At what rate do learners learn and retain new vocabulary from reading a graded reader?

By R. Waring, M. Takaki. Reading in a Foreign Language, 2003

718 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This study examined the rate at which vocabulary was learned from reading the 400 headword graded reader A Little Princess. To ascertain whether words of different frequency of occurrence rates were more likely to be learned and retained or forgotten, 25 words within five bands of differing frequency of occurrence (15 to 18 times to those appearing only once) were selected. The spelling of each word was changed to ensure that each test item was unknown to the 15 intermediate level (or above) female Japanese subjects. Three tests (word-form recognition, prompted meaning recognition and unprompted meaning recognition) were administered immediately after reading, after one week and after a three month delay. The results show that words can be learned incidentally but that most of the words were not learned. More frequent words were more likely to be learned and were more resistant to decay. The data suggest that, on average, the meaning of only one of the 25 items will be remembered after three months, and the meaning of none of the items that were met fewer than eight times will be remembered three months later. The data thus suggest that very little new vocabulary is retained from reading one graded reader, and that a massive amount of graded reading is needed to build new vocabulary. It is suggested that the benefits of reading a graded reader should not only be assessed by researching vocabulary gains and retention, but by looking at how graded readers help develop and enrich already known vocabulary.

Subfields: Developmental and Educational Psychology, Language and Linguistics

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/d5f3e621619a593a6e39f92f01fbd48132b24b5b

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Citations in the corpus

Comparing Focus on Form and Focus on Forms in Second-Language Vocabulary Learning. (2006, background): “This position is supported by empirical studies showing that only a small number of L2 words can be ‘picked up’ from exposure to texts without any subsequent vocabulary practice (Day, Omura, & Hiramatsu, 1991; Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Hulstijn, 1992; Waring 2003; Zahar, Cobb & Spada, 2001).”
Vocabulary acquisition from extensive reading: A case study (2006, neutral): “The hypothesis is that reading will affect all three aspects of word knowledge, but spelling is expected to be affected the most, based on the findings of Schmitt (1998) and Waring and Takaki (2003).”
Beyond raw frequency: Incidental vocabulary acquisition in extensive reading (2008, methodology): “In examining vocabulary learning and retention by 15 Japanese college students who read one graded reader, Waring and Takaki (2003) changed the forms of the 25 words that were used in the text to make them into non-words to control for previous knowledge of the words (e.g., changing house into windl”
The Four Strands (2007, background): “For example, the Waring and Takaki (2003) study showed that in approximately 56 minutes of meaning-focused reading of a graded reader, four words were learned reasonably well, and another 12 were partially learnt.”
Incidental vocabulary acquisition: The effects of task type, word occurrence and their combination (2011, background): “Waring and Takaki (2003) investigated 25 target words that appeared with different frequencies in a text: 1 time, 4–5, 8–10, 13–14, and 15–18 times.”
LEARNING VOCABULARY THROUGH READING, LISTENING, AND VIEWING (2019, background): “Empirical studies have confirmed that repeated encounters with unfamiliar words are needed for L2 incidental vocabulary learning to occur through reading (Hu, 2013; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Waring & Takaki, 2003).”
A framework for developing EFL reading vocabulary (2005, background): “Indeed, in a study involving fifteen Japanese university students, Waring and Takaki (2003) found that very little vocabulary was retained three months after reading a single graded reader.”
Second language reading and incidental vocabulary learning (2020, methodology): “The Waring & Takaki (2003) experiment used 15 subjects to examine how SECOND LANGUAGE READING AND INCIDENTAL VOCABULARY LEARNING many words of varying frequencies of occurrence rates were learned and retained from the reading of one graded reader A Little Princess.”
Learning L2 collocations incidentally from reading (2017, background): “…& Donkaewbua, 2008; Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2015; Pellicer-Sánchez & Schmitt, 2010; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Rott, 1999; Waring & Takaki, 2003; Webb, 2005, 2007a, 2007b), with different degrees of certainty of that knowledge (Pellicer-Sánchez, 2015; Wesche & Paribakht,…”