Vocabulary and Listening

HILDE VAN ZEELAND

University of Nottingham, UK

Second language (L2) listening has received relatively little research attention (Vandergrift,
2007), and this is also the case in the field of vocabulary. Considerably fewer vocabulary
studies have been conducted in the context of listening than reading. However, the existing
research has emphasized the reciprocal importance of listening and vocabulary: vocabulary
knowledge is a prerequisite for listening comprehension, and listening can serve as a useful
source for vocabulary acquisition. This entry provides an overview of the existing research
by considering both points in turn: (a) the role of vocabulary knowledge in listening
(their relationship, the vocabulary requirements for listening, and vocabulary recognition
in listening); and (b) the acquisition of vocabulary from listening.

The Relationship Between L2 Vocabulary Knowledge

and Listening Comprehension

Although much research has explored the role of vocabulary and second language (L2)
reading comprehension, and generally shown a strong relationship between the two (e.g.,
Albrechtsen, Haastrup, & Henriksen, 2004), considerably less research has focused on the
role of vocabulary knowledge in L2 listening. The few studies that have been carried
out in this realm have indicated that vocabulary knowledge is an important factor in L2
listening ability. Stæhr (2009), for example, found strong relationships between learners’
listening comprehension and both their vocabulary size (the number of word families
known) and their depth of vocabulary knowledge (how well individual words are known).
However, a few comparative studies have indicated that vocabulary knowledge correlates
more strongly with reading than listening ability. Mecartty (2000) found that vocabulary
knowledge explained a larger amount of variance in reading than in listening, and Stæhr
(2008) found that learners’ vocabulary size correlated more strongly with their reading
comprehension (0.83) than with their listening comprehension (0.69). Possible reasons for
this smaller role of vocabulary knowledge in listening are discussed by van Zeeland and
Schmitt (2012). Overall, then, research shows that vocabulary knowledge is an important
predictor of L2 listening ability, but also suggests that a wide variety of factors besides
vocabulary knowledge affect listening ability.

Lexical Coverage and L2 Listening Comprehension

One central question regarding the relationship between vocabulary knowledge and
language comprehension is: How much vocabulary do we need to know in order to
achieve successful comprehension? This question has been the focus of various L2 studies
over the last few decades. Such studies measure learners’ comprehension in relation to the
percentage of words they know in a text (also referred to as “lexical coverage”). Researchers
have raised the question whether learners need to reach a certain degree of lexical coverage
The Encyclopedia of Applied Linguistics, Edited by Carol A. Chapelle.
© 2013 Blackwell Publishing Ltd. Published 2013 by Blackwell Publishing Ltd.
DOI: 10.1002/9781405198431.wbeal1430
2 vocabulary and listening

in order to successfully comprehend a text. For example, can learners understand a text if
they know 85 percent of the words? Or do they need to know 95 percent or even more?
This question is important, because on the basis of such a coverage figure we can
establish what vocabulary size learners need in order to achieve successful comprehension.
Text analysis can be used to identify how many word families (groups of semantically
related words with the same root, e.g., nation, nationalize, nationalization, etc.) are needed to
reach a given lexical coverage degree (e.g., a vocabulary size of 3,000 word families could
reach 95% lexical coverage). Thus, if we know what lexical coverage degree is required for
comprehension, and we know a learner’s vocabulary size, we can make a good estimation
of the likelihood of that learner understanding a certain text.
Most lexical coverage research has been carried out in the written mode, that is, it
has explored what degree of lexical coverage is required to achieve successful reading
comprehension. One much-cited reading study was carried out by Hu and Nation (2000).
They presented L2 readers with a short text with varying degrees of pseudo-words and
investigated how this affected their text comprehension. The results suggested the required
coverage for reading comprehension to be around 98 percent. More recently, Schmitt, Jiang
and Grabe (2011) explored L2 readers’ comprehension at each percentage point of coverage
between 90 percent and 100 percent, which revealed a linear coverage–comprehension
relationship. This suggests that the lexical coverage required depends on the comprehension
level aimed for.
In the realm of listening, Stæhr (2009) analyzed the relationship between vocabulary
knowledge and listening comprehension. Based on learners’ vocabulary size, Stæhr calcu-
lated what lexical coverage degree they would likely achieve in several listening passages,
and tested their comprehension of these passages. Results showed that listeners’ compre-
hension increased as coverage increased, indicating a linear relationship between the two,
with 98 percent lexical coverage generally leading to adequate comprehension. However,
many learners achieved adequate comprehension with lower coverage degrees. Stæhr
emphasized that there was considerable variation in the comprehension scores, indicating
that a range of factors besides vocabulary knowledge contributed to listening success. Van
Zeeland and Schmitt (2012) manipulated the lexical coverage of several listening passages
by inserting pseudo-words and explored how this affected L1 and L2 listeners’ comprehen-
sion. They found that both listener groups comprehended the passages surprisingly well
with only 90 percent coverage. However, L2 listeners showed a great deal of variation in
their comprehension scores at this coverage level, indicating that this is not an appropriate
coverage target for all learners. Instead, the authors suggest 95 percent as a better figure.
However, if very high comprehension is required, if a more difficult text is used, or both,
higher coverage figures (such as 98%) are advisable.
So what vocabulary size do L2 learners need for successful listening comprehension?
Clearly, this depends on the comprehension, and hence the lexical coverage degree, aimed
for. Corpus analyses of spoken language (Adolphs & Schmitt, 2003; Nation, 2006) have
indicated that a vocabulary size of 2,000–3,000 word families is needed to reach 95
percent coverage (sufficient for most learners to understand informal narrative), while
6,000–7,000 word families are required to reach 98 percent coverage (appropriate for higher
comprehension requirements, more difficult texts, or both).
It should be emphasized that these numbers are by no means conclusive. Lexical coverage
and vocabulary size targets (and the relationship between these two) depend on various
factors. One of these has been mentioned before, namely the comprehension level aimed
for. Another factor is the lexical characteristics of the text. Academic lectures, for example,
contain technical terms and other low-frequency vocabulary, leading to higher vocabulary
size requirements than other genres such as informal narrative. Another factor is learners’
background knowledge, which plays a significant role in listening comprehension (Macaro,
 vocabulary and listening 3

Vanderplank, & Graham, 2005). While a low lexical coverage may hinder comprehension
greatly in contexts where the topic is unfamiliar, texts with more familiar topics may enable
better inferencing which can compensate for a lack of vocabulary knowledge. The role of
background knowledge in relation to lexical coverage has been investigated in the reading
context by Schmitt et al. (2011). Perhaps the most important factor, however, is the learner
and his or her various listening skills and strategies. The variation in comprehension found
by Stæhr (2009) and van Zeeland and Schmitt (2012) indicates that some L2 listeners simply
deal better with unknown vocabulary than others. This suggests that some make better
use of other knowledge sources and listening strategies to compensate for this lack of
vocabulary knowledge. Research has identified several individual learner factors besides
vocabulary knowledge that affect listening comprehension, such as topic familiarity,
pragmatic knowledge, metacognitive knowledge (learners’ awareness of the cognitive
processes involved in listening and the ability to monitor, regulate, and orchestrate those),
L1 listening ability, sound discrimination ability, and working memory span (Vandergrift,
2011). Such knowledge sources and strategies, and how effectively learners orchestrate
their use in the listening process, will affect how well they manage to compensate for
insufficient vocabulary knowledge.

Vocabulary Recognition in L2 Listening

From the studies discussed above it appears that word knowledge enables listening success.
But is it really safe to assume that L2 learners recognize all the words they “know” when they
listen to ongoing speech? Recent research has shown that this may not always be the case.
First, learners’ vocabulary knowledge likely differs between the written and the spoken
context: some words may be recognized in their written but not their spoken form, and
vice versa. Milton, Wade, and Hopkins (2010) directly compared L2 learners’ orthographic
and phonological vocabulary size and found that their orthographic vocabulary size was
larger (though these relative sizes differed between groups with different L1s). We should
therefore be careful not to presume that a learner’s vocabulary knowledge as found by
means of a written test is the same in the listening mode.
Moreover, there often is a difference between learners’ knowledge of isolated spoken
word forms and their knowledge of these same forms in continuous speech. Weber and
Scharenborg (2012) discuss three characteristics of spoken language that make online
spoken word recognition difficult: (a) words resemble each other, and short words may
be embedded in longer ones (e.g., rise contains rye and eye); (b) speech is highly variable,
and the same words may be realized differently depending on the speaker as well as the
phonological context in which the word occurs; (c) speech is transitory (requiring quick
online processing) and continuous (not providing clear boundaries between words).
Owing to such speech characteristics, L2 listeners often experience difficulties recognizing
vocabulary that they may otherwise know. Goh (2000) found that L2 learners consider lexical
segmentation, or the recognition of individual lexical items in speech, as one of the prime
obstacles to successful listening comprehension. Such low-level processing difficulties were
reported more by learners of lower listening ability than of higher listening ability. Field
(2008) analyzed the segmentation abilities of native and non-native listeners and found
that non-native listeners were less accurate in their lexical segmentation and recognition,
even though the words used in the task should have been familiar to them. These results
“underline the gap which often exists between knowledge and recognition” (Field, 2008,
p. 48). Clearly, these lexical segmentation and recognition difficulties can seriously hinder
L2 listening comprehension. The growing body of research in this area, mostly from the
4 vocabulary and listening

field of psycholinguistics, continues to increase our understanding of the difficulties L2

learners experience with spoken word recognition.

Vocabulary Acquisition From L2 Listening

The topic of incidental vocabulary acquisition, that is, learning words without being focused
on doing so, has been given considerably less research attention in the listening than in
the reading context. As this is traditionally a reading topic, most research to date has
measured the learning from listening in comparison to that from reading. A primary
interest has also been the effect of words’ frequency of occurrence, more specifically, how
often learners need to be exposed to a word in the input to acquire its meaning. Brown,
Waring, and Donkaewbua (2008) presented L2 learners with texts in the modes of reading,
reading-while-listening, and listening only, and tested their vocabulary knowledge gains.
Results showed that all three conditions led to learning, but that listening led to significantly
lower gains than the other two. Listeners needed more exposure to words than readers
for acquisition to take place. Vidal (2011) compared learners’ vocabulary acquisition from
reading and listening in the academic context and similarly found gains from both, but
lower gains and a smaller frequency effect in the listening mode than in the reading mode.
From these studies it thus appears that listening can be used for the incidental acquisition
of L2 vocabulary, but does not lead to very high gains, especially in comparison to reading.
It should be noted, however, that these studies measured only learners’ knowledge of the
form–meaning link (i.e., learners were asked to demonstrate they knew the meaning of
a word when given its form). There is of course much more to knowing a word. Recent
studies on incidental learning from reading (e.g., Webb, 2007) have shown that learners
can incidentally acquire knowledge of other components of vocabulary knowledge, such
as spelling, grammatical characteristics, and associations. It is likely that listening may also
serve well in enhancing learners’ knowledge of these and other knowledge aspects, as has
been hypothesized by listening researchers (Brown et al., 2008).
The field has also seen a growing interest in how technology can aid vocabulary
acquisition from listening. Findings indicate that learning from listening can be enhanced
through dynamic visual information. Techniques that have been found to aid learning are
multimedia vocabulary annotations (i.e., access to translations, sounds, and images) and
video with or without various types of textual support (Plass & Jones, 2005). Audio players
with variable speed playback can also be used to enhance learners’ vocabulary knowledge
as well as their listening fluency. As the L2 classroom and the individual language learner
make increasing use of these and other forms of technology, this is another fruitful area of
investigation. More empirical and longitudinal research is needed to gain understanding
of the effectiveness of different (multimedia) listening input types for the acquisition of
various vocabulary knowledge dimensions.

SEE ALSO: Spoken Word Recognition in Second Language Acquisition; Teaching Listening;
Technology and Listening; Vocabulary and Reading; Vocabulary Size in a Second Language;
Vocabulary and Speaking; Vocabulary and Writing

References
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Suggested Readings
Buck, G. (2001). Assessing listening. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press.
6 vocabulary and listening

Field, J. (2008). Listening in the language classroom. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University
Press.
Lund, R. J. (1991). A comparison of second language listening and reading comprehension. The
Modern Language Journal, 75(2), 196–204.
Milton, J. (2009). Measuring second language vocabulary acquisition. Bristol, England: Multilingual
Matters.
Nation, I. S. P. (2001). Learning vocabulary in another language. Cambridge, England: Cambridge
University Press.
Vandergrift, L., & Goh, C. C. M. (2012). Teaching and learning second language listening: Metacognition
in action. New York, NY: Routledge.
Vidal, K. (2003). Academic listening: A source of vocabulary acquisition? Applied Linguistics,
24(1), 56–89.