Effects of Graded Texts on EFL College Students' Incidental ...

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the three sources. It was concluded that a general service vocabulary <strong>of</strong> close to 2000 words is suitable and sufficient for learners who are moving towards a specialized vocabulary. Also, after learners have achieved this 2000 word level, a specialized vocabulary such as UWL will contribute to more text coverage than the next words in the general word lists. While learning vocabulary by word lists does demonstrably result in eminently word growth, caution is needed for incorporating standard word lists as teaching material. As was warned by Ghadessy (1979), the idea <strong>of</strong> standard word lists “ignores the simple fact that the acquisition <strong>of</strong> new vocabulary items differ for various language learners because <strong>of</strong> differences in linguistic, cultural, and motivational factors" (p. 25). In other words, no particular word list or sets <strong>of</strong> word list can satisfy all learners, and word lists should be contingent upon and carefully tailored for learners’ specific needs. The above studies amply demonstrated the following contentions. 1. Using high frequency word lists to select appropriate instructional material can substantively accelerate learners’ vocabulary growth. 2. Selection or development <strong>of</strong> particular sets <strong>of</strong> word lists should be conditional upon learners’ specific needs. 2.4. Vocabulary Acquisition Through Sequencing <strong>of</strong> Reading <strong>Texts</strong> Vocabulary difficulties encountered by L2 students in authentic reading texts are major stumbling blocks to reading comprehension and also further acquisition <strong>of</strong> new words. Laufer (1989) found that learners whose vocabulary size enabled them to cover 95% <strong>of</strong> the words in a text were successful in achieving satisfactory text comprehension. Under the condition that learners are able to use contextual inference strategies for incidental vocabulary acquisition, Laufer (1997) and Nation 13
(1993) suggested a required 5,000 word lexicon for reaching this adequate 95% understanding in general and non-specialized texts. However, most high school graduates in EFL countries have a far smaller vocabulary than this (Kyongho & Nation, 1989). With vocabulary size around 2000-3000 word level, Taiwanese college students are among those who are likely to fail when reading unsimplified texts (Chen, 1998). Due to the fact that authentic and unsimplified reading materials are generally written to convey information to those who are already familiar with the words in texts rather than for language learning, two essential vocabulary learning conditions, intensive exposure <strong>of</strong> target words and comprehensible reading contexts, can therefore hardly be found in authentic texts. Incidental vocabulary learning from reading is not an all-or-nothing piece <strong>of</strong> leaning, but a gradual process <strong>of</strong> one encounter with a word adding to, strengthening, or further completing the knowledge established from previous encounters. Thus, if the small amount <strong>of</strong> word knowledge is not soon reinforced by another meeting, then the previously built word knowledge will inextricably be lost. Vocabulary learning from extensive reading could therefore easily be lost, as Nation (2001) cautioned “it is critically important in an extensive reading program that learners have the opportunity to keep meeting words that they have met before” (p. 156). In order to create a more optimal vocabulary learning environment, sequencing <strong>of</strong> reading texts for the purpose <strong>of</strong> ensuring repetitive target word exposure and providing adequately comprehensible texts are thus suggested. By using newspaper articles as extensive reading materials, Kyongho and Nation (1989) advised to sequence newspaper texts according to “running stories”, which are very closely related stories, to reduce the vocabulary load and to create an optimal word learning sequence for learners. It was postulated that newspaper stories with similar topics would provide more repetitions <strong>of</strong> new words and therefore, naturally 14
Page 1 and 2: 國立清華大學碩士論文英
Page 3 and 4: Abstract Incidental vocabulary lear
Page 5 and 6: implicit learning for learners’ q
Page 7 and 8: 4.3. Discussion 70 4.3.1. The Feasi
Page 9 and 10: List of Figure Fig
Page 11 and 12: competence (Elley, 1991; Hafiz & Tu
Page 13 and 14: EFL classes, and determining the am
Page 15 and 16: consultation for second language le
Page 17 and 18: vastly reinforced with the ease and
Page 19 and 20: learning to occur. 2. Word meaning
Page 21: inging learners who are competent <
Page 25 and 26: words in this set of</stron
Page 27 and 28: Besides the above potential limitat
Page 29 and 30: immediately after reading, one week
Page 31 and 32: 2.6. Measuring Incidental Vocabular
Page 33 and 34: 2.7. Summary We incorporated the em
Page 35 and 36: 3.1. Overview Chapter Three METHODO
Page 37 and 38: The Sinorama magazine is dedicated
Page 39 and 40: Word List (鄭恆雄, 2002; 2003),
Page 41 and 42: for the cut off po
Page 43 and 44: TextLadder; instead, our program pu
Page 45 and 46: target words within each text. Afte
Page 47 and 48: Table 3.2 Target word rate and targ
Page 49 and 50: 7. into the Exposed Word List Selec
Page 51 and 52: Table 3. 5. A comparison between Gh
Page 53 and 54: 3.3.4 Glossing of
Page 55 and 56: participants were required put a ch
Page 57 and 58: score of 2. If a t
Page 59 and 60: Table 3.9 Instruments used in the s
Page 61 and 62: had finished all sixteen texts. The
Page 63 and 64: technical feasibility of</s
Page 65 and 66: a result, valid subjects dropped fr
Page 67 and 68: Table 4.2 Learners’ perspectives
Page 69 and 70: estimation of lear
Page 71 and 72: words from known words. The provisi
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vocabulary level, on the other hand
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4.2.4 The results of</stron
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Table 4.11 shows learners’ respon
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4.3 Discussion 4.3.1. The feasibili
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direct phonetic translations <stron
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on gloss suggested that they still
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measurement tool for its function <
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learners’ processing of</
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not be untangled without considerin
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5.1. Overview Chapter Five Conclusi
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with the same group of</str
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also accelerate sequencing time wit
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esponsible for connecting the two b
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REFERENCES Berman, R.A. (1984 ). Sy
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Hulstijn, J. H., Hollander, M., & G
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Rationale for Pedagogy (pp. 174-200
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第 1-6 題電腦方面 Appendix A
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Student Post□ 其他□__________
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26. optimistic 27. consumption 28.
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1. entrepreneur: VI. 我對這個
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21.calligraphy: I. 我對這個字
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41.insufficient: I. 我對這個字
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3 points entrepreneur: (item three
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Appendix F The In-class Evaluation
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Appendix H The Introductory Page on
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Appendix J A Search Example <strong
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Appendix L Student Reading Process
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第 1-6 題電腦方面 Appendix N
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13(2). 英文雜誌 41.7% (28/67) (
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Appendix P Results of</stro
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