Vocabulary Achievement through Natural Rich Context: A Corpus Based Study

In the 1970s and 1980s, communicative language teaching encouraged the field to focus on ‘incidental learning’ in natural situations and contexts. In the 1990s, corpus databases were developed out of written texts that were collected from natural utterances of the speakers produced in natural situations via computer databases. Probably the most reliable source on vocabulary research is to make use of corpus studies. Therefore, this study made use of corpus materials to investigate vocabulary achievement through context. To carry out the study, an available sample of ninety pre-university male students studying in three classes was selected. The study was completed through a pre-test, control group, post-test design to examine the effect of rich natural context and repetition on the students’ vocabulary gains. The results, analyzed through analysis of covariance (ANACOVA), showed that rich natural context promotes vocabulary achievement and also repetition influences vocabulary gains in rich natural context. The results further indicated that the type of context is determinant in vocabulary gains and teachers have to reconsider their vocabulary teaching methods. Based on the findings of this study, teachers are encouraged to develop contextualized procedure for presenting new words to the learners.