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Presenters
Diako Hamzezadeh Afkham,
Sarah Bahremanjooy
(M.A. Students of TEFL at Shiraz University)
Title
Incidental vs. intentional vocabulary learning
Abstract
This study investigated the effects that the incidental and intentional learning conditions might have on vocabulary learning with regard to reading simplified short stories, learners’ vocabulary size, and word frequency. To this end, sixty-eight participants were chosen out of ninety-four students based on their Oxford Placement Test scores. They were divided into experimental and control groups with different treatments. In the experimental group, the participants were taught vocabulary through reading a number of simplified short stories under incidental vocabulary learning condition; whereas the control group was taught vocabulary through reading the same texts but with intentional vocabulary learning. To achieve the goals of the study, two vocabulary tests were administered: a researcher-made test as well as a valid and reliable vocabulary size test designed by Schmitt, Calpham and Schmitt (2001). Also, through Cobb software (2000), the researcher tried to determine most and least frequent words of the texts and constructed the vocabulary test based on the list of word frequency.
The results of the study showed that the participants who were taught simplified short stories in intentional learning situation performed better on the vocabulary test than those who were taught the same texts under incidental condition. Another finding was that higher lexical group was able to perform better on learning most and least frequent words than lower level group. The final finding of the study demonstrated that word frequency was also a significant factor in intentional vocabulary learning meaning that more frequent words were more likely to be learned intentionally than incidentally. As a conclusion, it seems that for vocabulary teaching and learning, the teachers should be aware of incidental and intentional vocabulary learning conditions and recognize the potentialities of each to make the process of teaching vocabulary easier and more efficient.
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