Effects of Input Elaboration on Vocabulary Acquisition through Reading by Korean Learners of English as a Foreign Language

This article investigates whether (a) lexical elaboration (LE), typographical enhancement (TE), or a combination, and (b) explicit or implicit LE affect 297 Korean learners' acquisition of English vocabulary. The learners were asked to read one of six versions of an experimental text that contained 26 target words. The study adopted a 2 × 3 MANOVA design with TE and LE as two independent variables and form- and meaning-recognition vocabulary posttests as two dependent variables. The TE had two levels, enhanced and unenhanced, and the LE had three levels, explicit, implicit, and unelaborated. The results were (a) LE alone did not aid form recognition of vocabulary, (b) explicit LE alone aided meaning recognition of vocabulary, (c) TE alone did not aid form and meaning recognition of vocabulary, (d) LE and TE combined did not aid form recognition of vocabulary, (e) both explicit and implicit LE aided meaning recognition of vocabulary, (f) explicit and implicit LE did not differ in their effect on form and meaning recognition of vocabulary, and (g) whether a text was further enhanced in addition to either explicit or implicit LE did not seem to affect the acquisition of the previously unknown words' forms or meanings.