Vocabulary learning through listening

Abstract

This chapter discusses the impact of three types of aural lexical focus-on-form vocabulary explanations (L2-only, codeswitched, and contrastive focus-on-form) in relation to the learning and retention of words of different concreteness levels and across different word classes. Learners completed aural vocabulary pre-, post-, and delayed post-test measuring vocabulary knowledge of 43 target words including 18 nouns, 13 verbs, and 12 adjectives. Results showed that for short-term learning, CFoF seemed to be the most balanced teaching approach for words at different concreteness levels, followed by the L2 approach. The CS approach was the most helpful for the abstract words. While the CFoF approach was better than the CS approach for learning the adjectives, the CS approach was more beneficial than the CFoF approach for the verbs and nouns. For long-term retention, both CFoF and CS seemed to be balanced teaching approaches, yet the L2 approach was the most beneficial for the concrete words. The CFoF and L2 approaches were more beneficial than the CS approach for the nouns and adjectives, while the CS approach was more helpful than the CFoF and L2 approaches for the retention of the verbs. The study concludes by discussing the pedagogical implications of these findings.