The effect of frequency of occurrence of lexical items in incidental vocabulary learning

This study attempts to examine incidental vocabulary instruction in terms of learners’ frequency of encounter with target lexical items. A text containing target words with different occurrence frequencies was selected. Five frequency bands were created based on the occurrence frequencies of words. Subjects were asked to read the text guessing the meaning of the words with the help of contextual cues. Learners’ retention of unknown words from five frequency bands was measured using immediate and delayed post test. The test included three sections: a recognition test, a multiple choice test and a translation test. Correct answers were analysed to see whether there exists differences in retention of words from various frequency bands.