Type of task, time-on-task and electronic dictionaries in incidental vocabulary acquisition

AbstractAcomputer-basedstudycomparedtheeffectofthreetasktypesonincidentalL2vocabulary learning, on task-induced amount of dictionary activity and time-on-task.Ninety-sixChineseESLstudentsreadatextcontainingtwelveunfamil-iar target items and performed one of the three tasks: a form-oriented produc-tion task, a form-orientedcomprehensiontaskor a meaning-orientedtask. Thetext was presentedon computer and the words could be looked up in electronicglosses. The results of immediate and delayed vocabulary tests showed thatthe two form-oriented tasks yielded better results than the meaning-orientedtask. There was no significant difference in time-on-task, but there was a sig-nificant difference in the amount of dictionary activity the tasks generated. Weconcluded, therefore, that an important factor determining task effectivenessfor vocabulary learning is the amount of word-related activity that the taskinduces. 1. Background 1.1. Vocabulary learning during reading Oneofthecontentiousissuesinsecondlanguagevocabularylearningistheex-tenttowhichtheexposuretowrittenlanguageinputisaneffectiveandefficientmeans of learning vocabulary. Researchers of reading and L1 vocabulary haveshown that with an estimated vocabulary of 5,000 words on entry to primaryschool, native speakers quickly increase their word power by around 1,000words per year (Nagy 1997; Saragi et al. 1978). Since learners are delugedwith written texts, especially from high school onwards, increase in vocabu-laryhasbeenattributedtoextensivereading.Byentrytouniversity,Gouldenetal. (1990) suggest that the vocabulary size of educated adults is around 20,000word families. Indeed such gains in vocabulary could not be accounted for bydirect vocabulary acquisition (Nagy et al. 1985; Nation and Coady 1988).