The effect of pre-reading instruction on vocabulary learning: An examination of L1 and L2 readers’ eye movements

This study examines the effect of pre-reading vocabulary instruction on learners’ attention and vocabulary gains. Participants (L1 = 92; L2 = 88) were randomly assigned to one of four conditions: pre-reading instruction, involving explicit instruction of six novel items and reading a text with them repeated eight times; reading-only, which only involved reading the text with the novel items; reading-baseline, in which participants read a text with the repeated items replaced by known (control) words; and instruction-only, which involved explicit instruction of the novel items and the reading of an unrelated text. Eye-tracking was used to measure amount of attention to the vocabulary during reading. Knowledge of the target vocabulary was assessed in three immediate post-tests (form recognition, meaning recall, and meaning recognition). Results showed that pre-reading instruction led to both higher vocabulary gains and a processing advantage. Cumulative reading times were a significant predictor of meaning recognition scores.