Receptive academic vocabulary knowledge and extramural English involvement – is there a correlation?

Marcus Warnby

doi:10.1075/itl.21021.war

Abstract

Abstract Extramural English (EE) exposure has been shown to correlate with general vocabulary knowledge. It remains uncertain, however, how academic vocabulary knowledge correlates with EE and can be explained by EE factors and demographic factors. Therefore, an academic vocabulary test, a background questionnaire, and a survey on current EE involvement were administered to 817 Swedish upper-secondary students in university-preparatory study programmes. A linear model revealed little explanation from demographic factors (age, gender, number of first languages, length of English instruction, and parental educational level) whereas EE factors (reading, listening & viewing without textual support, viewing with Swedish subtitles) accounted for 26% of the variation. Since extensive EE involvement may support the incidental learning of academic lexis, the paper suggests pre-tertiary instructional principles being guided by extramural as well as intramural incidental learning opportunities.

Highlights

Since English has become the lingua franca of global academia (Mauranen, Hynninen & Ranta, 2016) students’ engagement with academic content in internationalized higher education demands a certain level of English proficiency
The present study addresses this research gap by correlating different Extramural English (EE) activities and receptive English academic vocabulary knowledge among English as foreign language (EFL)4 students enrolled in Swedish upper secondary programmes preparing students for higher education
This study investigates the relationship between EE and receptive academic vocabulary knowledge among EFL learners in university-preparatory uppersecondary programmes

Summary

Introduction

Since English has become the lingua franca of global academia (Mauranen, Hynninen & Ranta, 2016) students’ engagement with academic content in internationalized higher education demands a certain level of English proficiency. Swedish upper-secondary programmes offering eligibility to higher education are supposed to provide, to all students, a foundation for tertiary-level studies, including fostering students’ basic academic language skills (Skolverket, 2011; n.d.a, n.d.b); a passing grade in the final compulsory course in English is equivalent to a B2-level in the Common European Framework of Reference (Skolverket, 2021). In the background questionnaire, administered after the AVT, students responded to a variety of closed- and open-ended questions From these questions, the following demographic variables were extracted and accounted for in the analyses: age, gender, number of years of EFL instruction (EFLI), parental educational level, and number of first language/s/.

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