Minding the Gap in Vocabulary Knowledge: Incidental Focus on Collocation through Reading

Abstract

The present study seeks to contribute to our knowledge of the effectiveness of reading in the incidental learning of collocations. The study also addresses the question whether out-of-class exposure such as watching TV, listening to radio or music, reading English books and using social media plays a significant role in the learning of collocations. The research participants were 46 Arabic-speaking young adult EFL learners. They were asked to read a modified text containing 10 pseudo-word collocations and to verify that all were unfamiliar to them. One week later, they read a text containing the actual 21 target collocations, which had been selected on the basis of appearing in instructional materials and a reference corpus, as well as of frequency. Participants were then asked to complete a meaning-recall cloze test in the form of a gap-filling task in which the 21 target collocations were embedded in sentences. Subsequently they were administered a self-report survey about any incidental exposure to English. The analysis of the quantitative results revealed that the target collocations can be learned incidentally through reading although the level of mastery was limited. The survey data showed a positive correlation between the learners' knowledge of collocations and activities such as watching TV, listening to radio and reading English books. The study also confirmed that collocations are particularly difficult for adult EFL learners and is thus an aspect of vocabulary knowledge in need of further empirical investigations. Introduction It is well established that vocabulary knowledge and its learning play a vital role in second language (L2) development. There is broad consensus that there are many aspects of a word to know, as Nation (1990, 2001) points out, who to date has provided the best specification of such word knowledge, said to include collocations, grammatical functions, and associations among other components of word knowledge such as meaning, appropriateness and frequency. It is also useful to think of the depth of knowledge required to master these aspects of word knowledge in order to gain a more complete picture of the vocabulary knowledge required of learners. Regarding just one of these components, research shows that much language consists of sequences or chunks of words which operate as multi-word units, and as Moon (1997) argues, much of the input that we experience is comprised of formulaic sequences that cannot be understood simply by looking at the individual lexical items they are composed of. Research into single vocabulary items that intermediate and advanced learners acquire has shown that they are learnt under conditions incidental to self-conscious learning