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

Table 4.5 Target words completely unfamiliar to learners
Number <strong>of</strong> Groups Amount <strong>of</strong> Words in the
Exposure Group
Group 1 (1-2 times) 2 times monopoly Noun
1 times recruitment Noun
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Word Classes
Group 2 (3-4 times) 4 times startling Adjective
4 times deputy Adjective
Group 3 (5-6 times) 6 times calligraphy Noun
5 times epidemic Adjective
Group 4 (7-8 times) 8 times faculty Noun
Group 5 (more than 9 times) 15 times entrepreneur Noun
4.2.3 The results <strong>of</strong> the posttest
15 times hypnosis Noun
10 times administrative Adjective
A posttest was conducted one week after learners have finished sixteen reading
texts for two purposes: to measure overall word gain and to determine the necessary
amount <strong>of</strong> exposure for incidental word learning. Items designed as the Vocabulary
Knowledge Scale (Paribakht & Wesche, 1996) including the 50 target words tested in
pretest was adopted as posttest. Scorings in VKS were based on learners’
demonstration <strong>of</strong> self-report knowledge on each word. Knowledge from never
having seen the word before to being able to make a correct sentence with the target
word were scored on a scale <strong>of</strong> 1-5. For the purpose <strong>of</strong> examining word gains,
words with scores from 1 to 2 were classified as words that are “not known” to
learners and words with scores from 3 to 5 were the ones considered as “known”
(Paribakht & Wesche, 1997). Referring to the VKS scoring scale, with a correct
Chinese translation provided for a certain word, a score ranging from 3 to 5 could be
obtained, and therefore, the word could be considered “known” by the learner.
Otherwise, the word remains “not known”. Our pretest and posttest, though differ in
format, were comparable due to the common distinction <strong>of</strong> determining unknown