SPACED VOCABULARY ACQUISITION WHILE INCIDENTAL LISTENING BY ESL UNIVERSITY STUDENTS

Abstract

Based on a prior study by Zubenko and Shwedel (2019), the present study investigated the possible effects of repetition (repeated exposure) on the incidental acquisition and retention of 120 English target words by 51 Ukrainian-speaking ESL learners at a Ukrainian university. The hypothesis was that regular repetition of vocabulary while incidental listening would have a significant and positive effect on students’ vocabulary acquisition and performance. The paper examines the results of the implementation of spaced repetition of L2 vocabulary strategy of the second-year students who were covering the same vocabulary they learned during the experiment in the previous year. 7 audio lessons were created for increasing the long-term retention of target vocabulary in the students’ memory. Participants (N=51) were second-year Ukrainian university students majoring in English as a second language (ESL) at the age of 17-19. They were assigned to three groups, one experimental and two comparison. The optimal result based on the interval of repetitions influences the vocabulary recall and retention. Students who used the spaced L2 vocabulary acquisition strategy (SVAS) outperformed on the End-of-Experiment test 84,1 versus 80,6 for the Comparison group. The results prove that spaced L2 vocabulary acquisition strategy is an efficient part of enriching new vocabulary. The findings indicate that implications of this research are connected with the spaced vocabulary acquisition strategy as an effective tool for learning new lexical units by ESL learners while incidental listening to the audio dictionary lessons. Thus, the study results open up new possibilities for the teachers and learners to consider implementing audio dictionaries and similar tools as assets for efficient vocabulary learning.