Etymology

Independent Reading. One great advantage of independent reading is that it has the potential to expose learners to massive amounts of vocabulary in a variety of registers that may not be available through spoken language. This clearly affords rich learning opportunities. There is ample evidence to show that incidental learning of vocabulary through reading does occur for both native English-speaking students and ELLs.
For example, Nagy, Anderson, and Herman had English proficient students read four natural passages and found that the probability of students learning a word well enough to answer a multiple-choice question was .05. They went on to note that even though the probability of learning a word from context is small, given the volume of texts students can potentially read, they could learn a very large number of words from context. Based on their findings, they estimated that the average middle-grade child learns between 800 and 1,200 words from context annually. As a cautionary note, the authors also pointed out that their study revealed ―no learning from context for words at the highest level of conceptual difficulty.‖
Based on a meta-analysis of 20 studies that examined how native English-speaking students learn from context when not directly prompted to do so, Swan-

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born and de Glopper concluded that students can and do learn words incidentally,

and that the probability of learning a word from one exposure in a naturally occurring context is .15. They also showed that students at higher grade levels and students with higher reading ability are better able to use context, and that texts containing fewer unknown words better facilitate learning from context.
Research conducted with ELLs indicates that silent sustained reading in which students select and regularly read books of their choice for a period of time each day leads to improvements in comprehension and oral language development.
With regard to ELLs, an important question is what students learn about vo-cabulary through reading. Schmitt argues that ―incidental vocabulary learning from reading is more likely to push words to a partial rather than a full level of mastery, and that any recall learning is more prone to forgetting than recognition learning.‖ Additionally, incidental acquisition appears to include only content words— function words are generally not attended to. These limitations may explain why even very advanced second-language learners continue to manifest lexical errors in such areas as the use of prepositions and collocations. Finally, research with ELLs indicates that independent reading along with structured support for comprehension and language development facilitates ELLs’ language.
A related issue concerns the number of exposures to a word or expression needed for incidental acquisition to occur. Summarizing the research, Schmitt concluded that ―8–10 reading exposures may give learners a reasonable chance of acquiring an initial receptive knowledge of words.‖ However, the number is likely to be highly variable depending on a variety of factors such as the language proficiency of the readers, the difficulty of the texts, and the conceptual difficulty of the words. It will also depend on the depth of processing involved when readers encounter words. ―Exposure‖ may involve no more than fleeting attention to a word, or it may involve more deliberate attempts to process the form and meaning of the word.
All in all, these studies of learning from context show that context can pro-duce learning of word meanings for both native English speakers and ELLs, that
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the probability of learning a word from a single occurrence is low, and that the

probability of learning a word from context increases substantially with additional occurrences of the word. In giving students books to read on their own, it is im-portant to ensure that the texts are ones they can read with accuracy, fluency, and good comprehension.[4]

Television. Research with native English speakers indicates that educational television programs can be a source of language learning for these students. Several studies have also found that exposing ELLs to high-quality television can also be effective in developing their vocabulary. For example, Neuman and Koskinen found that middle-grade ELLs who watched captioned episodes of 3-2-1 Contact, a high-quality science program, outperformed their classmates who just read from their science textbooks on measures of word recognition, understanding sentences, and word meaning. In addition, these students also performed better than their classmates who watched the television program without captions. It should also be noted that only ELLs with sufficient English proficiency benefited from the television programming, indicating the need to consider this variable when designing instruction. Pigada and Schmitt concluded that extensive reading influenced the learner’s growth in terms of orthography, meaning and grammatical types of lexical knowledge, ―translating to a pick-up rate of about one of every 1.5 words tested‖ . However, they were quick to warn that it was rather difficult to believe that the learner had complete mastery of these three types of word knowledge given that only 6% of the target words were learned. The researchers’ contribution is valuable regarding the incremental development of vocabulary aspects of the learner when encountering new words in reading texts.

We may conclude that Pigada and Schmitt’s study has provided us with insights concerning the gradual process of learning vocabulary.

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Chapter II Breadth of Vocabulary Knowledge

The breadth of vocabulary knowledge refers to the size or quantity of vocabulary which is partially or fully known by learners¹. It is considered a continuum, ranging from partial to full knowledge. Moreover, Schmitt suggests that all vocabulary knowledge can be ranged on a cline as being not known-partially-fully known applying this to spelling, as shown in.
Aspects of lexical knowledge ranging from zero to partial to precise from Milton investigated the annual growth of the vocabulary size of British learners of French up to graduation from a language school. His study offered a good example of documenting the incremental development of lexical knowledge over time, particularly at the beginning stages of the learning process. He used a French vocabulary size test which incorporated Bardot’s frequency levels.
The test took a paper and pencil form and comprised 120 Yes/No answers to whether the learners know the word or not. The time of completing the test was not restricted; however, it was usually completed within 5 to 10 minutes. Moreover, 20 unreal words were added to the test and 20 real words were chosen randomly for every 1000 word level out of5,100 frequency word bands. The number of Yes answers to real words was adjusted to minimize guessing. As suggested by Milton, the results show that while learners of French advance from one school year to another so does their vocabulary size. While year 7 learners’ mean score was 311, the score of year 13 learners had increased to 1930. Furthermore, an ANOVA test confirmed a significant relationship between the increase in vocabulary breadth and the time the learners spent on learning.[7]
Consequently, Milton’s study thus provided further support for the notion of a gradual or incremental increase in vocabulary size by EFL learners.
Annual progress in frequency bands at school level More recently, in a longitudinal study tracked the gradual increase in receptive vocabulary knowledge

¹ Hunt, A., & Beglar, D. (2005). A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary. Reading in a Foreign

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of 224 young Spanish learners of EFL. The goal of the study was to measure the

learners’ receptive vocabulary size growth over a period of four years and to check the effect of target language exposure on the learners’ vocabulary knowledge size. The study incorporated the 2k frequency level of Schmitt, Schmitt and Clapham Vocabulary Levels Test. Starting with an exposure of 419 target language interaction hours in 4th grade, learners had 524, 629 and 734 target language interactions in their 5th, 6th and 7^th grade, respectively.
Evolution of the increment of word knowledge International Journal of English Linguistics. They found that the learners’ receptive vocabulary knowledge size grew significantly as they moved from one grade to another. In relation to the 2k frequency level, the learners added 148 words from 4th to 5th grade, 122 words from 5th to 6th grade, and 186 words from 6th to 7th grade to their receptive vocabulary knowledge. We conclude from these results that vocabulary learning is incremental in terms of an adequate vocabulary size.