Learning L2 German Vocabulary Through Reading

• Elke Peters , Jan H. Hulstijn , Lies Sercu , Madeline Lutjeharms

• This study investigated three techniques designed to increase the chances that second language (L2) readers look up and learn unfamiliar words during and after reading an L2 text

• They could look up the meaning of unfamiliar words in an online dictionary

• Test announcement and word relevance substantially prompted participants to use the online dictionary more.

• Only test announcement and vocabulary task (not word relevance) affected performance in the word recognition test positively

• oth word relevance and postreading vocabulary task substantially affected word retention in the Recall posttests

• low incidence of vocabulary acquisition through reading (“input only”) can be substantially boosted by techniques that make students look up the meaning of unknown words, process their form-meaning relationship elaborately, and process them again after reading (“input plus”).