This article discusses the role of vocabulary learning in supporting multilingual students' participation in disciplinary practices and discourses in K-12 content-area classrooms. First, the authors discuss the strengths and limitations of incidental and intentional vocabulary learning. They then propose a new approach to vocabulary instruction in…

The incidental or implicit learning of vocabulary has long been a topic of interest in various disciplines. In studies on foreign language acquisition, reading is often the activity that researchers use to generate their findings. "Reading in a Foreign Language" has maintained its position at the forefront of this research, consistently…

Students in academic contexts are expected to engage with large amounts of reading and they frequently meet unknown words and phrases in those reading materials. Previous research has shown that second and foreign language learners can acquire some of the unknown vocabulary that they encounter during reading. However, these previous findings were…

Developing young children's vocabulary is essential for later reading success; thus, early childhood classrooms require a comprehensive vocabulary approach that teaches academic vocabulary. Yet even providing young children with child-friendly definitions of sophisticated words can be a challenge. First, the authors outline the components of a…

Second language (L2) learners comprehend more when they are prepared for novel vocabulary that they encounter in a text. Input-based incremental (IBI) vocabulary instruction (Barcroft, 2012) provides L2 instructors and learners with a means of achieving this goal by (a) presenting optimal input to learners at the right time during a…

Language researchers and teachers have long been interested in the timing of learning, and the distributed practice effect, whereby greater inter-session intervals result in longer retention, is well-known (Kim & Webb, 2022). Many L2 studies have focused on the intentional learning of lexis (Edmonds, Gerbier, Palasis, & Whyte, 2021),…

There has been a great deal of research on first language (L1) and second language (L2) learning through meaning-focused input since Nagy, Herman & Anderson's (1985) seminal study of incidental vocabulary learning through reading. Two strands of research within this area are incidental vocabulary learning through listening and guessing from…

While vocabulary development is mostly peripheral to entertainment or socialization, there are opportunities for explicit learning which can complement incidental learning. In fact, recent work based on usage-based language theories calls for a combination of inductive learning and explicit instruction (Ortega, 2015; Tyler & Ortega, 2018). A…

This paper describes a task-based activity used at the United States Military Academy, in their first- through third-semester Portuguese language sequence "Proficiencies" (Proficiências). The stand-alone task-based activity can be an effective tool in gaining foreign-language proficiency at even the lowest levels of classroom instruction…

Learning statistics requires learning the language of statistics. Statistics draws upon words from general English, mathematical English, discipline-specific English and words used primarily in statistics. This leads to many linguistic challenges in teaching statistics and the way in which the language is used in statistics creates an extra layer…

This book focuses on theory, research, and practice related to "lexical input processing" (lex-IP), an exciting field exploring how learners allocate their limited processing resources when exposed to words and lexical phrases in the input. Unit 1 specifies parameters of lex-IP research among other levels of input processing as well as…

"I was grabbed early [by vocabulary] and never let go. That's why it's difficult to explain why I enjoy working in this area. I just love doing it," said Paul Nation (in Coxhead, 2005, p. 46). How many people get grabbed by an area of research, teaching, and learning that continues to engage interest and cause excitement after 30 years? In this…

Vocabulary can no longer be said to be "a Cinderella topic", at least so far as its representation in other journals is concerned. Research articles on vocabulary learning and teaching now occur frequently and have been particularly well represented in recent issues of the North American research journal "Language Learning". While studies of…

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.…

Children's acquisition of vocabulary is essential for gains in reading comprehension and reading development. Struggling readers often do not make gains in their reading comprehension because they have a limited reading vocabulary. Enhancing the vocabulary development and growth for children who are experiencing reading difficulties enables them…