Reconocimiento visual y categorización semántica de palabras nuevas en inglés como lengua extranjera (L2): El rol de la lectura y las actividades explícitas de vocabulario

Abstract

This experimental study investigated the effects of incidental reading and reading plus vocabulary exercises on the learning of novel words in English as a foreign language (EFL). The participants were a group of 20 pre-intermediate EFL learners in 6th grade. The experiment took place over three consecutive days and used a repeated-measures design that included two learning sessions and one testing session. The results showed that novel words learned in the reading plus vocabulary exercises condition had higher accuracy and faster reaction times than those learned in reading only, both in visual word recognition and semantic categorization. This suggests that the combination of reading and explicit vocabulary activities benefits both the acquisition of word form and meaning, beyond incidental reading alone.