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

ate and learners’ perception <strong>of</strong> insufficient glossed words is that learners’
comprehension difficulty might derive from sources other than vocabulary such as
complicated sentence patterns or ability to grasp main ideas (Berman, 1984; Nuttall,
2000). In other words, vocabulary control alone could only to certain extent
sequence text difficulty and thereby enhance comprehension, difficulties in syntax and
reading strategies might emerge as vocabulary obstruction was minimized to the least.
All in all, though learners have enjoyed the online extensive reading syllabus,
their extensive reading inexperience impeded fluency in reading. Due to the fact that
the current study only lasted for twelve weeks, the question <strong>of</strong> whether learners’
reading difficulty would gradually diminish with increase in extensive reading
experience awaits for further exploration.
4.3.3. Amount <strong>of</strong> Exposure necessary for incidental vocabulary acquisition
Discrepancy in amount <strong>of</strong> exposure required for successful word acquisition
suggested by various researchers has been documented in previous studies (Nagy,
Herman & Anderson, 1985;1987; Nation, 1990; Rott, 1999; Sarage, Nation &
Meister, 1978). The nature <strong>of</strong> word knowledge as a continuum leads to the
phenomenon that merely one exposure to target word could be able to push learners’
knowledge further along the continuum, yet, even with exposure up to fifty times,
learners’ word knowledge might still not be so satisfactory as to actively use words in
various contexts. Researchers’ discrete opinions on what may be considered as
successful word acquisition and the fact that previous studies might be measuring
different points along this developmental construct could be the factors attributing to
diverse results. Hence, by viewing word learning as a continuum with incremental
learning leading to learners’ receptive and productive knowledge for specific words,
the current study adopted VKS (Paribakht & Wesche, 1993) as a vocabulary
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