The Effect of Exposure Frequency and Reading Comprehension on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention Through Reading for Learners of German as a Foreign Language

The results indicated that intermediate language learners acquire a significant amount of vocabulary incidentally during reading after only two exposures, and that receptive as well as productive gains are moderately to strongly related to learners' text comprehension. It was further found that two or four exposures resulted in fairly similar vocabulary gain but that six exposures produced higher vocabulary gains. Although subjects who had been exposed to the target words in text retained significantly more vocabulary than subjects who had not encountered the target words in context, retention measures for these same subjects produced mixed results: On productive vocabulary knowledge three reading treatment groups displayed a significant rate of retention and three reading treatment groups displayed a significant decrease in retained vocabulary. On receptive vocabulary knowledge all but one experimental group retained vocabulary over four weeks.

Name thesis:degree_name

Ph.D.

Level thesis:degree_level

Dissertation

Discipline thesis:degree_discipline

Germanic Languages and Literatures

Grantor

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Year dc:date

2015

Author dc:creator

• Rott, Susanne

Contributors dc:contributor

• Lee, James F.
• Lalande, John, II

• Education, Language and Literature

Language dc:language

eng

Identifier

(MiAaPQ)AAI9737239

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:www.ideals.illinois.edu:2142/86349