFL Learners’
Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Le CHANG
Shenyang Ligong University
Juncai MA
Bohai University

Abstract
This study examined the effects of either listening or reading input on 88 first-year non-
English-major Chinese university EFL students’ incidental acquisition in vocabulary form,
meaning and production. The students were put into a Listening Group (n = 47) and a Reading
Group (n = 41), each of which finished either two listening activities (each consisting of a
dialogic text and an information transfer task) or two reading activities (each consisting
of a reading text and five multiple-choice questions). The four texts all contained five low-
frequency target words which a revised Vocabulary Knowledge Test had shown to be only
slightly known by the participants before the activities. The results of the post-tests showed
that the Reading Group had general acquisition advantage over the Listening Group in terms
of all the three vocabulary aspects, and due to the fact of rich target word contexts and repeated
access to the texts, the Listening Group manifested vocabulary meaning acquisition nearly
equal to the Reading Group. Overall, the study shows the notably advantageous effects of
reading input on incidental vocabulary acquisition, and concerning facilitating vocabulary
acquisition through listening, it points out the importance of increasing opportunities for
learners to process listening input with rich contextual clues through task repetition.

Keywords: incidental vocabulary acquisition; listening; reading; input

ISSN 2192-9505 Chinese J. of Appl. Ling. 41-2 (2018), pp. 169-181   DOI 10.1515/cjal-2018-0010
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© FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy
Comparing the Effects of Listening Input and Reading Input on EFL Learners’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

1. Introduction
Incidental vocabulary acquisition has been generally defined as “the learning of new
words as a by-product of a meaning-focused communicative activity, such as reading,
listening, and interaction, which occurs through multiple exposures to a word in different
contexts” (Huckin & Coady, 1999, p. 185). Given that much research has examined the
effects of vocabulary acquisition in the notion of vocabulary knowledge, Nation (2001)
claimed that vocabulary knowledge is not a single or simple construct, but is composed of
such multiple aspects as form, meaning, grammar, collation and use, and the acquisition of
words indicates the mastery of these aspects of lexical knowledge.
In addition to reading, many second language (L2) learners rely on aural input as
another primary source of information about the target language. Through listening they
may learn to identify the forms and meanings of new words, which they then remember
and in due course come to use. Nevertheless, though both reading and listening have
been proved to be able to facilitate vocabulary acquisition, few studies have attempted to
compare the effects of vocabulary acquisition between them.

2. Literature review
Most work on L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition has focused on how such learning
occurs during interactions with written texts or discourse, that is, how such learning
occurs in reading (e.g., Paribakht & Wesche, 1999; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006), and recent
years have seen some work researching and providing evidence of incidental vocabulary
acquisition from listening comprehension (e.g., Brown, Waring & Donkaewbua, 2008;
Ellis & Chang, 2016). Nonetheless, to date only very limited attempt has been made to
compare the effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition from listening input and reading
input.
To compare the effects of academic listening and reading on incidental acquisition
of vocabulary at a university in Madrid, Vidal (2011) put 230 first-year undergraduate
students of English into three groups. The reading group read three academic texts; the
listening group watched three video-taped lectures and the control group received no
treatment but only attended the vocabulary tests. Developed from the same sources,
the three lectures and the three reading passages in the study were similar in content
and contained the same target words (12 words in each lecture/passage) for the study of
incidental acquisition. The three lectures lasted similarly long (14-15 minutes) and were
of approximately the same length to the reading passages (1500-1800 running words).
During the 4-week-long experiment, the participants in the listening and reading groups
were presented with either lectures or readings, and each of the learning conditions was
followed by a 20-item cloze test and 10 true/false questions to measure the participants’
comprehension. A modified version of the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) by
Paribakht and Wesche (1997) was used as the pre/post-tests some days before, immediately
after and one month after the experiment. The study found that the participants in the

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reading group made greater vocabulary gains than those in the listening group, and
the finding was especially obvious in the aspect of word form recognition. Vidal thus
concluded that although both academic reading and listening result in vocabulary gains,
“reading is a more efficient source of acquisition” (p. 242).
To compare the effects of different input and output tasks on incidental acquisition
of 15 target words, Wang, Yao and Xu (2012) selected 120 non-English-major university
students in China and divided them into four different input and output groups. In the
experiment, all the participants were asked to first finish an input task — with the help
of a list of new words and in 10 minutes, either reading a 400-word passage or listening
to the same passage 3-4 times. Next, the participants were required to perform an output
task — either writing a 200-word summary of the passage in 10 minutes or interactively
retelling the passage in 5 minutes by using the 15 target words. Immediately after the
experiment, the participants received a vocabulary test and were tested again three weeks
later. The results of the study showed that listening input had equal effects to reading input
on incidental vocabulary acquisition. The finding was accounted for by the condition of
repeated listening (at least three times within 10 minutes for the two listening groups),
which negated the disadvantage of not being able to read the passages, along with the
fact that the participants were allowed to consult a list of the target words while listening,
which provided the participants with both auditory and visual stimulus (sound and image
of a word) and therefore drew more of the participants’ attention to the target words. Wang
et al. thus claimed that such while-listening support as providing a wordlist and output
tasks like interaction or writing can aid students in achieving vocabulary acquisition as
effectively as or even more effectively than reading does. However, it should be noted here
that the tasks in the study involved both input and output tasks, and thus might lead to
different results from those that only involved input tasks.
Chang, Wang and Liu (2013) studied 30 English-major freshmen at a university in
China. The students were involved in either some listening or reading tasks and incidental
acquisition from these tasks was compared in such vocabulary aspects as form, meaning
and production. In the study, 20 selected low frequency words were put into two reading
passages and two listening passages, each about 500-word-long with five target words. The
target words occurred twice in the listening passages but differently (from 1-4 times) in
the reading passages. Each of the four passages was followed by a comprehension task. A
revised VKS was employed as the pre-test and a set of post-tests were used to examine the
participants’ vocabulary knowledge after the experiment. In consistence with the findings
of Vidal (2011), the study results of Chang and his colleagues showed that while listening
also had some positive effects on vocabulary gains in form and meaning, reading could
better facilitate vocabulary acquisition in word form, meaning as well as production.
Although the study made an attempt to investigate incidental acquisition in different
aspects of vocabulary knowledge, the results of the comparison between the listening
and reading input modes were made less convincing due to the fact that the target words
occurred differently in the listening texts and the reading passages.
The studies reviewed above, despite the inconsistent findings, point out equally
promising effects of listening input on incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, a few

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defects in the research designs made the results less convincing. (1) The bigger the gap of
time between the vocabulary pre-test and the activities, the less reliable the results of the
pre-test would become. In Vidal’s study, the pre-test was some days before the activities,
and no pre-test was reported in the research of Wang et al. (2012). As for Chang and his
colleagues (2013), there was no mention of the time gap between the pre-test and the
activities. (2) Any repetition of the experiment procedure may result in the participants’
conscious noticing of the vocabulary test that would follow. Vidal’s study took four
weeks, during which the participants were given either three lectures or three readings on
different days. Therefore, there may be good chances for the students to, from the second
round of the experiment on, pay conscious attention to some vocabulary items for the
specific purpose of the following vocabulary test, which consequently would result in some
quasi incidental acquisition. (3) The difference of time spent by varied input modes would
make the comparison of incidental vocabulary acquisition between them meaningless. In
the study of Wang and his associates (2012), the R-C and L-C groups spent 20 minutes to
finish the tasks, while the other two groups (R-I and L-I) took 15 minutes to finish their
tasks. Moreover, there was no mention of the time spent in the study by Chang and his
colleagues (2013).
Given these defects, when the present research design and method are concerned,
the following cautions have been taken into consideration. (1) The gap of time between
the vocabulary pre-test and the language activities should be kept to minimum to avoid
the participants having any likely contact with the target words. (2) Any repetition of
the experiment procedure should be carefully designed or simply avoided to ensure the
acquisition is incidental. (3) The time taken by different input modes should be kept equal
to achieve more convincing comparison data.

3. Research design and method

3.1 Research questions

The present study, with a pre/post-test design, attempts to compare the vocabulary
acquisition effects of reading input and listening input. In addition, in pedagogical
consideration, this study also attempts to investigate the facilitating functions of such
listening conditions as rich contextual clues and repeated listening on vocabulary
acquisition. With the two purposes illustrated, the present study aims to find answers to
the following two research questions. (1) How do the effects of reading input and listening
input compare on incidental acquisition in vocabulary form, meaning, and production?
(2) What effects do such conditions as rich context clues and repeated listening have on
incidental vocabulary acquisition?

3.2 Participants

The participants of the study were 88 freshmen at the age of 17 to 19 and enrolled in an

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English course at a university in northeastern China. English as a foreign language (EFL)

was a compulsory subject. Before entering university, they had received at least six years
of formal English instruction and thus were considered to be at a pre-intermediate to
intermediate level of language proficiency. The participants were using the same course
materials and following the same syllabus in their usual classes. The participants were
enrolled in two intact classes and were thus divided into a Listening Group (n = 47) and a
Reading Group (n = 41), and the difference between the two groups’ language proficiency
was not evident from a previous term-end examination (t(86) = 3.514, p = 0.582).

3.3 Instruments

The instruments for the study were composed of two listening activities, two reading
activities and some vocabulary tests. In the activities, the listening passages were two
450-word-long dialogic texts (“A Report of a Sales Manager” and “A TV Program on
Different Types of Working Dogs”) and the reading passages were two 950-word-long
descriptive texts, in the same content to the listening passages. The listening passages were
read and recorded at a moderate speed by two native English speakers. (According to Ellis
(1994, p. 274), a moderate speech rate is 143-164 words per minute or 270 syllables per
minute.) All the listening passages were pre-checked by other native-English EFL teachers.
To ensure that the participants’ attention was on the main activities and to check their
understanding of the passages, each of the four passages was followed by a comprehension
task. To be more specific, after each listening passage, an information-transfer task (that
is, using information in a text to complete a chart or table) was administered to check the
participants’ listening comprehension, and after each reading passage were five multiple-
choice questions to check their reading comprehension. The highest possible score for the
two information transfer tasks and the ten comprehension questions was ten marks, and
the participants got one mark for each correct answer to the task or question.
A pilot study revealed that the participants in the Reading Group generally spent about
15 minutes to finish one reading activity, i.e., reading one passage and then answering five
questions, and in the same period of time the participants in the Listening Group could
listen to a passage three times and then finish the after-listening information-transfer task.
Ten words of low frequency (Cobb, 2005) were chosen as the target words for the
incidental vocabulary acquisition study, selected on the basis that they were unlikely to be
previously known and which were also proved by the pilot study to be scarcely known by
the participants. As previously mentioned, the two listening passages were about a sales
report and an introduction to working dogs, and the two reading passages were similar in
content. Therefore, any two passages with the similar content shared the same five target
words, and each word occurred twice in the same passage. In a pedagogical view, to enable
the participants to be exposed to sufficient information about the target words, when the
passages were written, sufficient contextual clues were provided in which concepts were
purposefully repeated for clarification. For example, “At the start of the year I felt very
optimistic for our company. I felt we had a good chance of having an excellent year.”
Two types of vocabulary tests were administered in this study, a pre-test and a battery

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of post-tests. The vocabulary pre-test was a revised VKS of Paribakht and Wesche (1997).
In the test, a list of 20 words (composed of the 10 target words for incidental vocabulary
acquisition study and 10 distracters) was given to the participants to self-report their
knowledge in form, meaning and production/use before the listening/reading activities.
Any correct answer (i.e., the pronunciation or Pinyin, meaning or sentence, but not the
√ or ×) would be given a score. Table 1 presents a sample of the pre-test. It should be
noted that, in consideration of the participants’ limited ability of producing the correct
pronunciation of some word items, they were also allowed to write Pinyin instead of
the required phonetic transcription. Another issue worthy to be noticed is the fact that
some smart students can produce a sentence embedded with a target word without even
knowing its meaning. Therefore, when the pre-test was delivered, the researcher gave the
participants a specific precaution that any ambiguous sentence in which the meaning of
the word item was not clearly expressed would not get a score.

Table 1. A sample of the vocabulary pre-test

If √, the I know the If √, it
I can read the I can use the If √, please make a
pronunciation meaning of the means ____
Word Item word. word. sentence with the
or Pinyin of the word. (in English
√ or × √ or × word.
word is √ or × or Chinese).
optimistic [ ]
gospel [ ]
…… [ ]

The vocabulary post-tests included a production test, a form test, and a meaning test,
and they were administered to the participants immediately after the listening/reading
activities. To avoid a learning effect from one test to another, the post-tests were delivered
separately in an order of production, form and meaning. There were 10 questions in each
vocabulary post-test, and each question focused on one target word. The highest possible
score was 10 marks. The participants got one mark with each correct answer to the
questions of the post-tests.
The production test was a recall test to measure the participants’ ability to produce
the target words. Ten sentences were chosen from the passages and presented with the
target words removed. In the test, the participants were asked to fill in the blanks with the
exact words from the passages. For example, “But we ended with stronger sales than we
expected and I am very ___ for next year.”
The form test was a recognition test to check if the participants were able to recognize
the form of the target words, each of the target words was put in a wordlist with four words
similar in spelling, and the participants were asked to mark out what they read/heard from the
passages (Chang & Wang, 2015). For example, “declare–decline–declaim–incline-reclaim.”
Following Read’s (2000) Matching Items, the meaning test aimed to check if the
participants were able to recognize the meaning of the target words. In the test, the
participants were asked to choose three words (including a target word) from the left
column and properly match their numbers with their synonyms or definitions in the right
column. For example,

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1. complicated
2. chemical ______ exceptional; higher
3. optimistic ______ difficult and complex
4. advanced ______ expecting good things
5. stable

3.4 Procedure of the experiment

The experiment took approximately one hour and was executed in the following
order:

Step 1: All the participants finished the vocabulary pre-test before the activities. (12 minutes)
Step 2: The participants in the Reading Group finished reading the first passage and answered
the comprehension questions, and meanwhile the participants in the Listening Group
finished listening to the first passage three times and completed the first information-
transfer task. (15 minutes)
Step 3: The participants in the Reading Group finished reading the second passage and
answered the comprehension questions, and meanwhile the participants in the
Listening Group finished listening to the second passage three times and completed
the second information-transfer task. (15 minutes)
Step 4: The teacher collected all the materials of the activities from the participants. (2
minutes)
Step 5: The teacher delivered the vocabulary post-test in production to check the participants’
production knowledge of the 10 target words after the activities. (6 minutes)
Step 6: The teacher delivered the vocabulary post-test in form to check the participants’ form
knowledge of the 10 target words after the activities. (6 minutes)
Step 7: The teacher delivered the vocabulary post-test in meaning to check the participants’
meaning knowledge of the 10 target words after the activities. (6 minutes)

3.5 Data collection

To collect data in the study, measures of vocabulary acquisition were obtained from the
vocabulary pre- and post-tests. In the form of percentage, the pre-test rate of a certain
target word was calculated from the whole group’s vocabulary pre-test scores of the word
divided by the number of the participants in the group, and the post-test rate of a certain
target word was obtained in the same way. Thus the difference between the post-test rate
and the pre-test rate of a certain target word would be the acquisition rate of the word.

4. Data analysis and findings

Table 2, in terms of three vocabulary knowledge aspects (form, meaning, and production),
presents the two groups’ pre-test rates, post-test rates and acquisition rates of the ten target

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words as a whole.
Table 2 shows that the Reading Group has a small form pre-test rate of 26.1%, but an
impressive post-test rate of 80.5%, resulting in a high acquisition rate of 54.4%. A similar
case happens in the acquisition of meaning, with a pre-test rate of 24.4%, a post-test rate of
58.5%, and thus an acquisition rate of 34.1%. These results indicate that reading activities
help vocabulary acquisition in both form and meaning, especially in the aspect of form,
which is in agreement with previous research findings of Pigada and Schmitt (2006),
Brown et al. (2008) and Chang et al. (2013).

Table 2. Pre-test rates (PrR), post-test rates (PoR) and acquisition rates (AR)
Form Meaning Production
PrR PoR AR PrR PoR AR PrR PoR AR

Reading Group 26.1% 80.5% 54.4% 24.4% 58.5% 34.1% 6.6% 13.2% 6.6%
Listening Group 18.5% 39.1% 20.6% 17.4% 50.4% 33.0% 5.1% 3.8% -1.3%

In the same way, it is presented in Table 2 that the Listening Group has a form
acquisition rate of 20.6% and a meaning acquisition rate of 33%, a result consistent
with the findings of Schmitt (2008), who also claimed that listeners acquire vocabulary
knowledge in a specific order, which is, listeners acquire lexical forms first, and with the
repetition of the words, they begin to build form-meaning links. Though this study is not
able to testify the listeners’ acquisition order proposed by Schmitt, it justifies that learners
have more gains, as a by-product of listening activities, in word meaning than in form (33%
vs. 20.6%).
Concerning the word production knowledge, it can be easily seen from Table 2 that
the participants’ acquisition is rather minimal, and the fact that the learners largely failed
to develop productive control over the target words may lead to a conclusion that exposure
to the target words even six times (as was in the Listening Group, three times of listening,
twice in each listening) is still insufficient to ensure productive knowledge, which is
consistent to what is noted by Schmitt,

“While it is true that the form–meaning link is the first and most essential lexical aspect
which must be acquired, and may be adequate to allow recognition, a learner needs to know
much more about lexical items, particularly if they are to be used productively.”(2008, p. 333)

To examine the differences between the two groups, independent samples t-tests were
employed and the inter-group differences in form, meaning, and production are separately
shown in Tables 3, 4 and 5.

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Table 3. Comparison of the inter-group vocabulary acquisition differences in form pre-

and post-tests
Listening Reading
(n=47) (n=41) MD t(86) p
M SD M SD
Pre-test 1.85 2.16 2.61 2.65 -.76 -1.48 .14
Post-test 3.91 2.46 7.90 1.80 -3.99 -8.76 .00

As is shown in Table 3, there is a moderate difference in the pre-test (t(86) = -1.48,

p = 0.14), but a significant inter-group difference is shown in the post-test (t(86) = -8.76,
p = 0.00), which indicates that the Reading Group has gained significantly much more
form knowledge from the reading activities than the Listening Group has acquired from
the listening activities.

Table 4. Comparison of the inter-group vocabulary acquisition differences in meaning

pre- and post-tests
Listening
(n=47) Reading
MD t(86) p
(n=41)
M SD
Pre-test 1.83 1.43 2.37 1.32 -.54 -1.82 .07
Post-test 4.96 2.31 5.71 2.10 -.75 -1.58 .12

Table 4 shows that the inter-group difference in the pre-test (t(86) = -1.82,
p = 0.07), though not reaching a significant level yet (p < 0.05), is already quite close to
being significant. Nevertheless, in the post-test, the difference has grown insignificant
(t(86) = -1.58, p = 0.12). In other words, before the activities the students in the Listening
Group were disadvantageously different in meaning from their reading peers, but after the
activities, the inter-group difference has become less obvious, and this seems to suggest
that the listening participants gained more meaning knowledge than their reading peers
after the activities.

Table 5. Comparison of the inter-group vocabulary acquisition differences in production

pre- and post-tests
Listening
(n=47) Reading
MD t(86) p
(n=41)
M SD
Pre-test .60 .83 .61 .86 -.01 -.08 .94
Post-test .26 .57 1.56 1.90 -1.30 -4.50 .00

Similar to Table 3, Table 5 shows no significant inter-group difference in the pre-test

(t(86) = -0.08, p = 0.94), but a significant inter-group difference in the post-test (t(86) =
-4.50, p = 0.00), indicating that the students in the Reading Group have gained, though
minimal, significantly much more production knowledge from the reading activities than
their listening peers have acquired from the listening activities.

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5. Discussion
Not surprisingly, the study shows the reasonably advantageous effects of reading input
on incidental vocabulary acquisition, which is in consistence with the findings of many
previous studies (e.g., Brown et al., 2008；Chang et al., 2013；Ellis & Chang, 2016).
Printed materials are ideal media for vocabulary acquisition (Ellis, 1995). During the
process of reading, when students meet unknown words, especially when the unfamiliar
words make understanding difficult, students can attend to the words repeatedly from the
printed texts and infer their meanings from the contexts where the unknown words are
embedded. In other words, students can profit more from written texts over which they
have more control, and they can “dwell upon words they cannot understand and backtrack
if necessary” (Vidal, 2011, p. 243). To summarize, reading input mode creates for students
repeated access to unknown words, which helps students consequently acquire vocabulary
knowledge in word form and meaning, and to a greater extent, some initial and basic
productive knowledge of vocabulary.
The study also finds that many participants in the Listening Group gain fair word
knowledge from the listening activities. In other words, they can achieve to both listen-
to-comprehend (passages) and listen-to-learn (words) when they perform the listening
tasks. While the participants listen, they complete the information transfer tasks by
identifying the information required. At the same time they are able to attend to at least
some of the target words, notice the form, and use the context to establish a form-meaning
link. However, because the requirement to dual task (passage and words) of the listening
activities is demanding, the participants’ acquired knowledge of the target words is quite
shallow as reflected in the failure to develop productive knowledge. This is not surprising
given that the main aim of the activities is to listen for comprehension and the activities
themselves are not directly drawing the students’ attention to the target words.
It is worth noting that the Listening Group developed nearly equal acquisition of
meaning knowledge to their peers in the Reading Group, and to a lesser degree, they
could recognize the form of the target words. This can be accounted for by the fact of
repeated listening to the texts and rich target word contexts, which has, to some extent,
compensated for the listening group’s disadvantage of not being able to read the passages.
As findings in previous studies (e.g., Chang, 2012; Ellis & Chang, 2016; O’Bryan, 2010)
indicate, text repetition aids comprehension. Rost (2011) claimed that when listeners
meet with difficulties in language processing, they cannot use top-down strategies, but
only rely on compensation strategies. However, according to Goh (2008), if listeners have
the opportunity of access to the same material for a second or even a third time, they are
liable to reprocess what they fail to understand and have to omit in the first listening. By
clarifying the propositions and adding more details to the initial and partial understanding
from the first exposure, they can increase their comprehension of the material.
Learners’ being able to make use of the contexts to infer the target word meaning is
another key reason. The contextual clues embedded in the listening passages are designed
to help the participants to work out the meanings of the target words. When these
unknown words make comprehension difficult, the listeners are able to fall back on the

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contextual clues and thus make connections between form and meaning of the words.

6. Conclusion and implication

A clear finding from the study is that the Reading Group has general acquisition advantage
over the Listening Group in terms of all the three vocabulary aspects of form, meaning
and production. Surprisingly, the Listening Group demonstrates nearly equal meaning
acquisition to the Reading Group. Concerning facilitating vocabulary acquisition through
listening, the study points to the importance of increasing opportunity for learners to
process listening input with rich contextual clues through task repetition.
It might be argued that text repetition, as was designed in the study, is pedagogic and
not listening in real life. In other words, repeating a text might help learners comprehend
a specific text but will not help them become better listeners (Ellis & Chang, 2016,
p. 148). In fact, repeated listening (e.g., viewing and listening to the same film or TV
program repeatedly) also occurs in real-life contexts, and such learning opportunities
are often enlisted in good language learning scenarios. Also, repeated listening can help
build listening proficiency by contributing to the development of linguistic proficiency.
For example, as learners’ lexicon grows, so will their ability to process text in real time.
Therefore, it would be unwise to dismiss text repetition in either teaching or testing
listening ability (Ellis & Chang, 2016, p. 148).
The study has also pointed out the possibility and practicality of providing both
listening practice and input for vocabulary learning. As is shown in the study, listening
to learn and listening to comprehend can occur incidentally when learners have time to
process the input, though they involve different processes. Therefore, there seems to be
good reasons for listening activities to be designed to have a dual goal of comprehension
and vocabulary development.

7. Limitations
Given that L2 readers generally have the advantage over L2 listeners of revisiting the
context clues in a passage for meaning of unknown words, and that the speed for listening
is usually faster than that of reading, and this will usually result in more listening than
reading within the same amount of time, in the present study, rich contextual clues and
repeated listening were two specifically designed conditions for the listening group.
Nevertheless, it cannot be denied that this imbalance between reading and listening input
was administered at a risk to make listening and reading less comparable. Therefore, future
research designs should try to reach a balance between the two input modalities.
Moreover, the study used a revised VKS as the pre-test for the participants to report
their general knowledge of the target words under study, while the post-test were a battery
of three different tests to separately examine the participants’ knowledge in vocabulary
production, meaning and form. The fact that the vocabulary pre-test and the post-tests
are not equivalent in the study may make the direct comparison technically flawed and

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hence make the results less convincing. Additionally, percentages were used to compare
the results in the pre-test and the post-tests, an issue that future studies should also take
special precautions to avoid.

Acknowledgement
The authors would like to thank the two reviewers of the article for their valuable
comments. It should also be acknowledged that some of the research results were
previously reported by the authors in Foreign Language Education & Research (2017, Vol. 5,
No. 3, pp. 21-29).

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About the authors

Le ChANG is a professor of English at Shenyang Ligong University, and also an M.A.
supervisor (Applied Linguistics) at Bohai University. His research interests include
L2 vocabulary acquisition, L2 listening teaching and learning, and corpus for specific
purposes. His latest book published in 2017 is Metacognitive Strategy Study — Second
Language Listening Comprehension and Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition (Shanghai Jiao
Tong University Press). Email: gmwa@163.com

Juncai M A is an M.A. student (Applied Linguistics) at Bohai University, under the

supervision of professor Le Chang. His research efforts have focused on incidental
vocabulary acquisition. Email: jcma425@163.com

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 2018 年 4 月 中国应用语言学（英文） Apr. 2018
第 41 卷 第 2 期 Chinese Journal of Applied Linguistics Vol. 41 No. 2

中文提要
二语学习者在两种任务预备条件下行为的探索性研究
贝晓越  恒生管理学院
滕  锋  香港浸会大学............................................................................................................................127
任务型语言教学中的任务前预备研究，通常以量化而非质化方式进行。 然而，量化研
究较多注重任务预备的结果而非过程，从而导致学生在学习进程中的预备行为容易被忽视。
本研究尝试填补此方面空白，以访谈研究方法探索具体任务前预备行为，以及先前研究较
少触及的主题熟悉度问题。这两个因素构成了 Bui（2014）所提出的任务外和任务内预备理
论。八位香港本科学生完成了一项熟悉以及一项不熟悉的口语任务，并在任务后接受访谈。
尽管此前研究的部分结果得到证实，本研究还是发现了三项较新成果 ：第一，先前相关研
究都集中在任务预备的心理语言学过程，但我们发现，大部分学生报告任务预备可减少焦
虑并增强自信，显示任务预备在情感层面的影响。其次，即使先前研究显示，任务前预备
提高了流利度和复杂度而非准确度，学生的自我报告却反映了他们对准确度的重视。再次，
主题熟悉度可以在无任务前准备的情况下，部分填补任务前准备所起的作用。基于研究结果，
本文还讨论了相关教学启示。
关键词：任务前准备；主题熟悉度；任务预备；流利度；准确度；复杂度

英语学习的内外部动机——自我效能感的中介作用
马利红  杜宵丰  刘  坚  北京师范大学中国基础教育质量监测协同创新中心
马利红  天津职业技术师范大学外国语学院....................................................................................150
以往研究关注动机信念对外语能力的独立影响，很少有实证研究探索动机信念对外语
能力的共同影响。本研究通过自我效能感的中介作用探讨学生的内外部动机对外语能力的
影响机制。1036 名八年级学生参加英语学业水平测试和动机信念调查。结构方程模型结果
显示，内部动机可以直接影响外语水平，也可通过自我效能感的部分中介作用影响外语水平，
而外部动机对外语水平只有小幅直接影响，性别在中介模型中并无调节作用。研究结果表
明内部动机可以通过提高自我效能感进而提高学生的外语水平。研究发现对自我决定理论
的发展有理论贡献，对外语教师也有一定的启示意义。
关键词：内部动机；外部动机；自我效能感；中介效应；自我决定理论
备注：本论文为全国教育科学“十三五”规划2016年度教育部重点课题（课题编号DHA160310）的阶
段性研究成果。

听力输入与阅读输入中的英语附带词汇习得对比研究
常  乐  沈阳理工大学外国语学院
马军财  渤海大学外国语学院..............................................................................................................169
本研究对比了听力与阅读两种不同输入条件下 88 名非英语专业的中国大学新生在英
语词汇的词形、词义和应用方面的附带习得效果。实验中的所有听力或阅读文本均包含 5
个通过词汇知识前测显示学生基本陌生的低频词汇。在听力组（47 人）和阅读组（41 人）
分别完成听力任务（对话收听 + 信息转移练习）或阅读任务（文章阅读 + 多项选择题）之

ISSN 2192-9505 Chinese J. of Appl. Ling. 41-2 (2018), pp. 256-258   DOI 10.1515/cjal-2018-0020
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© FLTRP, Walter de Gruyter, Cultural and Education Section British Embassy
 中文提要

后，实验后测显示阅读组在词形、词义和应用等三个词汇知识侧面的附带习得效果均优于
听力组，但是听力组在重复收听和丰富语境线索的条件下，可以习得几乎与阅读组相同的
词义知识。研究从整体上证实了在附带词汇习得方面，阅读输入相对听力输入存在显著优势；
同时从促进听力中词汇习得的角度考虑，指出了借助重复和丰富语境为学生增加处理听力
输入机会的重要性。
关键词：附带词汇习得，听力，阅读，输入
备注：本 研究得到辽宁省高等 教育学会“十二五”高校 外 语教学改革专项2 015 年度重点课 题
（WYZD150040）以及渤海大学博士启动研究课题（0515BQ003）的资助，特此致谢！

量入为出——基于需求分析的本科阶段学术用途英语课程设计
都建颖  华中科技大学外国语学院
Jie SHI  （日本）电气通信大学英语系..............................................................................................182
需求分析是学术用途英语（EAP）的核心主张，然而在教学实践中却未得到充分实施，
从而使教学效果不尽人意。本研究提出了 EAP 需求分析综合框架（CEAPNA），阐释了如
何以该框架为依托，设计以学习为中心的 EAP 课程。华中地区某高校工程专业的 452 名本
科生和 82 名教师参与了 CEAPN 需求问卷调查，所得数据与笔者的七年教学反思进行三方
验证。结果表明，全面准确地进行学习者需求分析必须依靠多个信息渠道。同时，学习者
需求的独特性要求 EAP 教师从多个维度进行需求分析，从而保证语言、认知和情感因素在
EAP 课程中的合理权重。笔者希望通过对需求分析进行理论阐释和实际操作，为识别和满
足学习者需求提供理论框架和参考数据。
关键词： 学习者需求综合分析；学术用途英语；课程设计；本科生；中国
备注：本论文为国家社会科学基金项目（17BYY109）的阶段性研究成果。

汉语施用结构加工的ERP研究
周长银  张玉欢  北京第二外国语学院英语学院...........................................................................204
动词-论元关系是句子加工中句法-语义互动关系的重要方面。该领域现有的研究主要
关注句子中动词同其核心论元之间的关系。但是汉语中却存在一种动词非核心论元提升到
核心论元位置的施用结构。本文运用事件相关电位技术研究汉语中的施用结构与典型的受
事宾语结构在句子加工方面的差异。实验要求被试对汉语中的词组(含干扰性的假词组)进行
判断。实验结果显示，本实验在施用结构中发现了分布于双侧脑区的N400效应，与现有研
究中论元类型和论元数目违反所导致的N400效应相类似。但与现有的动词-论元关系的ERP
研究所不同的是：与典型的受事宾语结构相比，汉语施用结构呈现出一种持续的脑前部正
波。这一波形在动词-论元关系加工研究中较为罕见，反映的是新提升论元与动词整合的困
难以及汉语施用结构合格性检查的进行性特点，与汉语非受事论元认知研究中发现的转喻
机制一致，反映了在汉语这种意合语言中语义（题元角色）在句法-语义界面中会发挥了更
大的作用。
关键词：持续脑前部正波；汉语施用结构；ERP；动词-论元关系；N400

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