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The Korean Association for the Study of English Language and Linguistics
[ Article ]
Korea Journal of English Language and Linguistics - Vol. 21, No. 0, pp.1182-1195
ISSN: 1598-1398 (Print) 2586-7474 (Online)
Print publication date 31 Jan 2021
Received 17 Oct 2021 Revised 15 Nov 2021 Accepted 27 Nov 2021
DOI: https://doi.org/10.15738/kjell.21..202111.1182

The Effects of Watching an Academic Lecture on Incidental Vocabulary Learning

EunYoung Kang
Assistant Professor, Division of Liberal Arts, Kongju National University 1223-24 Cheonan Daero, Seobuk-gu, Cheonan-si, Chungnam, Korea, Tel: (041) 521-9682 ekang@kingju.ac.kr


© 2021 KASELL All rights reserved
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons License, which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Abstract

Of the many academic materials, lectures can be a great source for improving L2 learners’ vocabulary because they are likely to repeat topic-specific words in various contexts. However, whether and how such repeated exposure to topic-related words through lectures translates into L2 vocabulary learning remains largely unexplored. In addition, few studies have explored how learner-related factors such as prior vocabulary knowledge influence learning gains. This study investigates how watching an academic lecture affects L2 incidental vocabulary learning. It also analyzes the relationship between L2 learners’ vocabulary size and learning gains. Ninety undergraduate English-as-a foreign language (EFL) students were assigned to either the treatment group (n = 44), which watched an academic lecture containing ten target words, or the control group (n = 46), which only took a pretest and posttest of target words. The findings revealed that watching a lecture resulted in significant vocabulary gains. In addition, vocabulary gain appeared to be influenced by the participants’ vocabulary size.

Keywords:

incidental vocabulary learning, second language learning, English for academic purposes

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