A Comparison of Vocabulary Acquisition in Audio and Video Contexts

The development of lexical proficiency in a second or foreign language often causes problems for learners, as Marton (1977), Meara (1980) and Richards (1985) have reported. Current pedagogical trends emphasize incidental or indirect learning by resorting to contextual cues but do not explicitly describe techniques to facilitate vocabulary learning. After a review of the literature on L1 vocabulary acquisition, Krashen (1989) concluded that vocabulary can best be acquired through reading and that all other vocabulary teaching techniques are inefficient to some degree.