Online News as a Resource for Incidental Learning of Core Academic Words, Academic Formulas, and General Formulas

Abstract

Knowledge of academic words, academic formulas and general formulas is essential for second language learners, but resources for incidental learning of these lexical items are very limited, especially in English as a Foreign Language contexts. This study employed a corpus-driven approach to examine the potential of online news for incidental learning of core academic words, academic formulas, and general formulas. Twenty-six corpora were created from voice of America (VOA) news to represent the amounts of reading that learners with the reading speed of 200 words per minute (wpm) and those with the reading speed of 150 wpm could complete within certain periods of time if they read VOA news regularly for 40 minutes per day and 5 days per week. Then, occurrences of core academic words, academic formulas, and general formulas represented by well-known lists in each corpus were counted with corpus-based tools. Analysis showed that the number of core academic words, academic formulas, and general formulas increased steadily as more input was added. Depending on the kind of target vocabulary and the reading speed, reading VOA news regularly for 3 months to 3.5 years would likely offer learners opportunities to encounter nearly all target words/formulas and encounter at least 80% of them 12 or more times in their reading. This finding suggests that online news is a useful resource for incidental vocabulary learning. It also indicates the minimal amounts of reading needed for incidental learning of core academic words, academic formulas, and general formulas.