Prompted by the challenges faced by teachers in balancing grammar and content in English classes, coupled with the poor English proficiency of rural Odia medium school students, the study aimed to devise an intervention that could balance content and grammar, thereby enhancing the grammar competency and content comprehension of eighth-grade…

This study was to assess the spoken vocabulary knowledge and its role in incidental vocabulary learning from captioned television. The participants were a total of 87 minority students learning English as a foreign language in Australia. The breadth of their vocabulary knowledge was measured with a vocabulary size test, while the depth of their…

Purpose: The purpose of this study was to investigate the effects of word-related factors (i.e. frequency, range, dispersion and cognateness) on first-language English (L1E) readers' (n = 20) and second-language English (L2E) readers' (n = 20) incidental acquisition of vocabulary through the reading of an authentic novel.…

Providing glosses that explain the meanings of unknown words is a common method of promoting learners' learning of new words. Numerous studies have shown that compared with no-gloss condition, glosses benefit the learning of the meaning of new words. This study combines both online (i.e., eye-tracking) and offline (i.e., immediate vocabulary…

Previous studies on lexical focus on form (FonF) have mostly centred on FonF in reading with a few pre-selected lexical items. This study investigated the contribution of oral incidental FonF to developing learners' lexical knowledge in a free discussion EFL class. Incidental FonF was provided to 15 upper-intermediate learners who participated in…

In the late 1980s Batia Laufer worked with teachers who believed that to understand a text it was enough to understand 80% of the text's word tokens. In response, Laufer set out to calculate the minimal text coverage, i.e., percentage of running words in a text the reader should understand to comprehend it reasonably well. In 1992, she explored…

The present study examined two input modification techniques, namely lexical elaboration (LE) and typographical enhancement (TE), and the combination of these two (LE & TE) to seek the difference among them as far as incidental vocabulary learning through reading is concerned. Ninety six Iranian EFL students whose reading proficiency was at…

Morphological analysis and incidental learning are two vocabulary learning strategies that language learners may use in order to acquire the meanings of new words. To date, however, few studies have compared the effectiveness of these two strategies. Hence, the current study was carried out to compare the effect of morphological analysis and…

This article examines the influence of different reading conditions (i.e. reading only and reading with first language marginal glosses), number of word encounters (one, three, and seven) while reading, and combinations of these two variables on new word retention. This study considered a total of six possible combinations. Six groups of Chinese…

In the field of second language acquisition (SLA), a large base of research has shown the great influence of L2 reading on L2 vocabulary acquisition. Nevertheless, researchers have also found that acquiring new vocabulary happens rather gradually and in small amounts. Without altering the incidental nature of vocabulary acquisition through…

There is little research available on the incidental learning of figurative language from reading (e.g., Webb, Newton, & Chang, 2013). This study looked at collocations with both literal and figurative meanings, that is, duplex collocations (Macis & Schmitt, 2017a) and whether reading could enhance lexical knowledge of the figurative…

This article reports on a classroom-based experiment that tested the effects of three vocabulary teaching constructs (involvement load, spacing, and intentionality) on the learning of English verb-noun collocations--for example, "shelve a plan." Laufer and Hulstijn's (2001) "involvement load" predicts that the higher the…

Previous studies on dictionary consultation investigated mainly online dictionaries or simple pocket electronic dictionaries as they were commonly used among learners back then, yet the more updated mobile dictionaries were superficially investigated though they have already replaced the pocket electronic dictionaries. These studies are also…

Provision of multiple-choice (MC) glosses, which combines the advantages of glosses and inferring, has recently gained its share of supporters as a potential technique for enhancing L2 texts and increasing word gain for L2 learners. Upon taking an actual TOEFL, the participants underwent a vocabulary pretest to ensure that the target words were…

While researchers have examined the effectiveness of various online gloss types on incidental L2 vocabulary learning, little research on online gloss languages has been conducted. Previous attempts which compared the effects of L1 and L2 glosses have reported mixed results. To fill the gaps, this study examined the effectiveness of Chinese and…