Effects Of Narrow Reading-while-Listening On Grade 11 Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

In the past two decades,multi-modal input and text types have received considerable concerns from scholars in the field of incidental vocabulary acquisition(IVA).Especially,most of the researchers focus on the effects of extensive reading or extensive listening on IVA.However,empirical research on the combination of bimodality and narrow texts is still rare.Therefore,based on the comprehensible input hypothesis,affective-filter hypothesis and transfer theory,the purpose of this study is to examine the effects of narrow reading-while-listening(RWL)on four dimensions(spelling,aural meaning,written meaning and use)of vocabulary knowledge for L2 learners.Accordingly,three research questions are presented as follows:1.What are the effects of narrow RWL on four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge?2.What are the effects of narrow RWL on the retention of four dimensions of vocabulary knowledge?3.What are the effects of narrow RWL on different word classes(nouns,verbs and adjectives)of vocabulary?The participants of the study were sixty-one Grade 11 students from two intact classes in Changsha,and they were assigned randomly into two groups: EG(the experimental group)simultaneously read and listened to three texts from the graded reader Fire on the Mountain,while CG(the control group)simultaneously read and listened to three random texts.Meanwhile,there were 18 target words embedded in the texts,six for each.Target words have the same frequency in both EG and CG to highlight the significance of context.The study was conducted over 7 weeks,including a pilot study,pretest,immediate posttest and delayed posttest.By statistically analyzing the data with SPSS 26.0,the major findings are shown as follows.1.From the results of the immediate posttest,students in EG were able to gain more words than those in CG in terms of spoken meaning,written meaning and use,and there is a statistical difference,while there is no statistical difference in spelling.For students’ performance in EG,the knowledge of the aural meaning and written meaning was improved the most,followed by use and spelling(aural meaning=written meaning>use>spelling).2.From the results of the delayed posttest,students in EG performed better than those in CG in terms of the four dimensions of word knowledge.For students’ performance in EG,the rank of learning outcome was first aural meaning,then written meaning,finally use and spelling(aural meaning>written meaning>use=spelling).However,the rank of retention was first the spelling,use,then written meaning and finally aural meaning(spelling>use>written meaning>aural meaning).3.Students in EG were more efficient than those in CG to acquire and retain the knowledge of different word classes.Learning adjectives is more complex than learning nouns and verbs(nouns=verbs>adjectives).However,the rank of retention was first adjectives,then nouns,finally verbs(adjectives>nouns>verbs).All in all,this study supports the evidence that IVA is affected by the text types and the frequency of word occurrence.Based on the summary above,some pedagogical implications for the use of bimodal input and input materials on IVA are discussed.Besides,the limitations and suggestions for future research are provided.