The Effect of Segments Plus Visual Modality

Although language learners may benefit from the spoken forms (i.e., segments), there are only limited empirical studies which proved the effectiveness of segments plus visual input, and these studies are mainly conducted in a different paradigm, repeated reading. Despite this, repeated reading shares many similarities with songs: they are both meaning-oriented activities and offer learners repeated dual-modality input (both visual and auditory). Most importantly, they both require the learners to successively revisit and hence familiarize the target forms in the same context. Due to the above similarities, findings of repeated reading research may shed some light on the potential effect of segments plus visual input in songs. The dual-modality input in assisted repeated reading is illustrated in Figure 2.

Visual input Auditory input

Figure 2. The Dual-modality Input in Assisted Repeated Reading.

In the following paragraphs, two repeated reading studies that explored the acquisition value of dual-modality input (segments plus visual input) will be reviewed (Han & Chen, 2010; Zahar et al, 2001).

Studying the language acquisition progress of a heritage learner of Chinese, Han and Chen (2010) investigated the effect of assisted repeated-reading-based instruction on both intentional and incidental foreign vocabulary acquisition. The subject spoke fluent Chinese, but her literacy ability was behind her speaking ability.

The materials were chosen based on the subject’s interest so that she would be motivated for the reading process. The study consisted of 20 treatment sessions and 3 testing sessions. In each of the one-hour treatment sessions, there were two phases.

The first phase was a self-directed assisted repeated reading of the material, wherein the subject worked alone to read while listening to an audio recording as many times as she wanted. Thereafter she would choose four to five target words and practice writing them. The second phase was explicit instruction on the vocabulary from the previous reading. The researcher would have the subject read the material and then provided the corrective feedback on word recognition and explained the meaning of the material when needed. The researcher would evaluate the participant’s ability to

Repeated reading

Segments

(Spoken forms of the texts) Texts

write the target words through sentence dictation. After the evaluation, corrective feedback was given to the subject.

After the instruction, seven tasks were conducted to test the recognition and production of the participant’s intentional and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The result of the tasks showed that the repetition-based instruction had a positive effect on intentional as well as incidental vocabulary acquisition. More specifically, in the isolated recognition of the incidental vocabulary task, the subject recognized more than half of the incidental vocabulary. This outcome suggested that the segments plus visual modality provided in the assisted repeated reading helped enhance the incidental acquisition of the vocabulary.

Although the result showed significant vocabulary gains, the researcher could not make a strong claim that the dual-modality input provided by repeated reading was the determining factor that caused the difference since the researcher also provided other explicit teaching strategies—including both explicit corrective feedback and writing practice. These pedagogical practices might be confounding factors that could have improved the subject’s vocabulary knowledge in this research.

To investigate learners’ implicit vocabulary acquisition through reading, Zahar et al (2001) recruited 144 male seventh-grade ESL learners. The participants had been placed into five proficiency levels: from beginners to bilingual. During the experiment, all participants would first listen to a recording of a Greek myth. At the same time, they were required to repeat with the auditory input while reading the texts of the story. They were asked to try to understand the meaning of the story on their own.

After listening to the story, they were told to reread the story on their own as many times as they would like to within the class period. A vocabulary test of the target words was conducted as the pretest and posttest to examine the effect of the treatment

on implicit vocabulary acquisition. The result showed that there were positive vocabulary gains among the five different proficiency groups, increasing by an average of 2.16 words out of the 30 target words. The researchers hence argued that assisted repeated reading facilitated vocabulary acquisition for learners with different proficiency levels.

Overall, segments plus visual input in repeated reading seemed to have a positive effect on vocabulary acquisition. It is important to note that the findings of repeated reading should not be directly generalized to the learning context of pop songs. Nevertheless, these findings can provide an ex ante picture of the potential facilitative role of “segments plus visual input” in pop songs in language learning.

To sum up, although the preceding studies investigated the effects in different domains of language learning: syntactic structure and vocabulary acquisition, two corollaries can be made based on the studies in this section:

1) The combination of visual input and segments may facilitate language acquisition;

2) The combination of visual input and songs (segment + prosody) may also facilitate language acquisition.

However, it is yet to be established which sound form (prosody + segments vs.

segments alone) is more effective on retention of the target structure. The above inquiry is critical for teachers because it provides them with pedagogical guidelines for choosing more effective material for learners.