Depth versus Breadth of Lexical Repertoire: Assessing Their Roles in EFL Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Authors

  • Seyed Jafar Ehsanzadeh

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v29i2.1098

Abstract

This study explores the roles of depth and breadth of lexical repertoire in L2 lexical inferencing success and incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Students read a graded reader containing 13 pseudo-words and attempted to infer the meanings of underlined target words. The Word Associates Test (WAT, Read, 2004) and the Vocabulary Levels Test (Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001) were administered to measure depth and breadth of lexical repertoire respectively. To rate retention of inferred meanings, I administered the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS, Paribakht & Wesche, 1996, 1997) with a repeated measure design. The results indicated that (a) both breadth and depth of lexical knowledge correlated positively with long-term retention of inferred word meanings. However,depth of vocabulary knowledge indicated a higher correlation; and (b) scores on both breadth and depth of vocabulary knowledge had a significant positive correlation with success of lexical inferencing through reading, but depth of vocabularyknowledge was a stronger predictor of inferencing success.

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Published

2012-08-23

How to Cite

Ehsanzadeh, S. J. (2012). Depth versus Breadth of Lexical Repertoire: Assessing Their Roles in EFL Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition. TESL Canada Journal, 29(2), 24. https://doi.org/10.18806/tesl.v29i2.1098

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Articles