Extensive Reading plus Explicit Vocabulary Exercises: Is it Better Than Extensive Reading-Only?

Abstract

Fifty-two students with different word levels, all majoring in English, volunteered to take part in an extensive reading program. The participants were divided into two groups: EG (the experimental group), which received instruction in methods of extensive reading plus explicit vocabulary exercises, and CG (the control group), which only received extensive reading instruction. This study was to evaluate the effectiveness of these two different approaches on learning four levels of mastery of word knowledge (form recall, form recognition, meaning recall, and meaning recognition). The results showed that (a) both approaches resulted in significant gains in learning the four levels of word knowledge, but the combination of the incidental and explicit instruction yielded a deeper level of word knowledge; and (b) the students’ vocabulary size played a decisive role in acquiring the four levels of word knowledge. These findings demonstrate that the efforts spent on direct teaching of new lexical items after extensive reading are worthy in EFL extensive reading classes.