Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Aural Means: udWhat Do English Television Programs Have to Offer?ud

摘要

AbstractududIncidental Vocabulary Acquisition through Aural Means: udWhat Do English Television Programs Have to Offer?ududMyriam LévesqueududLittle research has been done with regards to the lexical environment provided by broadcasting television. In this study, the contribution of television viewing to incidental vocabulary acquisition was explored using a variety of corpora. Sitcoms, dramas and sci-fi programs were compared among themselves and to a teacher talk corpus to determine how television programs can benefit learners’ acquisition of vocabulary, particularly when combined with teacher talk. It was shown that the learnable vocabulary of teacher talk and TV-talk do not overlap. Even though dramas are slightly easier to understand than sitcoms and sci-fi programs, all three cater to the needs of advanced English as a second language students. Sci-fi programs appear to offer the most learnable words of all the programs. Because the lexical load of teacher talk is less demanding than that of TV-talk, combining the two activities to increase the number of learnable words available proves unfeasible. Implications for incidental vocabulary learning, research and pedagogy are discussed.ud