TESOL Quarterly | 2019
The Effect of Content Retelling on Vocabulary Uptake From a TED Talk
Abstract
This study investigates the potential benefits for incidental vocabulary acquisition of implementing a particular sequence of input-output-input activities. More specifically, EFL learners (n = 32) were asked to watch a TED Talks video, orally sum up its content in English, and then watch the video once more. A comparison group (n = 32) also watched the TED Talks video twice but were not required to sum it up in between. Immediate and delayed post-tests showed significantly better word-meaning recall in the former condition. An analysis of the oral summaries showed that it was especially words which learners attempted to use that stood a good chance of being recalled later. These findings are interpreted with reference to Swain’s (e.g., 1995) Output Hypothesis, Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, and Nation and Webb’s (2011) Technique Feature Analysis. What makes the text-based output task in this experiment fundamentally different from many previous studies which have investigated the merits of text-based output activities is that it was at no point stipulated for the participants that they should use particular words from the input text. The study also illustrates the potential of TED Talks as a source of authentic audio-visual input in EFL classrooms. It is indisputable that vocabulary knowledge is a hallmark of proficiency and should figure high on language learners’ and teachers’ agendas (e.g., Stæhr, 2008, and Qian, 2002, for illustrations of the importance of vocabulary knowledge for listening and reading comprehension, respectively). At the same time, there is a consensus that only a certain proportion of available class time can be reserved for deliberate, language-focused learning and teaching (Nation, 2007). After all, sufficient time needs to be devoted to message-focused activities that foster communicative competence. Fortunately, vocabulary can also be acquired incidentally in the course of such message-focused activities, for instance as a by-product of activities where learners are primarily engaged with the content of a text. For example, incidental acquisition can occur when learners read a story, encounter an unfamiliar word that appears crucial to understanding the story, and attempt to figure out its meaning on the basis of contextual cues. In that case, the attention given to the new word serves the purpose of text comprehension rather than being driven by the intention of adding the new word to one’s lexical resources. This does of course not preclude the possibility that learners also read texts with a view to expanding their vocabulary knowledge, and so the distinction between incidental and intentional learning is not totally straightforward. A situation where it is probably safe to say that new vocabulary knowledge is the result of intentional vocabulary study instead of incidental acquisition is when learners are told beforehand that a vocabulary test will follow the given activity (Hulstijn, 2001). The present article reports an experimental study where learners were prompted to engage with the content of input materials and were not forewarned about a vocabulary test. The learning conditions investigated here are therefore situated in the realm of incidental vocabulary acquisition as characterized above. The primary question addressed in this study is whether learners’ vocabulary uptake from audio-visual input (more specifically a TED Talks video) is positively influenced by asking them to sum up its content before engaging with the same input text once more. The effect of text-based output activities on vocabulary uptake has been explored in a number of studies before (see further below), but, as we shall see, the present investigation is different in at least four ways. First, unlike previous studies, it was not stipulated to the learners which words from the input material they should focus on in the output activity. Instructions to work specifically with pre-selected words from an input text create a shift from a contentfocused activity to a language-focused exercise (and thus from incidental acquisition to intentional study practice). While this has been shown to enhance learners’ retention of selected words, it does not address the aforementioned concern over the allocation of class time. Neither does it help teachers to estimate the rate of vocabulary learning that can be expected from textbased communicative activities where students themselves determine what vocabulary to recycle from the text. Second, we used an authentic, unmodified, input text. The texts used in most previous studies on this subject were created or modified for the purpose of drawing learners’ attention to particular target words and their meanings, typically through typographic enhancement (e.g., underlining of the words in the text) and through the provision of glossaries. Third, unlike previous research (which often used a mere input-output sequence in their treatment conditions), the present study applied an input-output-input cycle where the learners revisited the input text and could thus compare their own rendering of the content to the original ‘model’. Fourth, instead of using a reading text as was done in previous studies on the subject, the present study used audio-visual material—a TED Talk—as the input text. It is not the intention of the present investigation to compare vocabulary uptake from texts presented in different modalities. Rather, the decision to use audio-visual materials was motivated by their increased availability in L2 instructional settings (e.g., King, 2002). While much research has been concerned with vocabulary acquisition from reading (and to a lesser extent from listening), the growing popularity of audio-visual materials calls for more investigations of their affordances for vocabulary acquisition. Some studies have already demonstrated the potential of authentic audio-visual materials for this purpose (e.g., Rodgers & Webb, 2011; Webb, 2015), and there are grounds for believing that audio-visual input offers affordances that are absent from audio input alone (Vanderplank, 2010).