Chinese Students' Incidental English Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

Since the late 1970s, the negligence of vocabulary began to be recognized by L2 professionals. There have been several thrusts of research into methods of teaching and learning EFL/ESL vocabulary. One of methods which researchers show great interest in is the incidental vocabulary learning approach. Incidental vocabulary learning is the process of acquiring vocabulary when learners are reading or listening for comprehension rather than focusing solely on memorizing lists of words (Hustijn, Hollander, & Greidanus, 1996; Yoshii & Flaitz, 2002). In other words, it is a by-product, not the target, of the main cognitive activity, reading or listening. Studies on it have proven that it is an effective way to help build vocabulary as a necessary supplementary implement of direct instruction.This paper reviews the literature on teaching second language learners the word knowledge necessary for communicative competence. Theoretical frameworks for vocabulary acquisition are described on a continuum from extensive reading to direct vocabulary instruction. Lexicon size as a determining factor in selecting an approach most appropriate at various proficiency levels is discussed. With a vocabulary of less than 3,000 words, L2 readers cannot get access to authentic texts independently, and they require reading support. Studies of support types such as direct vocabulary instruction, textual and pictorial annotation, and minimally illustrated text are reviewed. Study results are analyzed to determine the most effective methods for improving vocabulary acquisition and retention. While the reviewed studies demonstrate that annotation produces significant gains, no comparison of the use of Chinese annotation and English annotation among vocational school students is included as no report is available in the literature review.Given this gap in the research, this paper proposes a study to compare the effects of using Chinese annotation supported reading material versus English annotation supported reading material on lower level second language learners. The two text...