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

lead to better vocabulary acquisition. 20 related texts from four running stories were
selected from four newspapers for analyses. In accordance to the vocabulary
knowledge <strong>of</strong> most high school graduates, which is a 2000 word level, words outside
this 2000 word level were considered as new words that learners have to learn in the
process <strong>of</strong> reading newspapers. New words in each text were calculated in terms <strong>of</strong>
target word repetition for both running stories and unrelated stories. In the examined
4 running stories, 17 <strong>of</strong> the 62 new word families (27%) occurred more than once
while in unrelated texts, only 14 <strong>of</strong> the 73 new word families (19%) occurred twice or
more. Compared with unrelated stories, texts in running stories were able to reduce
the density <strong>of</strong> target word families and also provide more repetitions <strong>of</strong> words outside
<strong>of</strong> 2000 words level. If some degree <strong>of</strong> word knowledge can be acquired through
only one encounter <strong>of</strong> words, then it was estimated that when learners have proceeded
into the second text in the running stories they would be able to reach about 94% to
95% lexical coverage, a percentage high enough for reading comprehension.
With the help <strong>of</strong> computer tools and analyses, large numbers <strong>of</strong> comprehensible
texts could be sequenced for readers’ needs. Using a self-developed computer
program, TextLadder, Ghadirian (2003) was able to conduct precise statistical
analyses as the basis for sequencing and arranging large amount <strong>of</strong> reading texts.
TextLadder was designed to attend to the problem <strong>of</strong> bringing foreign language
learners with limited vocabulary knowledge to the point where learners are able to
comprehend authentic texts in a specific genre. Word lists were included in the
program as a way to enhance vocabulary acquisition environments. In order to
achieve comprehensibility, Ghardirian first determined a set <strong>of</strong> word lists which
accounted for 95% <strong>of</strong> the running words in target texts, a percentage suggested by
Laufer (1989) for adequate reading comprehension. Considering the vocabulary
level and the needs <strong>of</strong> the target learners which are learners <strong>of</strong> academic purposes, the
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