1 + 1 = L2

Steven Tran
Copyright © 2020 by Steven Tran
All rights reserved.

2nd edition
Visit www.psylingo.com/blog for more quirky science studies
 Contents
Receptive and productive knowledge
Second language acquisition
Intentional and incidental language learning
Involvement Load Hypothesis
Reading for language acquisition
Intensive reading and extensive reading
Repeated Reading
Language acquisition and television shows
Word pair learning
To listen is to attend
Say no more
Downloading chunk
Mindless games
Breaking the language barrier
Bibliography
 Introduction
Ask a friend or family member to write 1 + 1 = 2. What did it look like?
Did they write the numerals? Or did they write out the words: “one plus one
equals two”? The unsurprising outcome would most likely be 1 + 1 = 2.
Despite the constant exposure to letters more often than numerals, we tend
to lean towards writing the latter, particularly in this case. Now imagine that
1 + 1 = 2 is your target language. How can you consciously create a system
to unconsciously see foreign languages similar to this example?
While studying international business and Mandarin Chinese, I
developed an interest in finding quirky language studies to help boost my
learning efficiency. If you are like me, you will have had your fair share of
opinions from other language learners. Some ideas sound good, while
others can be difficult to apply. I always saw myself as the typical language
learner, interested in language learning but lacking in talent. However, to
compensate for the lack of aptitude, I turned towards science for more
effective language learning.
The good news is that studies that observe language learning are not a
new subject. For decades, different fields of science have examined the art
of language learning, especially in the field of psychology. Unfortunately,
studies have yet to find a concrete answer for the perfect study plan. The
diverse investigations presented in this book are a collection of language
learning studies to demonstrate strong evidence in favour of which tasks are
potentially the most efficient. Each study finds a connection with the others
that lends support to a possible route for acquiring different language skills.
Contrary to popular belief, listening, speaking, writing, and reading may not
be as distinctly divided as they may seem.
The collection of this research is not merely to demonstrate that language
self study is an achievable objective, but also to introduce psycholinguistics
to the world of language learners. I hope it will persuade you to take an
interest in the research and effort these academics have spent so much time
on while also helping you enjoy the learning process.
It must be stated that despite the continuous efforts of these researchers,
their studies only demonstrate correlation, not causation. Many factors can
affect how the methods in these studies produce results in a real situation.
Since the studies discussed in this book mostly involve English as a foreign
language or use participants that have different levels of language abilities,
they do have limitations, not only in the experiments but also for each self-
studying individual.
Nevertheless, an objective viewpoint is an important tool. Hopefully,
these studies can shed light on some new quirky ideas for your next
language learning routine and add fun to your studies.

Happy Learning.
 Chapter 1

Receptive and productive knowledge

When language learners discuss learning vocabulary, what is the target?

One single word? Or a small string of scribbles that make up a large piece
of a puzzle? How you use vocabulary to communicate is important, and by
using it in different ways for reading or speaking, you can see it as more
than a single, simple item.
Beginning learners often believe each vocabulary word is one item, so
they continue to find as many words as they can, write them down, and
learn them in hope that they can use them once memorised. Unbeknownst
to them, it is not that simple.
Researchers have long known this. Vocabulary can be divided into two
types of skills: receptive and productive. Under each category are the four
language skills (reading, writing, speaking, and listening), which are then
divided into different aspects of knowledge. Before we address the
complexity of a word, we need to discuss the four language skills. It is
commonly known that language can be split into reading, writing, speaking
and listening; but what is less known is that these skills are further
categorised into receptive skills and productive skills. Receptive skills
consist of reading and listening; this involves the understanding of language
through input. On the other hand, productive skills include speaking and
writing; this involves producing output. The difficulty of defining ‘I learnt a
new word’ can be attributed to these two skills.
A language learner will need to complete different tasks to acquire these
skills. For example, most learners can read an entire language textbook and
still find it difficult to produce a sentence. Or maybe they write several
pages of a single Kanji character, yet when they encounter the kanji in a
piece of text, they still find it challenging to choose which pronunciation to
use: onyomi, kunyomi or nanori? As you can see, these tasks are designed to
train in either receptive or productive knowledge, respectively, without
addressing the other side. In certain cases, some learners have sworn to use
only productive tasks, yet then find it hard to comprehend the target
language through listening.
 When children begin to acquire a language, they start by listening. They
only begin producing language through speech later in their development.
In other words, they learn receptively first and then productively. As a
language learner, I assume you are an adult who has at least once pondered
on how to acquire a language like a child. This assumption is not entirely
incorrect, since Stephen Krashen's hypothesis for acquiring a language
through comprehensible input has been partially proven. His hypothesis
states that learners can acquire a language through understandable input, a
system which both children and adults have demonstrated in studies.
There are, however, consequences for such an idea. Children are not
biased and are more open to learning than adults. They lack the cognitive
maturity that encumbers an adult's ability to look at abstract thoughts in
more original ways. In other words, children are simply more creative. One
of these differences can be seen in the initial grammar structures acquired
by children in comparison to adults. In an example of grammar acquisition
for German speaking children, they begin by acquiring verb endings,
whereas adults start with subject-verb-object. Harald Clahsen and Pieter
Muysken are researchers that have written on this phenomenon and have
argued that the difference between adults and children can be related to the
children's ability to make abstract hypotheses1.
Now, assuming the theory that children and adults acquire a language in a
way that is unique to them, what does this have to do with receptive and
productive skills? By knowing it is different, hopefully you will no longer
restrict yourself to the belief that people should learn exactly like children,
by only listening and speaking. First, we need to know more about the
intricate details of receptive and productive knowledge in order to
understand the benefits of the studies described later in this book.
Paul Nation proposed that receptive and productive skills can be broken
into nine different types of knowledge, consisting of three subcategories for
each of the three primary categories of form, use, and meaning2. By
knowing these nine areas of a word, it is assumed that learners can fully
comprehend and exploit a word with ease. These nine areas are then
described corresponding to both the receptive and productive knowledge
categories.

Receptive knowledge includes the abilities to:

1. Recognise the sound form (Form)
 2. Recognise the written form (Form)
3. Recognise that a word can be made up of roots and suffixes to form
meaning (Form)
4. Recognise the grammatical function of a word (Use)
5. Recognise other words which often occur with the target word (Use)
6. Recognise the frequency of the word and the type of formality it
appears in (Use)
7. Understand the meaning of the target word (Meaning)
8. Understand the different meanings in diverse contexts (Meaning)
9. Associate the target word with similar words related to it (Meaning)

Productive knowledge includes the abilities to:

1. Pronounce the word correctly (Form)
2. Spell the word correctly (Form)
3. Select the correct suffixes and roots to apply meaning in context
(Form)
4. Produce the word correctly in context by speech or written form (Use)
5. Produce the word with other words that often occur along with it (Use)
6. Express the word in the correct formality (Use)
7. Convey the meaning of the word correctly either by speech or written
form (Meaning)
8. Use the target word in a variety of situations (Meaning)
9. Write or say words that are associated with the target word (Meaning)

Studies suggest that attaining all nine areas in both receptive and
productive knowledge would indicate a strong depth of vocabulary. But
before you decide to jump into 18 different tasks to target each aspect, it is
necessary to mention there is no need to go to such extreme lengths. Later
we will go through different studies which demonstrate that one task can
cover several aspects and applying these tasks can reduce the number of
impractical tasks in your routine.
The point in discussing the differences in how children and adults learn a
language is to call attention to the learning method children use and how
adults can apply a similar method. That is, they can address receptive tasks
before productive tasks and apply different task types for both receptive and
productive skills. Children begin through listening and monitoring, whereas
adults read second language (L2) texts with key ideas explained to them in
their first language (L1). The reason this needs to be addressed is the order
of knowledge that is exposed first. Receptive knowledge appears to come
first in the learning order, and at a later stage, productive tasks are
introduced.
The order of learning has long revealed the imbalance between the size
of receptive and productive word knowledge. This is not necessarily
abnormal, as indicated in a study by Stuart Webb3. In one of his studies, he
examined the relationship between receptive and productive English
vocabulary size in 83 native Japanese speakers, with over half of the
participants majoring in English. In order to examine the difference in size
for their receptive and productive vocabulary, the participants were tested
with translation tasks. Their test results showed a difference in size, with
receptive scoring higher than productive. These results show that the size of
high-frequency words in receptive and productive knowledge is similar; but
as the size of vocabulary increases, the balance is gradually broken. This
could be related to the lack of use for the low-frequency vocabulary. For
example, a university student will most likely use low-frequency
vocabulary in their assignments more often than a nine-year-old child
would for describing his day with his family.
Another important point in Stuart Webb’s research is the potential to
estimate a person’s productive vocabulary size by the size of their receptive
vocabulary. The test results indicated partial productive knowledge of
orthography. It is possible that the higher the listening and reading skills,
the greater the ability to speak or write. In other words, receptive
knowledge could be the building block of productive knowledge.
The previous research employed mostly university students that majored
in English. In another size comparison study by Dongkwang Shin, Yuah
Chon and Heejin Kim4, the researchers wanted to investigate the English
vocabulary level of the Korean National Curriculum, as they believed there
was a mismatch between the required vocabulary size for the Korean
College Scholastic Ability Test and the education delivered to high school
students based in South Korea. The English section of the Korean College
Scholastic Ability Test (CSAT) is famous for being challenging even for
native English speakers.
The researcher's analysis of 402 seventeen-year-old students reveals a
receptive English vocabulary size of 6,000 and a productive English
vocabulary size of 2,400 on average. The difference in size displays a
sizable imbalance between the two skills. The results imply that the
students have a high comprehension level for reading but a low-level ability
to express themselves. When these numbers are taken into account and
compared to a native speaker, they are equivalent to a native German-
speaking child in grade one or a child that is roughly five to six years old5.
Given the importance of larger receptive skills than productive skills,
how much productive knowledge affects spoken ability? Those reading may
be curious how to learn to speak a language as soon as possible. Sadly,
there is no definite answer; it mostly depends on how much effort and time
you spend on learning. Before you decide to burn this book after hearing
that cliché, it needs to be clarified that although effort does play a large role,
within that role lies an effective method. That being said, researchers have
shown a connection between vocabulary knowledge and speaking skills by
testing creative tasks.
Takumi Uchihara and Kazuya Saito investigated the relationship between
productive vocabulary knowledge and speaking fluency of second language
learners6. The chosen participants were 21 females and 18 males. All
participants had six years of experience in learning English. At the
beginning of the procedure, the participants were tested on their productive
vocabulary knowledge. In the next phase, they were tasked with verbally
explaining what they saw in seven different pictures, each with three
keywords as hints. The researchers needed to analyse the fluency of the
participants, so five native speakers were invited to participate in the
research as examiners. After the post-test, the researchers concluded that
productive knowledge had a significant correlation with L2 speaking
fluency. However, they also pointed out that productive knowledge had
little relation to comprehensibility or accent and that productive tasks may
not be the most effective task type for comprehension development. In
addition to these results, their research suggests that strong productive
vocabulary knowledge could lead to speaking with fewer pauses and
quicker speed.
Understanding the importance of strong productive knowledge should
lead to discovering a task that can provide the necessary skills to speak in
the target language, as it is better to have one good task than to waste
several hours on dozens of mediocre tasks. Common sense would lead most
learners to believe developing spoken fluency requires frequent dialogue
creation through spoken tasks. However, this might not be entirely true, as
shown by another study that probes into productive vocabulary knowledge.
If speaking and writing are in the category of productive skills, would
developing speaking skills lead to an increase in writing skills and vice
versa? While the question of whether or not developing speaking skills will
lead to greater writing skills is still unclear, the reverse process has been
observed. A study by Ehsan Namaziandost and Fariba Rahimi Esfahani
found that developing writing skills could lead to better speaking skills7. In
their study, they set out to discover if writing practices can have a
significant effect on improving EFL learners' speaking skills. There were 50
participants invited for the study. A fair analysis was required, so the
researchers created two groups. First, an experimental group was given
extensive writing tasks, which included writing 150 words on a topic and
writing short stories based on pictures. The second group was a control
group that was given a typical language learning class. In addition to the
experimental group's writing tasks, they were also instructed to read the
written material out loud.
The experimental group focused on extensive writing performed
significantly well in both the speaking and writing tasks. These findings not
only demonstrate that writing skills compliment speaking skills, but also
potentially suggest that developing one productive skill can increase both
skills in the same category. A notable outcome from this study is the
possibility of practicing speaking skills without a partner.
During my time at university studying Mandarin Chinese, my classmates
and I had to spend our third year in Hangzhou in the north-western region
of China. Most of my time with my peers from England was spent
observing how they studied. Two of the best students had excellent
speaking skills, yet they would spend most of their study time writing. One
of them would spend days writing characters, even filling rows and
columns with a single character. To say the least, I was impressed at the
sight of that book. The other classmate did not have such an extreme habit,
but one thing they had in common was their writing tasks. They would
spend more time writing sentences than any of the other classmates. Could
that writing task have contributed to their ability to speak so well?
Let's take an example of a popular task: flashcards. Imagine someone is
learning French and they decide to only use flashcards to learn. They then
decide to pick the most commonly used words in that language and make
flashcards. If the learner has chosen to study from L1 to L2 they will mainly
be developing three aspects of receptive knowledge: the recognition of
written form, meaning, and possibly roots and suffixes. This type of task
will lack in recognising collocations, grammar function, and the other four
receptive knowledge tasks. On the other hand, the writing tasks from the
previous study addressed most, if not all, of the aspects of productive
knowledge. The writing tasks demonstrated more return than the flashcard
task.
The emphasis on productive tasks and how well they produce results for
speaking is not merely a lure to entice you to the potential of writing for
developing speaking skills, but to demonstrate the importance of both
receptive and productive skills. The two skills will find ways to develop
reading, listening, writing and speaking in their respective fields.
 Summary
Vocabulary knowledge can be broken into both receptive and productive
knowledge. Each has its own rules; and the more aspects you can master,
the greater the depth of your vocabulary. As such, you need to ask yourself
if your task helps develop any of the nine areas of receptive and productive
knowledge. Grab a pen and paper to draw a spider diagram with a list of
tasks and point them towards the nine aspects of knowledge. The task that
covers the most knowledge may be the most effective for learning
vocabulary.
● There is a definite distinction between receptive and productive
knowledge.
● There are a total of nine aspects of knowledge that represent the
depth of a word, which can be divided into receptive and productive
knowledge.
● The number of vocabulary items known receptively will be greater
than those known productively.
● Receptive and productive tasks can complement each other, and each
one can simultaneously develop some aspects of the other.
 Chapter 2

Second language acquisition

For a long time, grammar-translation was the champion of the language
learning world. People that have never studied or have only just begun
studying a language naturally assume that grammar-translation is the only
way to learn a language. This assumption was especially noticeable before
World War II. The approach involves intensive writing practices to focus on
learning grammar structures. The learner is expected to practice translating
sentences with the intention of learning how to convey meaning from their
L1 to the L2. Consequently, the method has little or no exposure to
speaking practices. The lack of spoken tasks may have been caused by a
scarcity of need to speak a foreign language. Globalisation and
communication technology were still in an infant stage during this time.
The ability to travel and verbally communicate was only for the elites.
After the 1950s, the demand for interpreters increased. Various
international, intergovernmental organisations were formed. Speaking
became an important role in language learning. This cause gave rise to
creating more effective language learning approaches to train more skilled
language users.
Currently, the most commonly seen and debated methods include the
audiolingual method, the direct method, and the natural approach. If you
read the introduction to this book, you may be thinking that because this is a
book dedicated to self-study, why would there be any need to review
classroom language teaching approaches? The answer lies within their
processes.
Each approach has a unique feature that is not only bound to classroom
rules; in other words, each approach has a quality that can be taken and
used for self-study. The grammar-translation approach described earlier is
mostly based on writing tasks. The main aim of this method is to
understand grammar rules and apply them to translation. The problem with
this approach is that usage is not obliged to stay the same in every language.
For example, a grammar structure in the L1 may have a similar meaning to
a grammar structure in the L2, yet may be slightly different due to minor
nuance, and as such would not be the most appropriate grammar to use.
Language and culture have a connection which creates a nuance for certain
special phrases or grammar. Since culture is different for every country, this
would result in translation problems.
The audio-lingual approach is based on behaviourism, the idea that
certain behaviours are made through conditioning. This is an approach that
has a strong emphasis on psychology studies. In audio-lingual language
learning, the learner is expected to listen to dialogues in the L2 and form a
habit by making the sentence pattern a reflex. This approach is interesting,
as the training tasks are simple, yet the concept is more complicated than it
may seem. The following task is an example of the audio-lingual approach.

I am going to ______ (school, the party, the beach)

By listening and repeating this sentence while changing the words, the
learner is expected to not only learn the vocabulary, but also create a habit
of spontaneously producing the sentence structure. Another unique feature
of this method is the practice of connectionism and chunking, which will be
seen later in the book.
In the case of the direct method, total immersion is expected in the
classroom. Teachers use the target language throughout the entire class
while the students are expected to focus on guessing the meaning. This
approach cannot be applied in self-study, as it requires a teacher to provide
a visual action along with L2 audio. The focal point of this approach is the
student’s ability to guess the meaning. The act of continuously hearing and
seeing the same or similar actions will help the student process the
language’s system. The student should eventually be able to point to certain
repetitive rules.
In the early 1980s, Tracy Terrell introduced the natural approach, which
sought to provide natural and comprehensible input in the target language.
Students are provided with an abundant number of comprehensible inputs
from the teacher. While receiving target language input, the students are not
expected to speak in the target language and are encouraged to speak when
they feel like they are ready. This is different from the direct method as it
does not involve encouraging or forcing the students to reply with L2. The
natural approach aims to gradually develop the students' confidence in
using the language.
The natural approach has mostly been developed in relations to Stephen
Krashen’s language acquisition theory. It can also be proposed that the
natural approach is a modified version of Krashen’s theory for classroom
use. Although the natural approach is an interesting subject, it is not the
natural approach which this book is interested in, but rather Krashen’s input
hypothesis.
In 1981, Stephen Krashen generated a hypothetical proposal that has
proven popular for the past few decades. He proposed that students need to
be exposed to comprehensible input to acquire a language. Enough input
would then lead to the development of speaking in the target language1.
Therefore, acquiring a language involves the need to understand input in
order to effectively feed output. His work has introduced five hypotheses:
the acquisition-learning distinction, the natural order hypothesis, the
monitor hypothesis, the input hypothesis, and the affective hypothesis.
Although his work on these five aspects is important to realise his thoughts,
this book deals with language self-study; therefore, the most important
aspect of his theory for us is the input hypothesis, which states that
comprehensible input provides language acquisition.
Comprehensible input is language that the learner is able to understand.
Gaining comprehensible input involves acquiring information that is not too
challenging for the learner. Not surprisingly, the input theory is all about
input: the student acquires their target language when they receive
understandable messages. Adults often communicate with children using
simplified sentence structures and simple vocabulary. This helps children
grasp the meaning of the presented word. Comprehensible input can be
acquired from people, books or television shows. The final result is to
promote natural acquisition and the opportunity to speak the language, as
opposed to forming a habit of talking from forced speaking tasks.
When I was young, I would often use the expression 'worser' to describe
a situation that had a stronger meaning than worse. It felt similar to words
such as colder or warmer. At the time, I was not the only child in the school
to use this expression. It was something that spread around the playground.
It was only later that I had learnt to correct this mistake and understand that
not every adjective can add the ending 'er' to increase its degree. I don't
remember exactly where I heard it from, but even now it feels natural to say
it. Out of curiosity, I asked my eight-year-old nephew if he thinks 'worser' is
a real word. He replied, 'No, because I've never heard it before'.
This story is a fine example for depicting the potential of Stephen's
Krashen's language acquisition hypothesis. When I was eight years old, the
internet was still new. YouTube and Netflix were non-existent. I was
acquiring English from the people that were close to me. The unfortunate
result was picking up the expression 'worser' from the other children at
school. Nowadays, children spend more time sitting in front of a tablet
screen than playing with their peers. The results are clear in my nephew's
example. Children in the 21st century have been acquiring input from
various online sources created by adults. This form of input has reduced the
likelihood of acquiring the wrong vocabulary; but it is also a double-edged
sword, since my nephew would often unnecessarily use the word 'like'
several times in one sentence.
A self-studying language learner will have few resources to learn from -
namely, books and the internet. If Stephen Krashen's hypothesis on
comprehensible input is correct, then students can acquire a language
through reading graded books or watching television shows. A professional
classroom environment or moving abroad would be unnecessary. Yet
students that have spent time abroad have consistently shown to have
gained more language ability after traveling as compared to their peers who
have not.
In a study by Taeko Oya, Emmanuel Manalo and Jackie Greenwood, a
correlation was discovered between the duration of time spent studying
abroad in an English-speaking country and the oral skills of native Japanese
speaking students studying English2. The study offers evidence of increased
language skills while studying abroad. The fascinating feature of this
research is the effects seen with other forms of learning; the study was not
exclusively focused on studying abroad. The main objective of the research
was to study the influence of language contact and speaking performance.
Other contact conditions included studying English at professional schools,
the duration of English contact outside of school environments with friends
and members of the household, and the duration of contact with tasks such
as reading English books, watching television, and listening to music. The
overall results indicated there was a relationship between speaking
performance and the duration of language contact.
Another possible explanation that can clarify the outcome of this study is
the duration and location of comprehensible input. Although the researchers
discussed the student’s need to produce more advanced output during their
stay in another country, which could have led to their increased speaking
ability, it can also be assumed that input had assisted in the improvement of
their overall skills, since output requires input. This hypothesis would
suggest total immersion in another country may be the best, but not the
only, method for input.
No matter which scenario they reviewed, the researchers believed there
was a connection between vocabulary knowledge and the duration of
contact. The researchers’ results showed speaking English at home in the
participant's native country with another person, not even necessarily a
native English speaker, had demonstrated positive results. This can also be
explained with comprehensible input: since both participants may not have
the high-level language skills of a native, they would be expected to
communicate on a level that is understandable for the both of them.
Consequently, there is no reason to believe you have to study abroad to gain
comprehensible input.
While searching for a relationship between contact and language skills,
the researchers discovered an interesting outcome from watching television
shows. The results indicated that the time spent watching television had
negatively affected the student’s verb accuracy. It would appear that the
longer the students spent watching, the more likely they were to make
mistakes with verbs. A reasonable explanation for this is the replication of
real dialogues. Television shows often use local dialects which contain
hyphenated or shortened verbs.
A hypothesis, however, is still a hypothesis; and as Stephen Krashen has
outlined, his proposal has yet to be recognised as concrete fact. This may
lead many readers to believe discussing his work up until now was a misuse
of time. Fortunately, researchers have taken an interest in his hypothesis and
formed academic studies based on it.
In one of these academic experiments, Robert Hamilton, while at Meiji
University in Japan, sought to understand how effective a new prototype
bilingual Japanese-English picture book (a comprehensible input material)
would be for natural language acquisition3. The experiment involved two
native Japanese speaking mothers, considered to have either moderate or
excellent English skills, assigned to read the book to their children for a
month and record their reactions.
The researcher was curious to understand whether or not Stephen
Krashen's proposed hypothesis could be utilized to help children that have
yet to acquire reading skills to learn English vocabulary. The parents of the
two test subjects were assigned to expose the pictures and passages in
Japanese and English translation to their children through reading. The pre-
test and post-test on the children's language ability suggested that the
children did acquire new English words, such as friend, help, and
goodnight.
Despite the success of this research, it has limitations and does not show
the effects on adult learners. The participants were children and considered
still in their 'critical period' for learning and, unlike adults, could creatively
attach meaning to new words. Nevertheless, this study shows the potential
of Stephen Krashen's hypothesis.
In another study, in contrast to the last example, 220 non-English-major
students in China were invited to participate. In this study by Han Xiaohui,
the participants were examined to investigate the effects of comprehensible
input on incidental English vocabulary meaning recognition4. The research
involved reading passages that were either exposed in the original form or
several different modified forms. One of these forms included an elaborated
input form which was intended to offer simpler interpretation of the
vocabulary. The control group was assigned to the original passage while
the other experimental groups were assigned to the modified group. After
the post-test, the researchers concluded that all forms of comprehensible
input had scored higher than the control group and that the modified groups
had achieved better understanding of the target vocabulary.
It is important to recognise from the results of this experiment that
comprehensible input is significant and potentially promotes recognition of
vocabulary. If the context is not easy to understand, there will be no
advancement in learning. Stephen Krashen created the i + 1 idea to explain
that context must be understandable for language acquisition, yet it must
also be slightly more difficult to advance.
If two tasks were compared: a cloze task (“fill in the blank”) and a task
that required the reader to read a comprehensible passage, the latter would
prove to be more effective for comprehension acquisition as it provides
more clear information.
Now that we have established some connection between comprehensible
input and language acquisition. We need to identify how comprehensible
input can be more effective than memorisation drills. It is quite common for
language learners to suggest memorising phrases and building a reflex for
using these phrases; but when a comparison is made between a task that
involves memorisation and natural acquisition, which is superior? Between
the audio-lingual approach and the natural approach, which learning
method is more effective?
Professors at the University of Isfahan wanted to look for the most
effective second language acquisition method for improving English
communication. Two methods were used for comparison in their research:
the audio-lingual method and the natural approach5. In this study, 40 Iranian
participants were chosen to attend either an audio-lingual class or a natural
approach class. Both classes were allocated to tasks in their corresponding
group. For example, the audio-lingual class was provided material to listen
to and repeat the grammatical structure, while the natural approach group
had a teacher supply them with L2 input. The students in the natural
approach were not expected to speak the target language until they felt
comfortable in doing so. The post-test results show the natural approach
outperformed the audio-lingual method.
Through a questionnaire, the students in the natural approach stated that
they enjoyed the natural approach since the 'silent period' made them feel
more comfortable. An arguable opinion about this outcome is that
comprehensible input had enabled the students to absorb a moderate
number of sentences and vocabulary, and as a result, they felt confident of
their output sentences. They may have judged their sentences to be correct,
since those sentences resembled what they had heard. If this conjecture is
correct, then acquiring a large amount of comprehensible input would allow
the learner to develop a feeling that their output is correct, ultimately
developing their confidence to speak.
You may be wondering why we are examining research on a classroom
language learning program and not focusing on a type of comprehensible
input task. Part of this answer is the importance of comfort, as mentioned in
the previous paragraph. The aforementioned research exposed an advantage
to acquiring language through comprehensible input: the method provides
adequate time to develop the confidence to speak.
A drawback to the natural approach is time. Depending on the person,
comprehensible input can take many months or even a year before the
learner utters a sentence. In the study that employed a bilingual picture
book, the parents had voiced their scepticism in teaching their children with
comprehensible input, and the fear comes from the lack of action the learner
needs to learn the language. Everyone wants to see results as soon as
possible, and our belief that the more you work the more you earn has
rendered us incapable of understanding 'less is more'. It is important to
acknowledge that using comprehensible input to acquire a language
requires time and patience. Even dust, if piled, can become a mountain.
 Summary
There are many different second language learning methods, but as a self-
study learner, these methods are difficult to access without a teacher. The
best option would be to pick the best feature from these methods, such as
Stephen Krashen's input theory, and apply them to your routines.

The theory on comprehensible input has offered a potential clue for

acquiring languages without the need for a teacher. Another advantage of
comprehensible input is the opportunity it delivers to acquire a language
entirely different from your native language. The study on bilingual books
for children has demonstrated even children can learn a language very
different from their own when put in context. Employing translation can
provide this meaningful context. With more advanced vocabulary that
contains greater nuance, comprehensible input can contribute to cross-
referencing the nuance of words that would normally not exist in the
learner’s native language.
The time spent in contact with the language also shows a connection to
speaking skills. Whenever possible, it would be worthwhile to immerse
yourself in as much of the target language as you can.
 Chapter 3

Intentional and incidental language learning

In this chapter, we will be discussing various subjects related to

intentional and incidental learning. Each section will be separated to outline
the different types of language learning methods and the requirements to
make them efficient.
First, we need to look at how tasks can be categorized as either
intentional or incidental. The two practices define the learning direction of
vocabulary. Intentional is, as the name implies, to study vocabulary with the
intention to learn the word, whereas incidental is to learn vocabulary
without realising it. In some cases, incidental learning can also be an active
process; for example, the learner could be informed of a test after the
reading session. They would, therefore, deliberately memorise specific
parts. Jack Croft Richards and Richard W. Schmidt would define this as
‘learning one thing while intending to learn another’1. Intentional and
incidental can be described as explicit and implicit learning respectively.
The previous definition of incidental also implies that it has a unique
feature that allows it to become explicit as well as implicit. The tasks most
commonly associated with these practices include:

Incidental vocabulary acquisition:

● Reading (receptive)
● Watching television shows (receptive)
Intentional vocabulary learning:
● Learning word pairs (receptive or productive)
● Matching words with synonyms and antonyms (receptive)
● Reading with sentence production task (receptive and productive)
● Creating a dialogue with target words (productive)
● Completing crossword puzzles (productive)

There are many more vocabulary learning tasks, which is one of the
reasons why vocabulary learning is interesting and fun. You can choose to
try them all to prevent yourself from succumbing to boredom from
countless vocabulary learning sessions; yet if you are only interested in
finding the fastest route for language learning, then I highly recommend
you search for the most effective tasks.
You may have noticed that the tasks were categorized as either receptive
or productive in brackets. The difference between receptive and productive
knowledge was discussed in the first chapter with the intention of helping
readers understand the tasks in this chapter. As you can see, as well as
dividing each task into intentional and incidental, they can be further
classified as receptive and/or productive.
Now you know that a task can be more complicated than you thought.
Imagine placing Post-it Notes all over your furniture with the L2
vocabulary written on each sheet. What skills would you be building up? It
is, in fact, an intentional task that raises your receptive skills. You may
believe seeing these notes every day can help you develop your vocabulary
and provide you with the skills to spontaneously use these words in
conversation but, contrary to popular belief, it is only practising your ability
to recognise meaning.
Before we look at how to find an effective task, we have to discuss the
difference between intentional and incidental. I have given definitions, but
now we need to examine which is better for learning vocabulary. The quick
answer is that incidental learning is better than intentional. The advantages
of incidental learning outweigh those of intentional learning, which will be
reviewed as we discuss each task further. Although this is a quick answer,
the real answer is not that simple.
A direct distinction between intentional and incidental vocabulary
learning has been explored by various researchers. One of these researchers,
Jameel Ahmad, wanted to examine the difference between the two based on
the ‘learner’s ability to understand, retain and use new words’2. In his
research, 20 students were chosen and divided into two groups: an
intentional type question group and an incidental type question group. The
scores from his test indicated group B, assigned to the incidental type
questions, had outperformed group A. This outcome can potentially be
explained by using the relationships between vocabulary. Words are usually
strung together with other vocabulary to provide meaning, syntax, and
morphology; and incidental tasks can deliver the opportunity to see all of
these aspects.
 Similarly, while at the University of Arkansas3, Amirreza Karami and
Freddie A. Bowles wanted to explore the best strategy to encourage longer
retention of vocabulary. In contrast to Jameel Ahmad’s research, this study
added a combined group. The researchers decided to create three
experimental groups: incidental learning, intentional learning and a
combined group (a combination of both types) to compete against three
control groups. The strict standards required for this study reduced the
number of participants from 100 to 78 English as a foreign language (EFL)
students. The design of the experiment was simple: each group was
assigned to complete tasks that conformed to the learning procedures
assigned to them, while the control group had various vocabulary
instructions that differed from the experimental group.
After eight weeks of administering the tasks, the post-test scores showed
the three experimental groups had different outcomes, and the scores
suggested incidental learning is better than intentional. When the results of
the combined learning were compared to the other two tasks, incidental
learning ranked second. Consequently, the researchers concluded that
combined learning was the most effective method, followed by incidental
learning. Intentional learning was found to be the least effective. The results
also indicated all three experimental groups had outperformed the control
group. Similar to Jameel Ahmad's findings, intentional tasks provided more
opportunity to learn several aspects of receptive knowledge and, when
combined with the intentional strategy to purposely target specific words,
the final result was longer retention of vocabulary. The combined strategy
had placed more involvement load to target each word.

Involvement Load Hypothesis

We have concluded that incidental learning is superior to intentional
learning unless the two tasks are combined. The combination strategy’s
superiority could be partially explained using Batia Laufer and Jan
Hulstijn's involvement load hypothesis1. The professors introduced the
involvement load hypothesis to define the conditions required for a task to
promote vocabulary retention.
Laufer and Hulstijn proposed that a task that induces higher involvement
load will lead to better vocabulary learning. They came to this hypothetical
conclusion by observing two different dimensions of a task: motivation and
cognition. These dimensions offer an insight into the requirements needed
for an effective task. Their proposal outlined three factors: 'Need, Search
and Evaluation'.
Envision a teacher assigning you two tasks. Task A involves reading
while glossing unknown words in the margin. On the other hand, task B
involves reading sentences with target vocabulary and writing an example
sentence. Which task would you expect to promote better vocabulary
retention? According to Laufer and Hulstijin's hypothesis, it would be task
B, since it requires higher task demand. Task A and task B have both
induced a need to achieve an understanding of the word to comprehend the
text. The difference between the two is the last step. While task A requires
moderate search, task B involved searching for the meaning in a dictionary
and evaluating the words function to form a sentence. The physical action
of consulting a dictionary and writing a sentence demanded more cognitive
function.

Need – The need to achieve an understanding

Search – Searching for the meaning of the word
Evaluation – Comparing the L2 word with other words and deciding
if it is suitable for the context
Laufer and Hulstijn have also added different levels of involvement to
determine how much involvement a task contains; they surmise that the
higher the degree of involvement, the stronger the task. Although this
proposal is considered hypothetical, many researchers have taken a strong
interest to prove its accuracy in hope of finding an answer regarding the
best tasks for learning vocabulary.
Teng Feng from Nanning University examined the effects of the
involvement load hypothesis on 60 students. The participants were divided
into three groups and assigned to translate texts2. Task one involved
translation only, task two was translation plus fill-in exercises, and task
three was translation plus sentence writing. Each task had a different degree
of involvement, which was calculated by observing the need, search, and
evaluation of the task. Task one had an involvement degree of one, task two
had an involvement degree of two, and task three had an involvement
degree of three.
The participants for task three were assigned to translate and use the
target words to create an original sentence, whereas task two involved
filling in blanks. The difference between the two tasks is similar, yet the
simple modification increased the workload of task three. The minor
difference gave stimulation which resulted in task three’s superiority. The
results led the researcher to conclude that task three outperformed task two,
which in turn outperformed task one.
This study demonstrates the prospect of measuring a task’s effectiveness
on vocabulary learning through three dimensions: need, search and
evaluation. The previous research looked at how crucial the involvement
load hypothesis is; but when looking at promoting a strong depth of
vocabulary knowledge, can this theory provide evidence of deeper
learning?
Maryam Tahmasbi and Mohammad Taghi Farvardin wanted to
understand more about the involvement load hypothesis and decided to
investigate its effects on receptive and productive knowledge. Strikingly,
their experiment invited over a double of the number of participants
compared to the previous study. The 130 participants were divided into six
groups and administered productive and receptive tests at the end of the
procedure3.
The degrees of involvement were as follows: paragraph writing (4),
sentence writing (3), translation from L2 to L1 (2), fill-in-the-blank (2),
combined task (2), and a control group that matched meaning (0). The study
revealed that the paragraph and sentence writing groups outperformed the
other groups in the immediate and delayed post-tests, serving as evidence
for the involvement load hypothesis. The receptive and productive scores
were higher for the paragraph and sentence task. This crucially supports the
importance of the degree of involvement in deeper vocabulary knowledge.
The control group scored the lowest for both the productive and receptive
scores. The outcome for the control group suggests that language learning
apps that use matching word gamification have little advantage compared to
the other tasks.
In a similar case, another study administered a receptive and productive
knowledge test at the end of the experiment. Gema Alcaraz-Mármol and
Angel Ángela Almela Sánchez-Lafuente decided to explore the effect of the
involvement load hypothesis on young students that were still in primary
education or students that were considered beginner learners of English4.
Again, the results provided evidence of the effectiveness of the hypothesis.
As the degree of involvement increased, so did the score for receptive and
productive knowledge. The researchers placed emphasis on the children’s
age as a cause of the lower than expected results. The lack of understanding
of the complex tasks may have affected the score between the top two
highest involvement load tasks. In other words, the complexity of a task
may hinder learning progress. The researchers’ reasoning implies that a task
should have a high degree of involvement but should not be over-
complicated.
Without the aforementioned limitations, all four tasks revealed a surge in
receptive and productive scores as the degree of involvement increased,
similar to the results of the previous studies. This experiment undoubtedly
demonstrates a correlation between the degree of involvement and the task
that affects productive and receptive knowledge.
Chapter two looked at studies based on Stephen Krashen’s second
language acquisition hypothesis which demonstrated intriguing results; yet
in this chapter I reviewed the involvement load hypothesis tasks that
intentionally study vocabulary. If Krashen was correct, there would be no
need to review these tasks because language is acquired naturally. Studies
on receptive tasks have shown that students still develop productive
knowledge, just at a slower speed than receptive knowledge. This is a
strong argument that would suggest listening and reading can help learners
acquire a language, but it would be a slow process; whereas adapting a
forced learning task for productive knowledge would greatly enhance the
speed of learning.

Reading for language acquisition

This section will more thoroughly discuss both the superiority of
incidental learning and its relationship to comprehensive input. The idea of
acquiring comprehensible input without a teacher is a controversial
proposal. Teachers can provide a representation of the vocabulary they are
using; without this representation, it is difficult to understand abstract
words.
Another form of input can come from reading. However, there does exist
criticism between the two approaches. Teachers can provide flexibility and
teach subjects based on their surroundings, whereas a book is a fixed
teaching program. This is a major flaw with books; to reduce the lack of
flexibility, a learner would need to read a vast number of books. Would that
truly help? How much benefit can you gain from reading?
There have been many studies on reading for language acquisition, and
the majority are in favour of using reading for acquisition. It has been
proposed that the majority of our adult vocabulary is acquired through
reading. One reason for the immense support for reading is the self-study
advantages it can provide such as real context, cultural immersion, and
exposure to low-frequency vocabulary. There are many more advantages,
which will be discussed later.
The most common types of reading methods include intensive reading,
extensive reading, and repeated reading. As a task for acquiring a language,
reading is considered an incidental, implicit, or explicit task that can raise
receptive vocabulary knowledge. In contrast to writing or speaking, it does
not require the need to produce the language. It is understandable that there
are doubts about the credibility of reading as a language learning tool.
Imagine reading through a passage from 1984 by George Orwell, noticing
so many new vocabulary items and wondering, ‘Is it possible to remember
all these words?’ You would likely answer in the negative. Unless you have
the memory of a memory champion, it would be difficult to remember
every single word. Reading is not a task to memorise every single
vocabulary item in one session, but a task to develop your receptive
vocabulary knowledge and comprehension. Accurately memorising words
would mean recognising the word as well as having the ability to write and
produce it through speech. Rather than memorizing, it may be best to define
reading as gaining grains of sand to build a sandcastle.

Intensive reading and extensive reading

Reading is different from writing; it provides vocabulary acquisition
through frequency of occurrence. For readers unfamiliar with frequency of
occurrence, it describes the acquisition of vocabulary after seeing the same
word multiple times. In the previous section, which discussed the
involvement load hypothesis, reading was displayed as the weakest task. It
is arguable that the text was simply too short and did not provide enough
exposure to the same vocabulary. This assumption presents the difference
between receptive and productive tasks. Productive tasks may be more
difficult but would offer a shorter route for learning vocabulary. Yet for the
busy learner that is balancing hobby, family, and work, the idea of
frequency of occurrence would imply tasks such as reading can be a
schedule-friendly method.
A study by Ana Pellicer-Sánchez and Norbert Schmitt offers insight into
the effects of word encounter. Their results show an interesting outcome for
acquiring ‘spelling, word class, and recognition as well as recall of
meaning’1. Twenty Spanish EFL students were invited to take part in this
study. All participants were required to read the novel Things Fall Apart.
The researchers aimed to look at the frequency of exposure by choosing
target words in the novel without informing the participants what they were
looking for. This task was designed with incidental vocabulary acquisition
as the main focus, so the students were requested to read the book for
pleasure and to not consider it a task.
At the end of the procedure, the participants were administered a test.
The researchers concluded that the results were positive and that learning
did occur during the reading task. Their results indicated the students had
acquired 14-43% of the target words after seeing a word 10 or more times.
The students acquired several different aspects of vocabulary knowledge,
and the highest scores were achieved in recognising meaning. Many of the
studies in this book have indicated that the aspect of recognising meaning is
one of the earliest forms of knowledge gained and could potentially be
achieved through one encounter. They also found some gains in spelling
(orthographic form). Even though the reading task is a receptive method
and rationality would dictate it should only contribute to gaining receptive
knowledge, the task developed some productive knowledge, mostly in the
form of orthography. This research would imply learners of Japanese and
Chinese may not necessarily need to write several pages of Kanji or
Chinese characters to memorise written form and reading alone would
suffice.
Another outcome that needs to be emphasised is the recognition of word
class or parts of speech. The participants were also tested on word class and
the remarkable results provide us with a small hypothetical connection with
grammar. An example of English grammar would be adding 'ing' to the end
of English verbs. If the participants had recognised word class in the
reading task, then it is possible to learn grammar concepts after several
exposures. After several exposures of verbs ending in 'ing', it would be
reasonable to assume that learners would see a connection and that all
words connected to 'ing' are verbs, allowing them to recognise or naturally
form verbs with this inflection. This may promote the creation of new
words without ever encountering them. The experiment demonstrated that
leisurely reading and multiple exposures to vocabulary have the effect of
delivering word knowledge acquisition.
This is not the only study featuring the effect of word frequency. In
another study, Stuart Webb provided evidence of learning through testing
multiple exposures on different targets2. He invited 121 Japanese students to
take part in the experiment. Similar to the previously mentioned study, his
focus was on frequency; however, his method to explore the student's
knowledge was largely different. He split the participants into four
experimental groups and one control group. The ten target words were
replaced with nonsense words to prevent the participants from using their
prior vocabulary knowledge to complete the tests. The participants were
divided into four groups that involved one, three, seven, and ten encounters
of a word. The study was designed to understand the effects of these
numbers on the learner's vocabulary acquisition.
The originality of this study was the ten tests employed to measure the
participants' word knowledge. Traditionally, research had only looked at
two aspects of vocabulary knowledge: form and meaning. Previous chapters
have discussed the different aspects of receptive and productive knowledge,
and it is clear that there are more than two aspects. Webb was motivated to
observe more knowledge in order to assess the accuracy of each subject's
vocabulary gains. Another difference from Pellicer-Sánchez and Schmitt’s
experiment was the material used for the experiment. Rather than assign the
participants to read a novel, they were given different, pre-arranged
sentences with the target words replaced with nonsense words.
The study confirmed that vocabulary can be acquired incidentally
through multiple exposures. The results from testing the different aspects of
knowledge showed that the largest gains came from receptive knowledge -
specifically, meaning and form. This outcome is similar to Pellicer-Sánchez
and Schmitts’s findings. Again, the study indicates that the learners gained
some productive knowledge generally associated with productive tasks. The
gain was, again, mostly in orthographic knowledge. The results show that
as the frequency increased, the participants gained deeper knowledge of the
target vocabulary. Webb stated that to obtain full knowledge, learners must
encounter the word ten or more times.
 The results of both studies have exposed an important relationship
between receptive and productive tasks. In addition to the traditional view
that each task supports the growth of its respective knowledge, they both
also develop features from the other skill at the same time.
Continuing with studies on frequency, Soo-Ok Kweon and Hae-Ri Kim's
experiment can also provide clues on learning vocabulary through extensive
reading. However, their results suggest lower frequency words were
acquired better than high-frequency words when the low-frequency word
was essential for understanding a sentence3. The method of their procedure
involved assigning twelve students with reading three books over the course
of five weeks. They were then assigned to complete two post-tests. The
results indicated a significant difference between the pre-test and post-test,
implying that vocabulary can be incidentally acquired from extensive
reading with multiple exposures to vocabulary. However, high-quality
context was an important factor in predicting vocabulary learning with
lower number of exposures.
The first two experiments revealed that incidental reading facilitated
strong growth in receptive vocabulary knowledge. Since reading and
listening are both in the same category of skills, can it be assumed that
reading can improve listening ability? Listening skills have always been the
least researched area in language. One of the reasons for this is the
expectation of natural growth; learners are expected to increase their
listening skills as they advance through speaking, writing, and reading.
The idea of developing listening skills through reading interested Anna
Ching-Shyang Chang. In order to measure the growth of listening skills, she
invited participants to take part in her experiment4, which involved 84
students separated into two groups. One group was assigned to both the
reading and listening tasks, whereas the second group was assigned to
listening only. The two groups were provided with different short stories to
complete. To make the experiment as accurate as possible, the texts for both
groups were on the same level.
The researcher discovered that the two modes of input did produce
different gains and that the combined reading and listening tasks provided
the best results. The researcher proposed that the participants in the
combined group had an opportunity to verify the text after hearing it out
loud and, through this dual action, improved more aspects of word
knowledge. Unfortunately, the results showed the comparative gains
between the two tasks were small and concluded that reading while
listening may only provide a small advantage for gaining listening skills.
In a 2011 study, Chang made another experiment to show more evidence
of her research on developing listening skills from reading. In this
experiment, her tasks were slightly different5. Seven students were provided
with the task of reading while listening to the audiobook. The other twelve
students were allocated to the control group, which was assigned to
complete a traditional listening textbook. The experimental group read a
total of 242 books and was advised to read one book a week. The length of
time of this study was longer than the previous experiment; due to the
number of books that were required to be read, this one went on for 26
weeks.
We can naturally think of this as an extreme study, but Chang’s results
have proven a fundamental point: it takes time to improve language
proficiency. The final results showed that the assisted reading group had
outperformed the control group in a dictation test as well as a vocabulary
test. The researcher specifically mentioned the assisted reading group had
improved 100% in dictation when pre-test and post-tests were compared.
These findings demonstrated the assisted reading group’s improvement in
auditory vocabulary recognition. In conclusion to the study, Chang has
presented extensive reading-with-listening as a superior method compared
to formal instructions that employ traditional listening textbooks. The
results from the dictation also suggest that extensive reading with assisted
listening can develop faster reaction time for word recognition. The two
studies have shown that developing listening skills requires an abundant
amount of time and texts.
Extensive reading has revealed a wide range of advantages, from high
exposure of vocabulary to the development of listening skills by combining
reading with listening. A combined task would reduce the need to
separately practice these skills.
Despite the advantages of extensive reading, intensive reading is a task
that should not be neglected. Intensive reading involves reading difficult
texts while also increasing the difficulty after each text material. Extensive
reading contrasts with this method by purposely reading for leisure. The
main distinction between the two can be seen in the time required. Intensive
reading needs more time than extensive reading, since the learner is
expected to search for vocabulary in a dictionary more often.
 So, can we simply interchange the tasks to gain the advantages of both?
Not entirely. The following experiments show that the best type of reading
task depends on the level of the language learner.
A study by Talia Isaacs, A. Young Park, and Helen Woodfield found that
intermediate and advanced learners benefited from extensive reading more
than beginning learners, whereas the beginners benefited more from
intensive reading6. Over the course of 12 weeks, 72 native-speaking Korean
students of English were divided into extensive and intensive reading
assignments. They were provided with a pre-test and post-test to examine
the results of the assigned tasks. The researchers stated there was 'a
significant improvement in the extensive reading compared to the intensive
reading group's vocabulary performance'. Additionally, the test scores
revealed the advanced group had developed more skills than the
intermediate group from extensive reading; however, the intermediate group
still outperformed the least proficient group. Despite the results for the
beginner group achieving the worst results, when the pre-test and post-test
scores were compared, the low level group demonstrated a notable increase.
The beginner group had gained positive results from using intensive
reading.
The researchers argued that the students would benefit more from the
correct teaching material that was based on their level of proficiency. Since
this book is intended for self-study learners, I must point out that their
research has suggested a style of reading for your level. If a student has
only just begun their journey in language learning, it would be beneficial to
use intensive reading until proficiency improves; only then should the
learner be introduced to extensive reading.

Repeated Reading
The role of repeated reading can differ from both extensive and intensive
reading. It is not necessarily the type of text that makes them different, but
how the text is used. Typically, repeated reading aims to create meaning
from the text in the first trial, and then, in the subsequent repeated sessions,
to transfer meaning into language form. One example of language form is
morphology, such as the difference between run and running. This approach
to reading delivers a different set of benefits, as demonstrated in the
following studies. The expected benefits are increased reading fluency and
comprehension development.
The majority of studies discussing the benefits of the frequency of
occurrence were based on extensive reading. Repeated reading, on the other
hand, does not contain elements of the frequency of exposure, since the
previous studies suggest exposure in different contexts is the major factor in
this phenomenon. Repeated reading differs by exposing the same context
over several trials and does not present any new text. Looking carefully at
the relationship between repeated reading and intensive reading, they are
not exactly that far apart; in fact, repeated reading may even be considered
a form of intensive reading, since the first time the learner is exposed to the
text it may be difficult for them.
Before looking further into the relationship between repeated reading and
reading fluency and comprehension, we have to look at assisted and
unassisted repeated reading, since the ensuing studies have incorporated
assisted reading into repeated reading tasks. The purpose of adapting audio
to the reading material can be associated with the difficulty of reading
unknown material. At the beginning of language acquisition and learning,
there is a difficult phase in which the learner may find it challenging to read
the text, especially in languages that use logograms. Audio assistance can
support the learner's reading speed and understanding of the text.
Reading an unfamiliar text in a logographic language is daunting for
many people. The reading material can become an unpleasant chore and
may result in the learner ignoring specific words. When this point is taken
into account, assisted repeated reading can be viewed as the best strategy
for vocabulary acquisition. A study by Stuart Webb and Anna Ching-
Shyang Chang demonstrated the difference between assisted and unassisted
repeated reading; the study lends support in favour of using of the former1.
The authors found evidence that both assisted and unassisted repeated
reading had naturally increased vocabulary in the 82 participants; however,
the assisted group delivered higher results.
In another experiment by Etsuo Taguchi et al., the researchers developed
a study aimed at understanding the effects of assisted repeated reading and
extensive reading in developing reading fluency2. They aimed to find
answers to the following questions: (1) Is repeated reading an effective task
for developing fluency? (2) Is repeated reading just as effective as extensive
reading at developing and improving reading fluency and comprehension?
(3) How do beginner learners feel about using repeated reading?
To find the answers, the researchers invited 20 students to participate.
The participants were divided into two groups: extensive reading and
repeated reading. They were then grouped by their TOEFL test scores and
had their words per minute rate measured. These results were used to
compare their results for the post-test.
The result of the experiment was in favour of repeated reading. In
conclusion to their findings, they believe the experiment answered two of
their questions. Repeated reading is as effective as extensive reading in
developing reading fluency for beginners; however, the comprehension
score was less favourable. Even though both tasks had shown improvement
in language comprehension, the researchers stated that extensive reading
slightly outperformed repeated reading in the comprehension test.
Before the results were analysed, the researchers had expected the
automaticity theory would support the repeated reading group. This theory
dictates that the brain provides better resource allocation when there is less
task load. Each repetition should have reduced the need to look at
previously observed information and allowed the mind to freely notice
other unique features of the text that were not noticeable in the previous
trials, resulting in the transformation of meaning to language form.
Intrigued by the failed outcome of comprehension development in the
previous study, Greta Gorsuch and Etsuo Taguchi created another
specifically targeting repeated reading in relations to developing reading
fluency and reading comprehension3. In this study, native speakers of
Vietnamese studying English were invited. The experimental group was
assigned to carry out a repeated reading task five times, with the addition of
every second and third session including assisted reading.
The participants were tasked with repeating segmented text from three
books five times. The experiment continued for eleven weeks, and at the
end of the procedure, a post-test was administered to measure their reading
fluency and comprehension. Again, the results showed improvement in
reading fluency, and these new skills could be seen on unpractised texts.
Comprehension test scores were similar to the previous experiment, with
improvement in the experimental group. The results were more clearly
visible when compared to the control group. Despite the similarity in
reading speed for both groups, the scores on the post-test indicated that the
experimental group was able to understand the text faster than the control
group. This may be supportive evidence for the previous study, which
demonstrated reading while listening developed faster word recognition.
In addition to the main goal, the researchers also wanted to discover why
comprehension score for this experiment was more successful than the
previous experiment. They believe it may have been due to the
experimental group's expectation of a post-test. The experimental group
read slower during the repeated sessions to grasp as much information as
they could in order to prepare for the post-test. This outcome could
potentially imply that fast reading and slow reading both support different
outcomes. Faster reading might accommodate reading fluency
development, whereas reading slowly might encourage comprehension
development.
In reality, the results of the last two studies have yet to provide strong
evidence for developing comprehension. Let us take another look at a study
by Anna Ching-Shyang Chang and Sonia Millet4. They cooperated on a
study including students from different majors, such as accounting and
finance. Similar to the previous two studies, the researchers looked at
understanding the reading fluency and comprehension gains from repeated
reading.
The participants were divided into two groups: repeated and non-repeated
reading. The repeated reading group followed the same routine from the
previous study by repeating the material five times. The non-repeated group
was instructed to read the passages once.
The results demonstrated a positive outcome for the repeated reading
group. This difference was evident when comparing the pre-test with the
post-test scores. Both groups had scored similar results in the pre-test; yet
by the end of the post-test, the difference was significant. The scores
indicated that the repeated reading had led to a greater increase in reading
rate (words per second) than the non-repeated group. The reading
comprehension results were also satisfactory. The experimental group
achieved higher comprehension scores than the group that only read the text
once. The researchers concluded that these skills can be transferred to
passages that have not been practised.
Discussing the results of reading tasks is to present the possible gains of
comprehensive input from reading; and as the research suggests, repeated
reading not only provides input but also improves comprehension. The
results of the studies offer a reason to consider adding repeated reading into
your learning routine. A downside to repeated reading is the length of time
required. In these studies, the participants read the material five times, with
different text material each session, and the procedure continued for several
months. Despite this disadvantage, the advantages proposed by the
researchers may still prove it is worth it.
Improved reading fluency and comprehension are the only advantages of
repeated reading that have been thoroughly studied. In this next study, Sujin
Kim from Sunchon National University investigated the advantages of
repeated reading. Dissimilar to the previous studies, the focus was how
repeated reading affected speaking fluency and writing5. The repeated
reading approach was also different when compared with the previous
studies. The participants were only required to read texts three times a week
for two months, and the reading material was changed every week.
After analysing the post-test, the writing and speaking test scores showed
a positive correlation between repeated reading and improved speaking and
writing abilities. The pre-test mean scores for speaking and writing were 9.7
and 7.667 respectively; those of the post-test were 17.5 and 10.333. When
the scores for speaking and writing are compared, speaking scored the
highest. This could indicate reading aloud had a positive effect on the task
and, again, a receptive task had stimulated growth in productive skills.

Language acquisition and television shows

Earlier, I suggested the idea of acquiring comprehensive input from
reading and watching television shows. The previous section showed
several advantages and potential gains from different reading methods, and
the studies demonstrate strong support for reading tasks. Watching
television shows for language acquisition, on the other hand, is a method
that greatly differs from reading in many ways. When looking at research
on watching television, the most studied aspects are comparison
experiments that look at subtitled and non-subtitled media. A reason for this
is the popularity of watching television shows for second language
acquisition learners. Many believe it to be an effective way of acquiring a
language, and this assumption certainly arises from how we see children
learn.
 It is common to hear learners question the prospect of learning a
language from television, but the consensus from studies suggests it is
possible. The interesting element of these studies is the creative
perspectives the researchers have turned to in order to better understand
how learners acquire a language from watching television.
Over the years, television has piqued the interest of language researchers
since the task is easy and should not even be considered a task. Modern
society simply revolves around watching, and it would not be a surprise to
see a statistic revealing the number of people watching television is greater
than the number of book readers.
Researchers have become fascinated with television shows because of the
authentic language used and the fact that there are not simply one or two
dialogues, but an entire episode full of them. In this 2009 study, Stuart
Webb and Michael Rogers investigated the number of vocabulary and the
number of low-frequency encounters in 88 television programs. The
challenging task was reduced to only contain British or American television
shows. The shows were then categorised into different genres1. The results
from the analysis would demonstrate how many words a language learner
would need to understand a certain percentage of the show. The frequency
of word encounters would potentially provide clues to incidental language
acquisition by frequency of occurrence.
The design of this study was innovative, as transcripts were used to
provide the number of vocabulary items in the episodes. Native local terms
from contractions and hyphenated words were changed to follow the word
list created by Paul Nation2, which was divided into 14 parts of 1000 words
each. The list represented both the high and low-frequency vocabulary.
After analysing 264,384 words found in the scripts, the researchers’
conclusion shows that a person would need to understand the most frequent
3000 word-families with proper nouns and marginal words to reach an
understanding of 95.45% of the television shows. The researchers stated
that means ‘one in every 22 words would be unknown’. Assuming this
study is correct, then the 3000 word-families should provide an excellent
target for learning vocabulary.
The previous study analysed the combined scripts of numerous television
programs, but what happens when scripts are reviewed individually based
on genre? Each genre has its own set of unique words that are accompanied
by the subgenre. For example, a sci-fi movie would contain words such as
'spaceship' or 'extra-terrestrial' more often than the medical genre. In
another study to further examine the idea of vocabulary learning from
extensive television viewing, Stuart Webb presented an investigation of the
frequency of words based on each genre3. This study divided the programs
based on genre and then employed the same word list from the previous
study to target the vocabulary used in the scripts.
The results indicated that different genres would require different
vocabulary sizes. For example, roughly 2000 word-families are necessary to
understand the spy/action subgenre, whereas the medical subgenre would
require 4000. The research analysis also indicated which vocabulary was
most likely to reoccur in the same genre. According to the author, to acquire
vocabulary through watching television, a certain number of shows in the
same subgenre must be extensively viewed.
I admit the research in this study would prove to have a flaw for English-
speaking SLA learners, since the study focuses on English. Nevertheless,
transferring the outcome of this study into a language that resembles
English may yield similar results. The question that should be examined is
whether or not a language that greatly differs from English would have a
similar outcome.
The previous two studies have established the number of vocabulary
items required for watching television shows in English, and the word
frequency analysis would suggest it may be possible to learn vocabulary
from incidental television viewing. Although frequency of occurrence is a
major topic for both reading texts and watching television shows, there is a
clear difference between the two. You may believe that between reading and
extensive television viewing, the latter is the best choice for input, as it is
more relaxing and easier while also targeting the same goals as reading.
However, information is not so simple; it enters through different systems
and reaches different areas of the brain. In the following study, participants
displayed a higher need in word encounter to learn vocabulary through a
listening task. Incidental learning through listening can be comparatively
similar to learning by watching television, since both require listening
skills.
It is easy to understand why researchers have taken a strong interest in
Paul Nation’s aspects of vocabulary knowledge. The aspects provide an
objective view for defining the depth of vocabulary. Hilde van Zeeland and
Norbert Schmitt investigated the effect of frequency on L2 learners’
acquisition of three dimensions of vocabulary knowledge through incidental
listening4. The researchers examined three of Nation’s aspects: form,
grammar, and meaning. The results were achieved by exposing the
participants to the target vocabulary in audio passages several times. The
researchers wanted to know how three, seven, eleven, and fifteen exposures
of a word would affect knowledge of form, grammar, and meaning. They
discovered that acquiring vocabulary from listening differed greatly from
reading. Studies on the frequency of occurrence have indicated reading only
requires at least eight to ten encounters.
The results for this study demonstrate that learning vocabulary in this
way required a greater number of encounters to gain all three vocabulary
knowledge aspects. This form of learning also produced weak retention.
The scores showed that participants achieved two out of twenty-five target
words for knowledge of meaning in the immediate post-test, and the results
dropped further in the delayed test. Even though the participants did gain
some of the vocabulary, they were at an advanced English proficiency level,
which would suggest the idea of acquisition of vocabulary through
incidental listening may be difficult for beginner and intermediate learners.
Assuming the results are more than just correlation, this study would have a
major impact on the effectiveness of learning through watching television
shows, indicating that it would require numerous episodes to acquire a
word. For example, if a television show in the spy subgenre used the word
'espionage' in every episode once, the learner would need to watch 15
episodes or more to acquire all three dimensions.
The previous study may seem surprising and be a cause for concern, but I
must mention that it focused solely on listening. Watching television shows
is slightly more unique and incorporates three features: visual, audio and
subtitles/captions.
Rather than examining a study related to auditory vocabulary acquisition,
it is necessary to directly review one that examines watching television
shows with subtitles and captions. The following research observed
vocabulary learning through subtitled and non-subtitled media. Subtitles
offer an opportunity for viewers to understand the story’s plot even if they
cannot hear the word. The modal difference between reading and watching
television is the visual aspect, since reading requires imagination. Some
language learners may find watching to be more enticing than reading.
 Many prominent researchers have taken a more direct approach in
studying vocabulary acquisition from extensive viewing of media material.
In a study by Madhubala Bava Harji, Peter Woods, and Zhinoos Kamal
Alavi5, 92 students were assigned to either watch videos with or without
English subtitles. After several media viewing sessions, a post-test was
administered, and the results showed that the participants exposed to
subtitles had gained more vocabulary than their counterparts. The post-test
mean score of the subtitled group was 46.20 while the non-subtitled group
had a mean score of 31.79.
It can be argued that although the video exposed vocabulary that contains
unique words to this type of genre over multiple encounters, achieving
gains for genre-specific words, the presence of subtitles may have offered
the opportunity for the participants to confirm that what they heard is
indeed a word they already knew. Matching their less proficient vocabulary
to the subtitles could have improved the knowledge of lesser known words.
Now we need to take a look at another popular format: captions. The
difference between the two formats may appear subtle; subtitles are
translations of the dialogue into another language, whereas captions simply
transcribe the original audio from the show. This is important to know, since
both methods can lead to different routes. While subtitles can provide
comprehension acquisition, captions are better for learning word form as
demonstrated in the following study.
The previous study compared subtitled and non-subtitled media, and the
results demonstrated a positive outcome for the experimental group. Paula
Winke, Susan Gass, and Tesyana Sydorenko wanted to investigate the
effects of captions on media for foreign language learning6. The participants
were all learners in their second and fourth year of Arabic, Chinese,
Spanish and Russian. They were tasked with watching captioned and non-
captioned videos. After the study sessions were completed, they were
administered two tests. The results revealed that captions had a positive
effect on the participants' test scores. The researchers pointed out that the
participants had used captions to verify the vocabulary they heard, and by
doing so, they were able to reinforce less familiar vocabulary. An important
fact from this study that requires attention is the proficiency level of the
participants. It appears as though captions will greatly benefit intermediate
and advanced learners rather than beginner learners.
 The results of these two experiments demonstrate the prospect of
learning vocabulary with television shows. Yet, when clearly examined,
watching television has a flaw. The learner is expected to have prior
vocabulary knowledge so they can employ metacognitive strategies to
analyse the sentence and relate information to the target vocabulary. Neither
this study nor the study that investigated the effect of subtitles by Harji et
al. examined whether metacognitive strategies affected their research
outcome.
Metacognitive strategies involve the use of methods that help learners
think about thinking. In the previous studies, the participants that heard the
audio may not have known the target word but could have used the
surrounding words to guess it. Watching videos may be considered an
uncomfortable and demanding task for beginner learners.
The last two experiments focused on subtitles and captions; yet when
visual/audio learning is compared to combined visual/audio/captioned
learning, what would the outcome be and what exactly are people focused
on? Another investigation by Tetyan Sydorenko was created to examine
these questions7. The researcher used this opportunity to investigate the
participants’ vocabulary gains and attention to input, curious as to whether
people focus more on the image or the captions. Tetyan Sydorenko
proposed that learners would focus on specific information when watching
videos. The researcher's premise relates to the limited human capacity for
focusing on several different items at once.
The researcher invited 26 learners of Russian to watch a video with audio
and caption (VAC), video with audio (VA) and video with caption only
(VC). They were divided into these three groups and received a post-test to
determine the results. After that, they were given a questionnaire. The
results suggested the VAC group may be better than the VA group, since the
VAC group’s score was higher in both the written and recognition tests. The
answers from the questionnaire suggested that the participants focused more
on the captions, and then equally the same on audio and visual. These
findings helped the researchers summarise captioned video as the best
option for learning vocabulary orthography while video with audio to be the
best practice for improving listening comprehension.
Language learners have often asked whether subtitled television is better
than television with just audio; these studies show an important implication
for employing television shows as a language tool. They suggest three
distinct directions depending on the method of viewing television.

Word pair learning

Some language learners have their own unique methods for learning a
language, but the majority still use one common method: word-pairing. The
task involves writing L1 on one column and then L2 on another column.
The purpose of this task is to recall or fill in the second column. The
purpose of dedicating a section of this book to this task is the simplicity of
the method and its popularity. The following studies demonstrate its
effectiveness.
Word pairing is a task that requires the learner to divert their effort
towards memorising vocabulary. This approach is ultimately different from
the incidental methods previously mentioned. A unique feature of word-
pairing that is unknown to many language learners is the ability to change
from receptive to productive. We have seen that one of the aspects of
receptive knowledge is recognising the target word; this aspect can be
achieved with L2 to L1. On the opposite end of the spectrum is the
productive condition, which reverses the language order to become L1 to
L2. This will then promote the learner’s ability to spell and pronounce the
word.
Reversing the conditions will allow change from receptive to productive
practice for the word-pair. For many learners curious to understand why
they find it difficult to recall the target L2 word in speaking practice, the
answer may actually be the result of learning through receptive condition
flashcards.
As a popular learning method, I want to discuss the effectiveness of
flashcards with the help of more research. We have seen that a task can be
either receptive or productive, depending on the learning condition. The
apparent aspect of vocabulary knowledge gained in the process was also
mentioned, but is it possible to gain other aspects of vocabulary knowledge
from this simple task?
In a study by Stuart Webb to evaluate the effects of word pairing on
receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, the author crafted an
effective test to measure multiple aspects1. His study examined five aspects
of receptive and productive knowledge by using a test different from
traditional methods, which traditionally only observed form and meaning.
These five aspects of knowledge were orthography, syntax, grammatical
functions, association, and meaning/form (these two are considered one
aspect).
The method of study was simple. The participants were native Japanese
speaking students divided into a receptive group and a productive group.
Both groups were tasked to complete the English word pair task in their
assigned group. The task involved covering either the L1 or L2 word and
recalling the translation. After the procedure, the participants were tested on
receptive and productive tests.
The findings show that both receptive and productive conditions
produced high results in their corresponding tests. Past studies have also
shown similar results and should not be of any surprise. Remarkably, the
research did demonstrate an interesting outcome. All participants were
administered the receptive and productive test without discrimination of
their task condition, and the results found higher scores in the productive
group’s receptive test compared to the receptive group’s productive test.
The conclusion is that productive conditions may be more advantageous
than receptive ones for acquiring vocabulary knowledge.
A problem many learners encounter at the beginning of language
learning is the direction they take. More often than not, beginner learners
find the most common words or words which the learner will often use in
their native tongue, and then create flashcards with them. A reason this is
considered flawed is the learner's lack of development in the various aspects
of knowledge. The other group of unexperienced initiates that search for
vocabulary commonly used in their native language will not have the
opportunity to understand words that have cultural references.
Learning vocabulary in the same category can also be a problem.
Memorising semantically similar words can affect recall. This may seem
evident, but how exactly does it affect learning? A study by Ismail Hakki
Erten and Mustafa Tekin has provided evidence to explain this issue2. The
researchers understood there was a potential relationship between recall and
semantically related words. In order to observe the effects of semantically
related and unrelated sets, an experiment was conducted, giving a group the
task to memorise similar words and non-similar words. The post-test results
indicated cross-association caused interference and resulted in recall
obstruction. The conclusion for this study would indicate that textbooks that
make word lists based on the same category can have negative side effects
for memorising vocabulary; this offers a warning regarding selecting
vocabulary for word-pairs.
 Summary
Differentiating intentional and incidental tasks can be an important key to
finding your successful method. As the studies suggest, the higher the
involvement, the better the vocabulary retention. The studies discussed
throughout this book appear to point towards writing tasks as the most
effective method for vocabulary learning and retention. Despite the success
of writing tasks, correcting yourself is difficult, and it may be helpful to
find a task that offers self-monitoring.

Although writing appears to be the perfect task, it lacks comprehension

development. On the other hand, reading and watching television shows can
provide the necessary comprehension training. At present, it is still
impossible to define Stephen Krashen’s hypothesis as the absolute truth.
From what has been demonstrated, it is possible to achieve vocabulary and
comprehension development from receptive tasks, specifically in reading.
However, the results that show gains in productive knowledge have been
much smaller. This implies that relying on comprehensive input alone
would only slowly develop speaking skills. It is reasonable to assume a
routine should include productive tasks to compliment the achievements
from reading. Applying a combination of intentional and incidental
methods would prove valuable, and a good suggestion for achieving
comprehensible input would be to read texts with translation.

If the excellent results from reading tasks have yet to persuade you to add
this method into your routine, then you should look into the other
advantages it can provide, such as building receptive vocabulary, realising
the most commonly used grammar, learning vocabulary by frequency of
occurrence, and in some instances developing certain aspects of productive
knowledge. The studies discussed have also shown strong support for
reading with audio; in these cases, the participants had increased their
listening skills.
Employing television shows to develop language skills not only boasts
amazing popularity, but it can also be seen as an effective method.
Unfortunately, the research demonstrated in this chapter showed it may
have a few flaws. The learner would need prior knowledge of vocabulary,
and it may require more encounters before acquiring vocabulary
knowledge.

The aforementioned tasks may appear overwhelming when combined, but

they serve a unique purpose. If you are fortunate enough to have time, then
you should make room for word-pairing as well. It is a valuable task and
depending on how you use it, it can develop two routes. Do you want to
watch foreign television shows, or do you want to speak with the locals?
 Chapter 4

To listen is to attend

Passive listening is a controversial topic. Some learners do not believe in

it; others feel that it is essential for developing listening skills. Fortunately,
research suggests it can help for a certain group of learners.
Passive listening involves listening to the audio without focusing on the
actual information. The supposed expectation is to incidentally acquire new
words or sentences without the intention to learn. In the previous section, a
listening study by Hilde van Zeeland et al. was examined with this in mind.
From their conclusion, vocabulary acquisition from incidental listening
requires 15 or more encounters to fully obtain the vocabulary knowledge in
three of the studied dimensions. This study suggests passive listening is an
extensive task unreliable for beginners. Although this study has offered us
insight on the ineffectiveness of passive listening, it is not the final answer.
The following study provides an intriguing outlook on what passive
listening might be doing to us.
Research on passive listening by babies and toddlers has shown that
auditory discrimination is an ability that can be trained. Auditory
discrimination allows the subject to distinguish certain similar sounds or
phonetics. For example, a native Japanese speaker that has spent their entire
life in Japan with no experience in studying English may find it difficult to
differentiate ‘R’ from ‘L’. However, the relationship between adults and
auditory discrimination is a less examined area.
Jari Kurkela et al. examined the auditory discrimination effect on adults
to study auditory perceptual learning1. 39 native speakers of Finnish
participated in this experiment and were divided into two groups: a control
group and a group passively exposed to speech sound. Since the
participants spoke Finnish and had studied other European languages, the
researchers chose Mandarin Chinese, a language that was largely different
and used tones.
The researchers hypothesized that the speech exposure experiment would
enable the participants to differentiate the Chinese tones by the end of the
study. During the experiment, the participants were all exposed to Mandarin
Chinese audio two hours a day for four consecutive days. During those two
hours, they were assigned to watch a silent movie. The researchers
informed the participants to ignore the background audio and focus on the
movie. To help the participants do this, the researchers informed the
participants that they would have to discuss the movie with them during
break time.
The results of the experiment offered the researchers a satisfactory
conclusion. After continuous exposure over four days, the participants had
enhanced their sound discrimination ability and improved their attention
towards variations in speech sounds. This study shows that the language
learners who would benefit the most from passive exposure are beginners
who have never encountered the sound system of their target language.
The direct opposite of passive listening is active listening. Developing
active listening skills has always been a difficult task, especially in a
classroom environment. Measuring how much information each student
understood is a challenging task for teachers. This troublesome dilemma
has perplexed researchers and hindered investigations for the best approach
to improving listening skills.
Language teachers before World War II expected learners to gradually
develop listening skills as speaking, reading and writing improved.
Therefore, it was natural to assume there was a connection between these
skills. Researcher Hossein Bozorgian at the Queensland University of
Technology has stated that speaking proceeds listening, yet writing and
reading precede listening, so we can presume listening skills are developed
during an intermission between reading and writing2. In other words, for
adults, listening skills may develop at a time between reading tasks and the
introduction to productive tasks.
In the previous chapters, I briefly discussed listening skills as a by-
product of certain outcomes in experiments. One of these studies
demonstrated assisted reading does have a positive effect on listening skills.
Reading can be viewed as the first step to acquiring listening
comprehension. Bozorgian was curious about the connection between
listening skills and the other language skills: speaking, reading and writing.
To understand this relationship in detail, he examined the close relationship
between them and how they interact in a study2.
The researcher analysed 701 participants’ IELTS results. Since IELTS is
an internationally recognised exam and involves testing all language skills,
it can be acknowledged as a reliable design. Contrary to the hypothesised
outcome, the author discovered from analysing the results that listening
scores were more closely aligned to reading scores, whereas writing and
speaking had less connection. However, he stated that the productive skills
lagged in results, but writing and speaking skills were evenly aligned with
each other.
This study shows that the development of the two receptive skills
complement each other. The evidence presented establishes stronger
support for the previous studies, which suggest improving reading skills can
improve listening skills, whereas productive skills have much less
connection to listening.
 Summary
A common practice for language learners is to practice listening skills by
listening to an audio recording while travelling to work or school, yet is this
the best practice? Before you reach the stage of reading and listening to the
text material, you might want to ask whether or not you can differentiate
sounds. No matter how closely related a family of languages are, they will
certainly have different sound systems. It may be obligatory to passively
listen to audio of the target language for a short period at the beginning of
language learning. Passively listening to foreign audio in a car would be
advantageous for an absolute beginner; but remember, safety on the road
should always come first.

Directly examining tasks to develop listening skills appears to connect them

with reading skills. The studies suggest the best approach for practising
listening is to read and listen to the text material at the same time.

● Learning vocabulary through listening requires more encounters

than reading.
● Passive listening can help beginner learners differentiate sound
systems.
● Reading and listening skills have a connection.
 Chapter 5

Say no more

Research in developing speaking skills has had modest results and

produced little evidence. The lack of concrete answers suggests that the
perfect approach to developing spontaneous speech is still unclear.
However, past studies have indicated size and depth of vocabulary and
speed of recall have been good predictors of speaking proficiency1. This
answer implies a need to acquire a large number of vocabulary items and
gain a strong command of each one. If this was the undeniable truth, it
would be a disappointing final answer. Many learners have had the
experience of attempting to learn thousands of words yet failing to utter a
single sentence - so what more do we need? What other ingredients are
required?
Improving speaking skills is a difficult task; however, there is a method
that can improve speaking fluency. Shadowing is a technique that many
learners know about and, at the same time, know little of. The lack of
understanding is due to its ambiguous instructions and origin. The earliest
known form of the technique can be found in interpretation teachings. If
you understand the difficulty of interpreting, you know how interpreters
occasionally fail to follow along with their client. The strenuous demand of
working in organisations such as NATO or the United Nations places
interpreters in constant need to improve their skills. There are three types of
shadowing: phrase shadowing, adjusted lag shadowing and phonemic
shadowing. The difference between them is ultimately the delayed
commencement of each task.

● Adjusted lag shadowing requires the longest delay before following

the audio. The general consensus is a 5-10 word delay before
commencement.
● Phrase shadowing involves following the audio recording after a
slight delay.
● Phonemic shadowing involves following and repeating the words as
they are heard and as close as possible to the audio recording.
 Since interpreters should have adequate language skills, the technique is
not a method to enhance their ability to create sentences, but to practice
intonation, fluency, and the pronunciation of words, as well as to improve
their listening skills. Hearing that professionals use this technique should
persuade you that it must be an incredible method. If you have yet to be
convinced, then hopefully the following studies will be more persuasive.
Researchers Kun Ting Hsieh, Da Hui Dong and Li Yi Wang administered
the shadowing technique on 14 voluntary students that were not English
majors2. The participants were tasked with following the audio as close as
possible while speaking out loud. After analysing the post-test, the
researchers concluded the shadowing technique had helped the
experimental group develop an ability to adapt to the flow of English audio.
When compared to the control group, the experimental group exhibited a
stronger development of pronunciation, fluency, and intonation. The
researchers associated the results with the technique’s efficiency on
memory. Take, for example, the tracking method, which requires the user to
listen to audio and then repeat it out loud. A technique such as this would
require the learner to memorise the sentence. In the case of shadowing, this
becomes an unnecessary stage and allows the mind to distribute functions to
other areas such as focusing on vocal movement and producing the correct
sound.
Another study that looked at the effect of shadowing on students
produced similar results. Julia Fouladi Nashta and Ramin Rahimy invited
30 intermediate EFL students to participate in this experiment3. Two groups
were formed. The experimental group was assigned to complete a
shadowing technique task for ten sessions over two weeks, whereas the
control group attended to a different method, a placebo task. The focus of
the study was to examine the effect of the shadowing technique on the
performance of L2 conversations.
The researchers found a positive effect of shadowing on the experimental
group. According to their post-test results and comparison to the control
group, it was clear that shadowing had improved the student’s
conversational skills. The experimental group scored a 3.4 mean score
difference between their pre-test and post-test, whereas the control group
scored a difference of 1.33.
It is evident that the shadowing technique has some effect, especially
compared to groups that were either not taught a speaking technique or
taught a placebo method. Now, how effective is it when compared to
another technique? How effective would shadowing be against the tracking
method briefly mentioned earlier? The tracking method was developed for
hearing-impaired children, so the origins of this method greatly differ from
shadowing. Fereshteh Yavari and Sajad Shafiee were curious which
technique would result in greater development of spoken fluency4. In their
research, the authors created three groups: shadowing, tracking, and
shadowing combined with tracking. Participants were assigned to these
tasks and then completed a pre-test and an interview-style post-test. The
shadowing group displayed higher results in their post-test, acquiring a
mean score of 1.55 in the pre-test and a score of 2.15 on the post-test. As
for the tracking group, the mean score for pre-test was 1.47 and the post-test
was 1.84. The results show that the shadow technique had scored a higher
difference in improvement.
The surprising outcome was that the combined technique scored a pre-
test score of 1.56 and a mean post-test score of 2.45. Despite having similar
pre-test results to the shadowing group, the combined technique had an
even greater effect than the two single ones. The researcher concluded if the
emphasis of learning is on speaking fluency, then the combined use of both
shadowing and tracking would prove to be effective.
A possible explanation for the shadowing technique’s success is the
imitation theory. Imitation can be seen in babies as they attempt to copy
words they hear. Through this process, they can gradually learn to produce
the speech sounds made by adults. The success of shadowing may seem
enticing, yet it may be different for each individual. A beginner may lack in
phonetic knowledge and find it difficult to follow the audio; as such, a
beginner may benefit from using the adjusted lag shadowing or tracking
technique, whereas an experienced learner can use the phonemic shadowing
technique.
At the beginning of this chapter, I stated that there was not enough
concrete research to present successful speaking methods. This does not
mean there is no research, but it is simply too difficult to separate the most
successful approaches from the theoretical ones. There is, however, one task
that has shown modest success and achieved increasing interest in research,
especially for its use in improving vocabulary and speaking skills: the
negotiated interaction approach.
 Generally, this approach requires two or more people. Person A signals,
and person B responds. Studies have suggested that negotiated interaction is
a viable technique in developing speaking skills as it targets specific aspects
in productive knowledge.
In a study by Sara Hashemi Shahraki and Zohreh Kassaian from the
University of Isfahan, interaction negotiation tasks promoted growth in both
productive and receptive knowledge5. The purpose of the study was to
examine whether negotiation interactions would provide improvement in
receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge as opposed to using
receptive and productive tasks. To uncover the answer to their questions,
they invited 66 participants that were then divided into three groups to test
receptive, productive, and negotiated interaction tasks. The learners were
given four lessons, and each group performed specific tasks to learn the 36
target items.
The receptive group was assigned a recognition task, the productive
group was assigned a writing task, and the negotiated interaction group was
split into pairs and assigned a conversation task. The negotiated interaction
pairs would read a passage and then, using the target words, create
dialogues. Person A would retell the story using the target words while
person B, the listener, would use the definition of the target words to signal
and correct person A on their usage. Person B would also elaborate on the
word if person A had forgotten the meaning or misused the term.
The negotiation interaction method was expected to score the highest on
the post-test, as it was theorised that correcting mistakes would assist in
longer retention and form a habit of using the target word. The post-test was
administered to measure the receptive and productive knowledge of the
target words and, as expected, the results indicated the negotiation
interaction group had indeed achieved higher marks than the receptive and
productive groups. The negotiation interaction group was able to acquire
longer retention of the vocabulary. The study also indicated that the
productive group had achieved a higher score than the receptive group. The
main purpose of discussing this study is to expose the higher gains achieved
in productive knowledge through negotiation interaction, especially
compared to a direct productive task.
 Summary
Speaking fluency is a challenging skill to achieve, since barriers such as
intonation, production of correct sounds, and weaving several words
together can be difficult to develop. The shadowing technique can offer an
opportunity to improve fluency, tones, and pronunciation. The general
advice from the studies would be to practice shadowing at least once a day.
As for spontaneous speech, focusing on developing productive knowledge
is important. Two methods that have shown success in developing speaking
skills are extensive writing with reading aloud, which was discussed in
previous chapters, and conversation with a language partner using
negotiation interaction. Before engaging in a conversation, gather the target
words you want to practice and try using those words in your conversation.
Earlier in the book, it was suggested that the different approaches to
language learning for children and adults are similar; but they are also quite
different, since one uses listening and speaking while the other uses reading
and writing. Studies on negotiation interaction suggest learning like a child
through listening and speaking is more difficult but could be more
rewarding.

● Shadowing can improve speaking fluency, accent, and

pronunciation.
● Negotiation interaction can develop vocabulary and speaking skills.
● Extensive writing with reading aloud can improve speaking skills.
 Chapter 6

Downloading chunk

Chunking is a strange concept in language learning. The term was

invented by George Miller, whose research had led to the discovery of his 7
± 2 hypothesis1. Researchers understand that children and adults practice
chunking unconsciously. The principle involves breaking a long chain of
items into several smaller pieces to assist in memorising information. For
example, a long number 4192879209871 could be broken into four parts: 4-
1928-7920-9871. This process is natural, and it is a visible tactic when
memorising phone numbers. In terms of language learning, the concept is
not so subtle.
Researchers believe children learn by breaking a sentence and monitoring
a hierarchy in the structure. If you have had the opportunity to converse
with a two-year-old child, you may have noticed that, despite being asked a
long question, the child would only reply by copying one or two words
from the sentence. The child chose those specific words as the most
important items. Gradually, as the child matures, their sentences will
expand, and more chunks will be added.
Chunking is difficult to define for self-study learners, since it is mostly
found in noun phrases, verb phrases, gerund phrases, etc. Such phrases are
complex and, in most cases, require a language teacher to point them out.
They are words organised together often enough to no longer be called
coincidence while maintaining a common rule to form one representation.
An example would be ‘It was a touching moment…’, the chunk ‘touching
moment’ does not refer to touching the time in a literal sense, but rather
feeling an emotion at that time.
Although chunking has been described as an unconscious act, it is still a
sequence that can be made visible. Nick C. Ellis explains that these
sequences can be recalled at a much better rate the more they are repeated2.
This explanation can be related to the Hebb effect theory, also called Hebb
repetition.
Imagine you were assigned to go shopping for your family. You attempt
to take out the shopping list from your pocket only to find the scrap paper is
missing. You close your eyes and think carefully at what was on that list.
The Hebb effect would suggest that if you had read and repeated the list
multiple times, you would be able to recall it. The Hebb effect is the
improved recall of a list of items when they are repeated. The phenomenon
was not part of the original experiment but was coincidentally noticed by
researcher Donald Hebb3. Both chunking and the Hebb effect have
connections to the following studies.
It has been proposed that chunking exists as a method to reduce stress on
our short-term working memory. The act of memorising a sequence of
words and forming a single representation of the sequence can help us
understand a long sentence in milliseconds, as opposed to creating a
representation for each individual vocabulary. Fang Xu from Qingdao
University of Science and Technology crafted a study based on the concept
that chunking assists short-term working memory. The result of practising
chunking should produce the power law of practice; in other words, the
more experience memorising that chunk, the faster it is to make sentences
and the greater the acquisition of new chunks4.
In the study, 112 students with non-English majors participated in the
experiment. They were divided into two groups. The experimental group
was trained in recognising and memorising chunks: phrases, collocation,
proverbs, etc. After analysing the results from the final test, it was apparent
that the experimental group, taught to memorise and recognise chunks, had
scored higher on their post-test compared to their pre-test for fast reading,
in-depth reading, vocabulary, listening, and cloze tests (“fill in the blank”)
as well as achieved a higher score than the control group. The results
support evidence of the power law of practice and that memorising chunks
can assist in reducing stress on short-term working memory; the learner can
then employ more focus on the task.
The above study looked at the evidence for the effectiveness of chunking.
A study by Naoko Taguchi examined the relationship between chunks and
developing spoken production5. The participants were beginner learners of
Japanese and consisted of native speakers of English, Chinese, and Korean.
They received lessons on grammatical chunks and were tasked to create
sentences with them. The final analysis suggested that in each session, the
participants naturally expanded the length of a sentence by adding a new
grammar chunk onto the previously studied grammar. This led to an
increase in complexity of the sentence structure. However, the creation of
more complex sentences resulted in lower speaking fluency; they were
adding pauses and breaks between words. The researcher associated this
issue with the thought process of adding a new unfamiliar grammar chunk,
which unfortunately slowed the participant’s speaking speed.
To gain such improvement, the participants were assigned to complete
repetitive communicative drills. This involved asking and answering
questions with their partner, similarly to negotiation interaction, while using
the same grammar chunks to form answers.
This task is also similar to the concept of behaviourism discussed in the
audiolingual method section of the chapter on second language acquisition.
In contrast to the tasks in the audiolingual method, the output in this study
was authentic; yet similarly, it embedded a behaviour into the participant
through repeated use of the grammar chunks and the memorisation of the
dialogue containing an example of the chunk.
The participants were tasked with memorising the example dialogue with
the target grammar chunk before creating their sentences. The memorisation
task involved watching a video of the dialogue and repeating it in pairs for
ten to twelve minutes. This occurred in every session introducing a new
chunk.
A theory the researcher did not discuss in the study was how the
memorisation task helped develop the participants’ skills in gradually
creating complex sentences. This memorisation task can be associated with
a study by Jeffrey D. Karpick and Janell R. Blunt6. Although their study had
no relations to language learning, it is important to look at what they
discovered by researching retrieval practice. In this study, they examined
the effects of retrieval practice and elaborative studying, learning by
making connections from prior knowledge or experience. The specific
difference between the two is that retrieval practice relies on memorising
information, whereas elaborative studying is a creative method.
The study by the researchers discovered, after a few experiments, that the
‘retrieval practice produced more learning than elaborative studying’. The
researchers concluded that retrieval practice promotes meaningful learning
of complex concepts.
The researchers reasoned that the retrieval practice exhibited such an
outcome because of the act of establishing a base. When the learner was
required to demonstrate what may have seemed like new information, they
were, in fact, restructuring the memorised information. Recall allowed the
learner to skip the phase of searching and combining several fragments of
knowledge. Recall simply transformed the old information by adding or
swapping new items.
In relation to the previous study on grammar chunks by Fang Xu, the
participants had created a base by memorising the original dialogue
containing the grammar chunk; this led to the construction of new, original
sentences. Memorising chunks can lead to fast acquisition of information
and less stress on the working memory.
Fang Xu’s study also demonstrated that the greater the number of chunks
memorised, the quicker it is to learn new chunks. This perception is not
only visible from chunk to chunk but also within the chunked parts. Studies
have shown that when one word is recognisable, acquiring new words that
often appear together with them is easier.
In the following example study, the participants were assigned to
distinguish between Chinese characters. The novelty of the study was the
practice of visually seeing and memorising similar characters while
developing familiar stimuli. Lynne M. Reder, Xiaonan Liu, Alexander
Keinath, and Vencislav Popov collaborated on this study to examine the
aforementioned effects to observe how participants reacted to learning.
The participants were exposed to several pairs of Chinese words in four
tasks for one to two months. Despite the Chinese character pairs
continuously changing, the participants were learning the pairs that
contained at least one familiar character more easily. Before reviewing the
word-pairs, the participants were exposed to each character with different
numbers of occurrences, some even up to 20 times. A reason the
researchers chose this introduction was to develop knowledge of high and
low-frequency characters.
During the procedure, the participants became more familiar with
specific characters as they were exposed to word-pairs. The researchers
concluded that effective learning occurred when familiar characters were
combined with less familiar characters. Grouping the mixed characters
assisted in acquiring them as a whole. The results also suggest that when a
familiar character is paired with a low-frequency character, learning is even
quicker than pairing with low or high-frequency pairs. Finally, the study
also demonstrated the ‘less is more’ theory, and the researchers have
recommended students should continue strengthening the memory of old
information while slowly adding new information.
 Summary
Acquiring information individually places numerous demands on the
working memory. To better allocate such tasks, we chunk information.
Chunking can help release stress from short-term working memory. It also
provides us with the opportunity to learn more items while strengthening
memory of older, familiar items.
In English, verb phrases, gerund phrases, noun phrases, etc., are difficult to
recognise even for a native speaker; for SLA learners, recognising these
chunks is exceptionally hard. The easiest collocations that can be
recommended are (according to the word order of the target language) noun
+ adjectives, noun + verbs, adverbs + verbs/adjectives, idioms, grammar
phrases, and set phrases.
Chunks are not coincidences and will appear more often than you expect.
This will require a method to assist in memorisation. The studies
demonstrated in this chapter suggest repeated recall is an effective task.
Memorising grammar chunks, repeated recall, and complete memorisation
make up an important routine for creating a base structure for future
restructuring.
 Chapter 7

Mindless games

This chapter is not exclusively related to the acquisition of language; as

the ambiguous title implies, it is about the mind. Throughout this book,
several tasks have been discussed to assist in acquiring and learning a
language. Although these tasks are important, understanding how the mind
works is just as important. I am not discussing mnemonics or memory
palaces, but repeated retrieval, spaced repetition, and the effects of sleep.
Spaced repetition has become an important routine for language learners,
yet the method is largely misused. Language learners often use spaced
repetition to learn vocabulary, placing vocabulary and the translation on one
card and using SRS software to provide the spaced repetition algorithm.
How long does it take to complete a hundred new words and review 200 old
words a day? The task is most likely easy when it is paired as L2 to L1, but
when reversed into L1 to L2 this can be difficult. Despite time being the
main importance in spaced repetition, it becomes time consuming and
tedious when the lack of achievement is taken into account. However, it is
still an effective method, as shown by the following study.
Intrigued by the effects of spaced repetition, researchers from Purdue
University, Jeffrey D. Karpicke and Althea Bauernschmidt, examined the
retrieval process of participants when given a spacing algorithm task1. The
participants were divided into four groups. The first three groups included
short, medium, and long spaced repetition intervals, whereas the fourth
group (the control group) was assigned to study the material only once. The
researchers hypothesised that the expanding length of spacing repetition
would enhance retention.
Each session involved studying and recalling Swahili paired with English
translations. The final test consisted of viewing the Swahili word and
entering the correct English translation. This was a simple study, but the
results provide an intriguing insight into the complexity of repeated
intervals. The results demonstrated all three spaced repetition intervals
produced successful recall. The researchers’ original hypothesis was that
the longer the interval, the greater the retention; however, the results
disproved their assumptions, as all three intervals produced retention with
similar scores. Other research on this phenomenon has consistently proven
spaced repetition to be effective in memorising items.
Previously, I discouraged learning vocabulary items individually and
stated that using spaced repetition on single vocabulary was time
consuming. Exploiting the spaced repetition effect on thousands of words
would result in spending more time memorising single words and less time
on developing comprehension, producing sentences, and learning
collocations. Studying vocabulary through spaced repetition only offers
growth in a few aspects of receptive and productive knowledge, namely
recognition of word and form. The time spent completing hundreds of
flashcards could be spent reading to gain greater depth of knowledge.
Nevertheless, the effectiveness of spaced repetition makes it a valuable
supplement, and it would be worthwhile to use this method in other areas of
language learning - for example, memorising collocations or set phrases.
Spaced repetition is a long-interval based technique, and its effects are a
commonly known phenomenon currently favoured by language learners.
However, long spaced repetition implies the intervals require several days
to several months to complete. Unbeknownst to most language learners, the
opposite of long spaced repetition also has an effective outcome on
memory. The hype of long spaced repetition has caused short spaced
repetition to be disregarded. This has, unfortunately, resulted in neglecting
it in study routines.
Whereas long spaced repetition requires long intervals, its counterpart
only requires a short rest period before studying the information again.
Various studies show ten minutes as the most effective length. Paul Kelley
and Terry Whatson examined this ten-minute spaced repetition on students
to understand its effect on long-term memory2.
Their experiment involved training students to prepare for the English
National Curriculum. To be precise, the researchers created a high-stakes
experiment on students studying biology in a British secondary school. The
participants were divided into several groups that were assigned to either
(1) study biology through the normal four-month period, (2) utilize only one
spaced learning session of 60 minutes, or (3) combine both tasks. The
researchers deliberately gave the students a 60-minute spaced learning
session five days before the national curriculum test to ensure it had
successfully induced long-term memory.
 The 60-minute spaced learning session involved two 10-minute breaks
and three 20-minute sessions of intense learning. The 20-minute session
included four months of biology curriculum packed into one lesson. This
was repeated three times, with slight changes in each session. During the
10-minute break, the students were given a distractor task, such as juggling
or playing basketball. The aim was to distract the students from thinking
about the biology lesson.
The novelty of the experiment was the high-stakes condition for the
experimental group. Rather than attending four months of class, they
received only the one spaced-learning session five days before the exam.
Since the participants’ results were analysed using the national curriculum,
the test scores from students attending other schools were used for
comparison.
The results from the test suggested that the ten-minute break had an
impact on the experimental group’s results. The task stimulated long-term
memory of the teaching material. The researchers even suggested spaced
learning is more efficient than standard teaching. The scores for the 60-
minute spaced learning group were not significantly different than those of
the control group (students that continued the four-month traditional study
without spaced repetition). The combined group, which had completed both
tasks, scored higher than both of the others.
The short spaced repetition had successfully promoted long-term
potentiation and long-term memory encoding, especially in a complex
subject such as science. The results from the study suggest that short spaced
repetition can also provide an effective method for studying a complex task
such as language learning.
Rather than studying vocabulary using long spaced repetition, which
requires learning and recalling hundreds of vocabularies every day, short
spaced repetition may be more effective and less time-consuming.
Despite the success of ten-minute spaced repetition, it contains a
fundamental flaw which long spaced repetition does not have: the time
provided to slowly understand the subject. Research has revealed that
people with high IQ are exceptionally good at solving puzzles. How does
this relate to studying a language? Grammar is similar to a puzzle. The
higher your IQ, the quicker you can decipher the mechanics of a puzzle.
Intelligence allows you to relate problems and quickly find a solution. This
does not mean that if you do not consider yourself intelligent, you should
throw away all your language textbooks and quit language learning forever.
It only means you will take longer to understand the mechanics of a
language. You may have seen or heard people learn a language in two
weeks or 24 hours and wondered if it is possible. Maybe it is. Their ability
to memorise, find connections and solve puzzles may have helped them
learn in a short time. For the majority of us, that would be impossible.
Another factor related to solving puzzles is that sleep is required to
facilitate learning and developing an understanding of abstract problems.
Researchers Ullrich Wagner, Steffen Gais, Hilde Haider, Rolf Verleger and
Jan Born studied the effects of sleep related to learning3. In their study, they
found sleep can affect how participants gain insight into an abstract rule
they initially could not see the day before. The participants were assigned to
complete a cognitive task that involved learning a sequence; then, following
eight hours of sleep, they were assigned to repeat the task. The tasks
contained a hidden rule which was difficult to notice for the majority of the
participants. After an eight-hour sleeping period, the participants that could
not grasp the hidden rule on their first try were able to swiftly understand
the rule on their second attempt. The researchers noticed that after a
sleeping period, the number of participants that could understand the rule
had doubled. They associated this to the change in representation.
Grammar and vocabulary are similar to puzzles. They either require the
understanding of abstract ideas or an ability to compare rules. If you have
had the unfortunate experience of completing multiple grammar tasks yet
still found it difficult to understand them, the solution may just be to stop,
sleep, and try again the next day. The study suggests that language learning
takes time, but eventually a solution will be found.
Hopefully, the previous study provides a partial answer to how long it
will take to learn a language, which may just be how fast you can decode a
puzzle. The following study will also demonstrate a possible answer to
another important question that is asked quite often in the language learning
community: ‘Can I learn two languages at once?’ This is a common
question, and the answers are usually either ambiguous or just very gentle
ways of saying you can do whatever you want.
There is still no concrete answer to this question, but a study on
interleaving may provide clues. The interleaving effect involves mixing
tasks to learn a subject. This task differs from blocking in that it requires the
learner to continuously learn one skill before moving on to the next.
Interleaving repeats unstructured items in a continuous cycle. For example,
in mathematics, the interleaving routine would involve learning
multiplication, division, and then subtraction. The learner would then cycle
back to the start and re-study the order of subjects again. Studies show
support for interleaving as a successful strategy, especially in music
learning and mathematics. The repeated exposure of different concepts in
one session leaves a strong impression on the mind. Regarding language
learning, this has been demonstrated to be a less effective approach.
Research has consistently shown that employing blocking for language
learning has better prospects than the use of interleaving.
In the following study, native English speakers were taught French
pronunciation through blocking and interleaving. In the blocking task,
participants had to learn several words that have similar pronunciations,
then a new set of French vocabulary with similar pronunciations appeared
immediately after. In the interleaving task, the order of the words was
mixed. After analysing the post-test, researchers Shana Carpenter and Frank
Mueller4 concluded that the blocking task had produced higher results. They
related this effect to the familiarity of pronunciation. Since the participants
had never studied French, the words were unknown and pronunciation rules
were difficult to discover in the interleaving task. In the blocking task, the
participants were able to compare the words and find a link in the concept.
Studying two languages can place strain on your working memory, and
the previous study on interleaving would demonstrate learners should focus
on familiarising themselves with similar concepts before moving onto a
different task. If one language has several abstract puzzles to solve, then
solving the puzzles of another language at the same time will be strenuous
and will not allow time to establish the previous information. Concepts take
time to understand, as mentioned in the study on gaining insight from sleep.
Therefore, to learn several languages, it may be beneficial to familiarise
yourself with one language before moving to the next.
 Summary
Long spaced repetition is an effective method that has been the favourite of
many language learners, and if you feel happy using it on individual
vocabulary, then continue with your methodology. Yet how much
information are you learning from reviewing words individually, and what
is the price of allocating precious time towards reviewing hundreds of cards
a day? A solution for memorising vocabulary may just be short spaced
repetition.

Employing spaced repetition would normally involve testing recall of the

vocabulary, which has proven to be invaluable. As for grammar, language
learners feel the need to continuously review and practice grammar with the
hope and determination that these actions will support faster comprehension
of its nuance. You may have found yourself in this predicament and still do
not understand the concept after an entire day of practice. This is normal,
and the best solution is to sleep and try again the following day.
Understandably, it is frustrating to know that you are not learning fast
enough, but remember that Rome was not built in a day.
If the tasks discussed in this book have convinced you it is possible to
acquire a language and you would like to try them on multiple languages at
the same time, you may want to rethink your choice. Grasping similar
concepts is difficult, and pressuring yourself to learn many of these items
would not provide enough time to find a connection. It would be advisable
to either learn one language until you feel familiar with it or separate
language days to provide some time to clear your mind before practising the
next language.
 Chapter 8

Breaking the language barrier

This book contains a total of fifty-seven studies. Now that we have gone
through all of them, what do they mean? If you do not use them, they can
mean nothing at all; or they can become invaluable tools towards your goal
of breaking the language barrier. The researchers have dedicated so much
time to understanding the psychology and acquisition of languages, and to
not exploit these results would be devastating. The idea that ‘correlation
does not imply causation’ is true in research; however, correlation is more
concrete than subjective influence.
This book was written to provide an objective viewpoint for learning a
language. As such, it is an attempt to search for answers that are close to the
truth. When the research is organised, a certain pattern is visible.
This chapter is an organised layout of the research with my individual
views on how learning could be ordered. I hope to use the information
demonstrated throughout this book to create a possible sequence. Whether
you find this intriguing or outrageous, the intended purpose is to create a
route for those that do not have one. You can either follow the sequence or
apply the previously discussed research into your personal routine. This
table suggests how the research should be split and followed according to the
learner’s stages.
 Absolute beginner
At the absolute beginner stage, if the learner has yet to make contact with the
target language, they should spend time listening to audio in the target
language. This can be done while doing chores or any other activity, as long
as there is audio of the target language playing. At this stage, you are not
learning vocabulary or practising listening comprehension, but simply
building your understanding of the target language’s phonetics. This task
should be done at least two hours a day for four to seven days.
Beginner
Assuming you have either completed the absolute beginner stage or spent
time immersed in media in the target language, the beginner stage will begin
by practising shadowing. The main focus is to practise following along with
the audio and producing similar sounds. The task requires you to imitate
short beginner sentences as closely as possible for 15 minutes a day for
seven days.
Intermediate
The next stage is split into two sections, lower and upper intermediate, as
they have similar yet different objectives. The intermediate stage is
dedicated to developing receptive knowledge with comprehensible input.
Reading narrative dialogue texts will provide you with the most frequently
used 3000 spoken word-families as well as the most commonly used
grammar. It is different from the expository text and descriptive text, as these
contain words and grammar regularly found in textbooks. For example, in
English text, passive verbs are prevalent in written text but rare in spoken
language.
The aim of dividing this stage is to propose beginning with dialogues in
intensive reading before using repeated reading. Staying ahead of dialogues
before repeated reading will allow you to review grammar, read translations,
use word pair tests, and provide the necessary rest to decode difficult texts.
Producing sentences is not the purpose of this stage, but according to the
studies that have been discussed, you can expect these receptive tasks to
develop certain aspects of productive knowledge.
The lower intermediate stage introduces intensive reading to develop
receptive knowledge and the opportunity to review grammar. Other reasons
for intensive reading include learning vocabulary and grammar through the
frequency of occurrence and learning pronunciation. You may have noticed,
despite discussing shadowing in the previous chapters, it has not been placed
in the intermediate or advanced stages; this is to save time and incorporate
shadowing into the reading session.
The intensive reading will require two sessions for every dialogue. Session
one involves reading aloud and reviewing with translation for
comprehensible input. Following this task is a word-pair task, writing the
unknown L2 words or chunks in a column to prepare a word-pair test after
the second session. The second session would then involve reading aloud
and shadowing audio. After completing the two sessions, return to the L2 to
L1 receptive word-pair test and complete the list. The combination of
intentional and incidental tasks will support each other for vocabulary
retention.
The upper intermediate level will continue with intensive reading towards
more advanced dialogues or graded books. In addition to this sub-stage, a
read-aloud repeated reading task will be included for developing
comprehension and reading fluency. The task should include five repetitions,
with every second and third repetition employing assisted reading. Dialogues
should be repeated to turn meaning into language form. Repeated reading is
a persistent task that will cause fatigue, so I would suggest using around five
dialogues, especially for advanced dialogues.
Reading quickly will improve your reading fluency more than
comprehension, but the intermediate stage is aimed at developing
comprehension and learning the most common vocabulary so I recommend
learners take their time. The results will allow you to comfortably read
graded material in the advanced stage.
Because this sequence relies on reading to acquire vocabulary, it is natural to
look back and forth at translation, word lists, dictionaries as well as grammar
notes. This may appear exhausting, but the act of need and search, as stated
in the involvement load hypothesis, should assist in memorising the items.
It would be advisable to achieve receptive knowledge of 3000 word-families
using beginner to advanced dialogues before moving on to the advanced
stage. A reason this number was chosen is to provide 95% comprehension of
television shows and to achieve relative ease reading graded books, which
are tasks for the next stage. Sound easy? 3000 words is the suggested aim,
but encountering these words 10 or more times is the objective. Reaching
this number can be difficult as words increase and frequency decreases.
Relying on acquiring vocabulary through the frequency of occurrence would
be detrimental to the speed of learning. The addition of a receptive condition
word-pair test is not only to respect the results from earlier studies, which
demonstrated combination tasks are more effective than single tasks, but is
also added as a supplemental task to practice the low-frequency vocabulary.
Advanced
The final stage introduces more tasks to continue receptive vocabulary
growth and develop the aspects of productive knowledge for the 3000 word-
families. At this stage, your reading skills should be adequate for general
comprehension.
The reading task will now focus on extensive assisted reading in narrative
graded books, descriptive textbooks, and expository textbooks, starting from
beginner books and advancing to more difficult texts. It may be reasonable
to believe at this stage you will no longer need to start with beginner
textbooks; however, due to the difference between written text and spoken
text, new vocabulary and grammar will often appear. Another reason is to
allow more time to improve the productive knowledge of the 3000 words.
Unlike reading in the previous stage, extensive assisted reading has the
purpose of leisurely reading. There is no requirement to read aloud unless
you feel the need to practice shadowing. Incorporating assisted reading is to
provide listening comprehension development and understanding of the
phonetic system of languages that use logograms.
Two productive methods are advisable. First, you will need to return to the
dialogue narrative text used in the intermediate stages. Assuming you have
developed the receptive knowledge of the vocabulary used in these texts,
your next step is to increase their productive knowledge. This will also be a
valuable opportunity to improve the grammar found in these texts using
grammar drills.
Occasionally, a new word and/or grammar topic will appear in the advanced
stage. These words should not be practised with productive tasks, as our
focus is on the depth of the previous vocabulary in the intermediate stage;
instead, this stage will rely on watching television and reading for exposure
of low-frequency vocabulary.

The first method involves using the productive condition (L1-L2) word-pair
test for the 3000 words. Chunking can also be used to save time. It is highly
recommended to use short spaced repetition, 10-minute breaks, and to
practice the productive condition. After the word-pairing test, the next step is
to write a sentence with each word or use all the target words to write a
paragraph. While it is important to develop productive knowledge as soon as
possible, quality cannot be sacrificed. The most desirable condition is to
focus on five to ten words per session and allow adequate time for extensive
reading. Incorporating writing and reading out loud would be beneficial for
improving speaking fluency.
This writing task engages the learner to create sentences, who may also want
to find a teacher to correct their work. It is not a terrible problem if you
cannot find an authority to correct you, since making mistakes is common in
our daily lives, and the goal of writing sentences is not to memorise the
sentence but to install the ability to spontaneously create the target word.
Write what you want, as long as the target word is present. Other approaches
to sentence writing are either to recall and write the original sentence or to
use the original sentence with a few adjustments, such as replacing the
pronoun, noun, verb or adjective.
The second method supports software or mobile app usage to create a cloze
sentence: simply enter the sentence and replace the target word with a blank
space. This task can also be hand-written. In addition to using software or
mobile apps, long spaced repetition can be incorporated into the routine. The
advantage of using cloze is the opportunity to practice chunking. Set
phrases, idioms and collocations can be replaced with a blank space, as
opposed to single words. The discussion with exploiting the involvement
load hypothesis was to suggest the most profitable tasks, and the writing
tasks demonstrated superior scores to those of the cloze task which had only
scored 2 on the degree of involvement. To supplement the cloze task’s lack
of involvement, it would be beneficial to add an extra task: translation from
L1 to L2. Method two can offer study time during your commute to work or
school.
The previous studies have demonstrated that training in grammar chunks can
increase the complexity of your sentences and should also be a part of the
advanced routine. First, memorise an example sentence with the target
grammar chunk. This will be the base of your knowledge and will be used
for future reconstruction of similar sentences. The next task would either
involve finding a language partner for a question and answer task, replying
with sentences based on the grammar chunk, or writing a question and
answer with five different sentences using the same chunk while also
reading aloud. Employing long spaced repetition would also be a worthwhile
task, since the example sentence must be memorised. You can write the
grammar structure on one side of a flashcard and the sentence on the other
side. It is unnecessary to write a description of how the grammar structure
works, as we are aiming to achieve ‘less is more’.
Both methods only contain writing productive tasks, since many learners
find it difficult to speak. Following the results of the studies, it can be
presumed that writing can also lead to developing speaking skills. However,
intonation, tones, and speaking fluency will rely on shadowing during the
reading task for development. The idea of writing to develop speaking skills
is also my empirical viewpoint. After observing both introverted and
extroverted language learners, I have concluded that extroverts may find it
more useful to use real speaking practice. In this case, negotiation interaction
would provide an interesting opportunity for learners. Practice by
memorising target words before engaging in conversation, and try to use as
many of those words as possible during the conversation.
Although the productive tasks are important, it is also important to continue
reading and acquiring receptive vocabulary knowledge. In addition to
understanding grammar, the overall goal is to achieve knowledge of 6000
receptive vocabulary items and a depth of 3000 productive vocabulary items.
I have long been adamant that long spaced repetition should not be used for
single words, as the substantial investment only yields little return. Rather
than reviewing words through spaced repetition, it would be more
appropriate to invest time in reading and encountering the words through
context.
Finally, watching television can be either a task or a leisurely pastime. In the
case of using it as a task, then it should be left until the advanced stage. It is
important to mention that subtitles or captions are an effective method for
practising low-frequency vocabulary. It was stated previously that word
frequency decreases as the word list grows and that watching television with
subtitles and captions is a complementary task that should be used with
reading to counter the low frequency. It would be advisable to focus on one
television subgenre before moving on to another. Some general advice
would be to find a subgenre that has the least number of vocabulary items. If
the show is designed for children, a good recommendation would be to
watch with visual and audio to improve listening comprehension.

Even if you skip the absolute beginner and beginner stages, it is still
necessary to complete the intermediate stage, because these achievements
will provide building blocks for the advanced stage. As you may have
noticed, arranging the studies into these stages resembles how a baby begins
to acquire a language up until their early stages of school. This was not a
planned outcome, but as the sequence suggests, we may have to take a
similar direction as children.

This book was written for learners that enjoy self-studying, and it is thanks
to the researchers that new learning concepts and theories are appearing,
which in turn help us acquire a language more effectively.

Interested in more?
Visit www.psylingo.com/blog
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Intensive reading and extensive reading

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Language acquisition and television shows

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Say no more
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 Table of Contents
Receptive and productive knowledge
Second language acquisition
Intentional and incidental language learning
Involvement Load Hypothesis
Reading for language acquisition
Intensive reading and extensive reading
Repeated Reading
Language acquisition and television shows
Word pair learning
To listen is to attend
Say no more
Downloading chunk
Mindless games
Breaking the language barrier
Bibliography