Adult Learners’ Acquistion of Vocabulary Knowledge from Explicit Listening: A Multidimensional Construct

Abstract

To date there has been little empirical research exploring the effect of explicit, instructional learning by listening on the acquisition and retention of vocabulary, both receptively and productively. To address this issue, the current study observed the learning of two groups (one control and one experimental) of a total of 40 adult learners of English as a Foreign Language (EFL) in a tertiary classroom setting in respect of orthography, grammar and form-meaning knowledge, tested via receptive and productive measures. All participants were administered a pretest, an immediate posttest, and a delayed test over 4-week intervals. The results indicated that a large proportion of target words were learned both receptively and productively through instructional listening involving several aspects of vocabulary, i.e. orthography, grammar and form-meaning. In acquisition and retention tests the members of the experimental group demonstrated significantly more knowledge about the target words than the members of the control group. The impacts of each of these learning conditions on different lexical aspects are discussed in detail.