A Commentary On:
Pellicer-Sanchez, A. & Schmitt, N. (2010). Incidental vocabulary acquisition from an authentic novel:
Do Things Fall Apart? Reading in a Foreign Language, 22(1), 31-55.
Meral Ozturk
Uludag University, Turkey
mozturk@uludag.edu.tr
meralozturk1@gmail.com
Summary
The authors investigated vocabulary learning from reading an authentic novel ‘Things Fall
Apart’. The novel was in English but contained words from an African language, which were all new
to all participants. The target words were 34 words of this language and appeared in the novel with
varying frequency. The participants were 20 university students in Spain learning English as a foreign
language and were relatively advanced in proficiency. Participants read the novel in their own time
over a one-month period. They were post-tested individually providing answers both orally and in
writing. The tests were a multiple-choice spelling recognition test, a word-class recall test, a
meaning-recall test which required participants to explain orally meanings of words presented in
isolation, and a multiple-choice meaning recognition test presenting words in non-defining sentence
contexts as well as an attitude questionnaire with 10 questions. Overall, around 9 of the 34 target
words (28%) were learned to some degree. The analysis revealed the following “acquisition profile”
of word aspects:
1. Meaning recognition (43%)
2. Spelling recognition (34%)
3. Word class recall (20%)
4. Meaning recall (14%)
10+ occurrences seems like a threshold whereby amount of learning is greatly improved in all aspects
(55%-84%). This is problematic for an extensive reading approach in the light of Cobb’s (2007) finding
that lower frequency words beyond the first two thousand did not appear frequently enough (6 or
more times) in authentic texts. The authors recommend combining extensive reading with explicit
teaching.
Comment
An unexpected finding of the study concerned the spelling recognition test scores. Learners
scored lower on the spelling test (34%) than they scored on the meaning recognition test (43%).
Authors interpreted this finding saying that “learning word form to a recognition level may be more
difficult than learning meaning to the same level” (p.43). This is counter-intuitive as meanings are
abstract and are identified only by means of the corresponding word form. Therefore, recognition of
the word from seems like a prerequisite to the recognition of word meaning. If the learner does not
recognize the form of the word, he will not recognize the meaning. Therefore, spelling recognition
scores should normally be higher than meaning recognition scores. It is interesting that Waring &
Takaki (2003) investigating gains in word-form recognition and meaning recognition from reading a
graded reader found just the opposite. Learners scored over two times higher on the spelling
recognition test. Since both of the studies used multiple-choice tests for meaning recognition, the
difference in results must be stemming from the different word-form tests. I would think PellicerSanchez & Schmitt’s (2010) finding demands a different explanation. The spelling recognition test
they used was a multiple-choice test with four options. The three distractors they used were very
similar in form to the correct spelling of the target word, e.g. ekwe (the key), ekbe, egwe, egbe. A
correct answer on this test required a high degree of precision in the knowledge of the word’s
spelling. I would argue that this precision is what we would need in the productive use of the word.
In receptive use, i.e. in reading, this word would not compete with similar-looking words in the cotext, and therefore, a less precise knowledge of its form would be sufficient for recognition. So,
Pellicer-Sanchez & Schmitt’s spelling recognition test did not measure the construct it claimed to
measure. Waring & Takaki, on the other hand, used a word circling task to measure word-form
recognition of non-word targets. They have given the target words in a list mixed with other words
quite distinct in form from the target words. They asked learners to circle the words they met in the
text. This is an easier word-form test and requires less precision than the one used by PellicerSanchez & Schmitt. The two tests are probably measuring different constructs. I would argue that
these constructs are receptive vs productive knowledge of spelling. The receptive-productive
distinction in spelling-knowledge is a continuum that involves increasingly greater precision of
knowledge about the individual letters that make up the word and about their order in the word.