The Effect Of Topic Familiarity And Passage Sight Vocabulary On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through EFL Reading

In vocabulary acquisition,be it L1 or L2,there always exists a dilemma which all language learners would encounter,i.e.,vocabulary is vast but the instruction time is limited.Thus language learners need to acquire vocabulary incidentally via extensive reading,which is known as incidental vocabulary acquisition(IVA)and is suggested by many scholars to be an important means for learners to build up their vocabulary dramatically and effectively.However,there are also some factors,either internal or external,that would possibly influence IVA.In view of this,the present study sets out to examine the impact that topic familiarity(TF)and passage sight vocabulary(PSV),two reader-based variables,exert upon incidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading.The author systematically follows the research model of Pulido(2007),taking topic familiarity as the within-subjects categorical variable and passage sight vocabulary as the covariate.Ninety Chinese non-English majors at the third grade from Central South University were selected as participants.They were instructed to read two passages,one familiar and one unfamiliar,and then take the immediate and delayed IVA tests.In addition,their degree of familiarities with the two topics and their passage sight vocabulary knowledge had also been measured.All the data were put into SPSS 22.0 for statistical analyses.The results reveal three major findings.Firstly,Chinese EFL learners can benefit from extensive reading as they can pick up a few words in their reading course,which is in line with many other researches in the same domain.In the present study,a certain proportion of the target words are incidentally acquired by the subjects,as is shown by the scores got from the immediate and delayed IVA tests respectively(immediate: 34.45%;delayed: 16.33%).Secondly,the variable of topic familiarity does play a significant and consistent role in the participants’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.That is,when they read passages of more familiar topics,they would encounter fewer difficulties in their comprehension,which in turn leads to better IVA performances.Thirdly,passage sight vocabulary also exerts a consistently robust impact upon IVA via FL reading.As the subjects’ PSV size increases,so does their IVA test scores.In addition,the ANCOVA analysis also confirms the significant and consistent effects of the two factors,and their interactive effect is not significant.Through this study the author suggests that in vocabulary teaching,instructors should make full use of the extracurricular reading activities to help expand students’ vocabulary size.The reading materials selected for this purpose should be of familiar topics rather than alien ones,which can help to improve students’ reading abilities as well as to build up their vocabulary gradually.Also,the students’ individual differences,in the present study reflected as the variation of their PSV sizes,should also be taken into account,which suggests that teachers should select materials that fit well with students’ specific personal conditions so as to achieve the optimal effect.