This study explored the effect of a lexical inferencing task on low-proficiency Korean EFL learners’ vocabulary acquisition from watching a movie. A total of 63 Korean freshman students enrolled in three different sessions of a compulsory English course for low proficiency level students participated in the two-week-long study. Each session was randomly designated as a viewing group, an instruction group, and an inference group. After watching an English movie, the participants’ gain in their lexical knowledge for twenty target vocabulary items from the movie was assessed. While the viewing group received no other treatment, the instruction group was explicitly taught the target vocabulary and the inference group completed a lexical inferencing task for the target words prior to watching the movie. In the posttest, the participants in all three groups showed a significant gain in their lexical knowledge, with the greatest improvement demonstrated by the inference group. The viewing group and the instruction group did not show any significant difference in their lexical development. Based on the results, this study suggests that i) movies are useful resources for L2 vocabulary learning and ii) a lexical inferencing task is a valuable supplement for foreign language classrooms employing movies in the curriculum.
I. INTRODUCTION
II. LITERATURE REVIEW
III. METHOD
IV. RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
V. CONCLUSION
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