One of the major challenges for any L2 teacher is to integrate vocabulary components into a course. Determining what words to select in order to satisfy the goals of the course and what instructional methodology best suits the purpose of vocabulary learning are not easy tasks. Even more difficult is dealing with the formulaic terminology of a…

Recently vocabulary studies have mainly focused on two forms of vocabulary acquisition: incidental and intentional vocabulary acquisition. For incidental vocabulary acquisition, Task-induced Involvement Load Hypothesis (TILH) was put forward by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) to investigate the vocabulary tasks by comparing their levels of involvement…

The aim of this study is to analyze the effect of different schedules of repeated reading practice on intentional vocabulary learning, and constitutes a partial replication and extension of the authors' previous study on incidental vocabulary learning. Two groups of Taiwanese EFL learners (n = 72) engaged in five repeated reading sessions; one…

Television programs are a rich source of input for which we can utilize in vocabulary acquisition. With foreign language television programs becoming more accessible globally, there is the possibility to better use this input source for learning. Can we incorporate television viewing into classroom learning (intentional learning)? Or use it as a…

Emergentist, usage-based L2 research has witnessed that emphasizing formulaic sequences as entry points in meaning-based instructional contexts contributes to the development of linguistic comprehension and production. Related studies have thus far striven to find the most effective methods of highlighting these word strings. This study explored…

Although English and German are both Germanic languages, due to various historical changes, many of their cognates are no longer easily recognizable. This study examined whether knowledge of language history can be beneficial to learners when learning English-German cognates. Thirty-five English-speaking second language (L2) learners of…

This article explores the pedagogical practices used by high school teachers in integrating disciplinary and language knowledge in a multilingual context where English is the medium of instruction. Specifically, we explored the way high school teachers implement the English Across the Curriculum (EAC) strategy in their content subjects. EAC is an…

The article discusses an experiment that researched the intentional vs incidental ESP vocabulary uptake in two university groups of third year political science students and addresses the implications of using an authentic audiovisual material as an input text for an ESP course. The procedure of intentional vocabulary learning involved…

It has been commonly reported by teachers and learners the strong and positive relationship between lexis and reading comprehension. This claim has been usually grounded on experience. In consequence, this paper attempts to find research-based evidence to support the connection between lexis and reading comprehension. To do this, a review of 128…

This paper examines the development and effectiveness of a strategy that promotes rapid vocabulary retention among university students who are learning English as a second language. This approach to vocabulary acquisition is based on research that shows that activating implicit memory has a stronger effect than simply activating intentional…

Since the late '60s, the field of second language acquisition (SLA) has grown enormously. Throughout its development, SLA researchers have investigated a wide range of issues including the processes involved in second language learning, as well as the psycholinguistic, affective and social factors that influence its success or failure (Spada,…

The present review explores the meaning of the term 'incidental' in light of how incidental learning is framed, conceptualized, and operationalized in second language (L2) vocabulary research. Three interpretations of incidental vocabulary learning that seem to appear recurrently in the literature are presented and discussed along with examples of…

Most studies that have investigated the effects of instruction on the SLA of specific grammatical features have focused on intentional learning. This study investigated incidental acquisition by comparing the relative effects of two types of instruction--comprehension-based instruction (CBI) and production-based instruction (PBI)--on young…

Lexical competence constitutes a crucial aspect in L2 learning, since building a rich repository of words is considered indispensable for successful communication. CALL practitioners have experimented with various kinds of computer-mediated glosses to facilitate L2 vocabulary building in the context of incidental vocabulary learning. Intentional…

This article overviews current research on second language vocabulary learning. It concludes that a large vocabulary is necessary to function in English: 8000-9000 word families for reading, and perhaps as many as 5000-7000 families for oral discourse. In addition, a number of word knowledge aspects need to be learned about each lexical item.…