Vocabulary Demands of Television Programs

Stuart Webb and Michael P. H. Rodgers Presented by Annie 陳怡安

Introduction

Gap:

Previous research—coverage needed for reading comprehension

Coverage—the percentage of known words in the discourse

Aim: to determine the vocabulary demands of television programs

Literature Review The lexical coverage for television programs?

Nation (2006)—

reading different types of

discourse

British National Corpus

Ideal text coverage of 98%:

a vocabulary of 6000-7000

for spoken text

8000-9000 for reading

Literature Review The lexical coverage for television programs?

Laufer (1989)—95% for reasonable comprehension

Hirsh and Nation (1992)—98% for reading for pleasure

Hu and Nation (2000)—98% for ideal coverage of written text

Bonk (2000)—adequate listening comprehension at 95%

Comprehension of television programs may be easier than listening because of visual imagery.

Adequate comprehension of television programs—coverage 90%-99%.

Aim—determine the vocabulary needed to reach 95% and 98% coverage of television programs

Literature Review Incidental Vocabulary Learning

“Learning words without deliberate decision to commit information to memory.” (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001)

Pavakanun and d’Ydewalle (1992)—watching television in a foreign language may lead to large incidental vocabulary learning.

Koolstra and Beentjes (1999)—watching television did lead to incidental vocabulary learning.

The vocabulary demands for successful incidental vocabulary learning?

Research Questions

1. How many words do viewers need to know to understand the vocabulary in television programs?

2. How does coverage of British television differ between programs from different genres?

3. How does coverage of American television differ between programs from different genres?

4. How often do viewers encounter low-frequency words in television programs?

Methodology

Materials

88 television programs

Total viewing time—35.1 hr., 11.3 days of viewing (3.1 hr. per day)

Analysis

RANGE software

Fourteen 1,000-word-frequency lists of occurrence in BNC by Nation (2006)

Results and Discussion

Significance of knowing the most frequent words

Importance of recognizing proper nouns when watching television

Marginal words

ah, oh, huh

Minimal learning burden

decreasing

Results and Discussion

RQ1

Without knowledge of the proper nouns and marginal words (PNAMW), the vocabulary necessary to reach 95%coverage is 12,000 word families.

A vocabulary of 3,000 word families plus PNAMWprovides 95.45% coverage, and with a vocabulary of 7,000 word families plus PNAMW, 98.27% of the words would be known.

British television is slightly less demanding than American television.

BNC

RQ2

Coverage of Brit. television varied slightly bw genres but largely bw episodes.

British programs is slightly less demanding than British news.

RQ3

95% coverage—large differences bw episodes

98% coverage—large differences bw genres and episodes

4,000 word families gap

Children’s program

RQ4

The number of encounters with most low-frequency word families is very small within 35.1 hr of viewing time.

Incidental vocabulary learning for low-frequency words is unlikely to occur.

More likely to occur in Children’s programs.

For learners who know most of the most frequent 3,000 words, television may offer the potential for large incidental vocabulary gains.

30%

Conclusion

The vocabulary demands

Knowledge of the most frequent 3,000 word families plus PNAMW provided more than 95% coverage of television programs

The most frequent 7,000 word families and PNAMW provided 98% coverage.

Teachers and learners target the 3,000-word level as the point at which television might become a useful tool for language learning.

Variation in Genres and Episodes

Pre-teaching genre and sub-genre specific voc.

Low-frequency vocabulary

Pre-teaching

Limitations and Empirical opinions

Limitations

The coverage should be carefully examined.

Vocabulary is one of many factors contribute to comprehension.

Feedback

Teachers should consider the vocabulary demands of programs to determine whether a program is suitable for use in the classroom.

Be aware of the vocabulary demands bw episodes.