Extramural English and Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition in China : On the Effects of Extramural Written English Language Media Consumption Among 2nd Year Chinese University Students

Abstract: The present study concerns itself with incidental acquisition of vocabulary through the consumption of English language media in an extramural setting by Chinese L1 speakers. The design of the study carried the intent to mimic an incidental acquisition through reading scenario so as to give insight into to what extent extramural English could benefit a demographic whose exposure to English outside of the classroom is low. This qualitative study featured both a treatment group and a control group and implemented a pretest – treatment – posttest structure wherein study data was gathered through four multiple-choice vocabulary tests. Two multiple-choice tests provided contextual examples of the lexical items by means of an example sentence while the other two did not. Both pretest and posttest contained one of each multiple-choice test with the context-free test being administered first and the contextual test being administered immediately upon the completion of the former. The data thus gathered was analyzed statistically and inferentially with results showing that consumption of written English language media lead to appreciable vocabulary gains.