The effects of word frequency and typographical enhancement on incidental vocabulary learning in reading

ABSTRACT

This study examines the effects of word frequency and typographical enhancement (i.e., words in bold) on the learning of single words in Spanish L2 reading activities in a classroom setting. Learners read a text in which target words appearing in bold occurred one, five or 10 times. A parallel text was also provided in which those same words appeared un-bolded. Students were tested three times on both spelling and meaning of the target words: before, immediately after and two weeks after the reading activity. Results show that: (1) after five or 10 encounters, both spelling and meaning recognition skills increase; (2) words appearing in bold only lead to learning gains at a form recognition level immediately after the test is taken and do not contribute to the acquisition of meaning in the post-test; and (3) there is no interaction between typographical enhancement and frequency.

RESUMEN

Este trabajo pretende examinar los efectos de la frecuencia y el realce tipográfico (negrita) en el aprendizaje de palabras individuales a través de la lectura en el aula de español como L2. Los aprendientes leyeron un texto con palabras meta que aparecían 1, 5 o 10 veces. Este tenía a su vez una versión paralela en la cual dichas palabras aparecían en negrita. Los estudiantes fueron examinados en el reconocimiento de la forma y del significado de las palabras meta en tres ocasiones: antes, inmediatamente después y dos semanas después de la actividad de lectura. Los resultados demostraron que (1) el reconocimiento de la forma y del significado se incrementa cuando la palabra aparece repetida 5 o 10 veces; (2) el realce únicamente favorece el reconocimiento ortográfico inmediatamente después de la realización de la prueba y no contribuye al aprendizaje del significado; y (3) no existe interacción entre frecuencia y realce.

KEYWORDS:

• Typographical enhancement
• frequency
• vocabulary
• reading
• incidental learning

PALABRAS CLAVE:

• Realce
• frecuencia
• vocabulario
• lectura
• aprendizaje incidental

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 In the present study and studies cited in this article we focus on recognition and understanding of form and meaning.

2 We use Hulstijn’s (2013, 2632) definition of incidental learning: “the acquisition of a word or expression without the conscious intention to commit the element to memory, such as picking up an unknown word from listening to someone or from reading a text.”

3 In studies focused on collocations, form recall and form recognition tasks test whether participants recognized or recalled the verb that was necessary to complete a given collocation, whereas in individual word learning, form recognition and form recall refer to spelling recognition and recall.

4 SPA 1 is taught in 10 different sections by different instructors and at different schedules but all sections follow the same syllabus and use the same textbook.

5 When using smaller samples, statistical noise tends to increase. Therefore, counterbalancing the appearance of each target item in all conditions ensures that this noise is similar in all conditions.

6 Statistical analyses were performed with SPSS 24 (IBM 2016).

7 The numbers, from 0 to 1, on the y axis represent percentages, so that 0.3 means that 30% of the words were recognized, 0.5 means 50% of the words were recognized, etc. All figures in this section present the data in a similar way.