A Study of Vocabulary Acquisition in EFL : Through Comparisons of Repetition Types of Vocabulary Tests

Abstract

This study aims to find an effective method to promote vocabulary acquisition through vocabulary tests. Several previous studies found six or more exposures are needed to acquire a vocabulary item. The subjects were junior high school students in Japan. This study investigates whether the following four variables have an influence on the rate of acquisition of unknown vocabulary: (1) The number of times the same sets of vocabulary items need to be tested, (2) The pattern of repetition sequences, (3) The parts of speech of the target words, and (4) The vocabulary size of the subjects. A pre-test was conducted to identify unknown vocabulary items for the subjects and from the result, 30 items were selected and six sets of vocabulary tests were designed with them. Each set consisted of five words including two nouns, two verbs and one adjective. The tests were carried out six times over a three week period. The subjects were divided into four groups and testing for each group was conducted in different ways. Post-tests were conducted twice to check the long-term effects of the vocabulary tests on item retention. Both of the tests consisted of the above-mentioned 30 items. A vocabulary size test was also conducted. The results were as follows: (1) Frequency of repetition is a more influential factor than the number of target items in one vocabulary test, (2) No significant difference was found to result from the pattern of test repetition, (3) Difference in parts of speech was not an influential factor on vocabulary acquisition, and (4) Different results were observed between a large vocabulary size group and a small vocabulary size group in effects on learning of frequency of test repetition.