The relationship between extensive listening to podcasts and incidental vocabulary acquisition

Abstract

The purpose of the study was to investigate the relationship between incidental vocabulary acquisition and extensive listening to podcasts. The choice of the topic was not random as EFL students acquire the majority of their vocabulary incidentally, whereas listening to podcasts is becoming a popular habit among EFL learners. Therefore, there was a need for more academic research to understand what type of relationship exists between incidental vocabulary acquisition and extensive listening to podcasts in order to grasp whether the practice is worth sharing in the EFL context or not. Moreover, an attempt was made to identify whether the time spent on podcasts’ listening may impact the vocabulary acquisition. Other contextual features of interest were the frequency of the target vocabulary in the input, its distribution across the episodes and the participants’ attitude to the practice. The research design was experimental with mixed-methods. The instruments applied are both quantitative and qualitative: the Ultimate Vocabulary Levels pre- and post- Tests, pre- and post- project-designed tests, listening journals, surveys, teacher interviews and listening comprehension tests. The sample is 32 private school students separated into experimental and control groups, where the experimental group was exposed to listening to podcasts as an extra- curricular activity whereas the control group had the curricular teaching according to the course curriculum. The findings indicated that a seven-week exposure to the episodes led to the acquisition of 17.84 lexical units with 11.05 having been identified at the pre- test and 25.11 remaining not acquired. The gains were significantly impacted by the frequency and the distribution of the target vocabulary, as well as the amount of time spent on listening to the episodes. The participants’ attitude was mainly positive about the practice.