Comparing the Effects of Listening Input and Reading Input on EFL Learners’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Abstract

AbstractThis study examined the effects of either listening or reading input on 88 first-year non-English-major Chinese university EFL students’ incidental acquisition in vocabulary form, meaning and production. The students were put into a Listening Group (n = 47) and a Reading Group (n = 41), each of which finished either two listening activities (each consisting of a dialogic text and an information transfer task) or two reading activities (each consisting of a reading text and five multiple-choice questions). The four texts all contained five low-frequency target words which a revised Vocabulary Knowledge Test had shown to be only slightly known by the participants before the activities. The results of the post-tests showed that the Reading Group had general acquisition advantage over the Listening Group in terms of all the three vocabulary aspects, and due to the fact of rich target word contexts and repeated access to the texts, the Listening Group manifested vocabulary meaning acquisition nearly equal to the Reading Group. Overall, the study shows the notably advantageous effects of reading input on incidental vocabulary acquisition, and concerning facilitating vocabulary acquisition through listening, it points out the importance of increasing opportunities for learners to process listening input with rich contextual clues through task repetition.