The Effectiveness of Implicit and Explicit Cognitive Processing in Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Year 2017, , 155 - 169, 25.09.2017

Kübra Örsdemir

https://doi.org/10.32601/ejal.460982

Cited By: 1

Abstract

This article tends to investigate the lexical processing strategies adopted by 12 elementary level
participants while doing reading-for-comprehension activities together with the effectiveness of these
strategies on the retention of new vocabulary items in incidental vocabulary acquisition. The participants
who took part in the research studied at an English Preparatory School in Turkey. Through these
procedures, incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading for-comprehension tasks were aimed to be
investigated since the Input Hypothesis suggests that incidental learning of vocabulary can be attained
through reading. During the reading process, the adopted strategies were investigated through the
introspective data gathered by the researcher. Later, the participants attended to a reading
comprehension process and finally the participants participated in a post-test which is known to be the
„Vocabulary Knowledge Scale‟. Through this scale the rate of retention of the participants for each
vocabulary item was identified in accordance with related scoring procedures. The adopted strategies
were then categorized in relation to the cognitive processing styles. Through this treatment the
effectiveness of retention through implicit and explicit processing in incidental vocabulary acquisition
was examined. The findings suggest that implicit processing strategies result to be more effective in
terms of incidental vocabulary acquisition. 

Keywords

Incidental vocabulary acquisition, input hypothesis, lexical processing strategies, retention

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