Abstracts
Abstract
This study investigated the lexical demands of English-as-an-additional-language (EAL) and general-audience podcasts and their potential for incidental vocabulary learning. Two corpora (i.e., one EAL and one general-audience) comprising 1,188,512 tokens were analyzed to determine the necessary vocabulary knowledge to reach 90% and 95% coverage. The results indicated that 2,000 and 3,000 word families plus proper nouns (PN), marginal words (MW), transparent compounds (TC), and acronyms (AC) covered 90% and 95% of words in podcasts, respectively. The results also showed that EAL and general-audience podcasts required 1,000 and 2,000 words families to reach 90% coverage, respectively. Regarding 95% coverage, knowledge of 2,000 (EAL) and 3,000 (general-audience) word families was required. The results also demonstrated almost 60% of word families from the 2,000-word level were encountered 15+ times in each corpus, suggesting podcasts may hold relatively great potential for learning such words incidentally. Furthermore, our findings indicated that there was some potential for incidentally learning words from the 3,000-word level in both corpora, while general-audience podcasts may hold greater potential in this regard. Implications for using podcasts in language pedagogy are also discussed.
Résumé
Cette étude a examiné les niveaux lexicaux des podcasts l'anglais comme langue additionnelle (ALA) et des podcasts audience-générale et leurs potentiels pour l'apprentissage incident du vocabulaire. Deux corpus (un corpus ALA et un corpus audience- générale) qui ont consisté 1 188 512 mots ont été analysés pour déterminer la connaissance du vocabulaire nécessaire pour atteindre une couverture de 90 % et 95 %. Les résultats ont révélé que 2 000 familles de mots et 3 000 familles de mots avec noms propres, interjections, composés transparents et acronymes couvraient respectivement 90 % et 95 % des mots des podcasts. De plus, les résultats ont indiqué que les podcasts ALA et les podcasts audience- générale demandaient respectivement 1 000 familles de mots et 2 000 familles de mots pour atteindre une couverture de 90 %. Pour une couverture de 95 %, la connaissance de 2 000 familles de mots (ALA) et de 3 000 familles de mots (audience-générale) était requise. De plus, les résultats ont démontré que près de 60 % de 2 000 familles de mots les plus fréquentes ont été rencontrées plus de 15 fois dans chaque corpus. Ces résultats indiquent que l'écoute de podcasts peut avoir un potentiel relativement fort d'apprentissage incident de tels mots. De plus, les résultats ont indiqué qu'il y avait un potentiel d'apprentissage incident de 3 000 familles de mots les plus fréquentes dans chaque corpus, tandis que les podcasts audience-générale pourraient avoir un plus grand potentiel à cet égard. Les implications de l'utilisation des podcasts dans la pédagogie des langues sont également discutées.
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