American Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition Rate in Japanese as a Foreign Language from Listening to a Story

Abstract

 The positive effects of listening to stories on second language development have been widely reported. In this study we investigated the rate of vocabulary acquisition by American high school students of Japanese-as-a-foreign-language from listening to a story told in Japanese just once. The rate was .17 words per minute, very similar to the rate reported for students in Japan acquiring English and German who also listened to a story just once. 

Keywords

• Story-Listening,second language acquisition,vocabulary development

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