This study aims to investigate the impact of topic familiarity and vocabulary learning tasks on vocabulary acquisition in an ESP (English for Specific Purposes) setting, focusing on 16 adult learners with varying proficiency levels (A1-B1), all training to be cooks. Participants worked with six cooking recipes, three on familiar topics and three on unfamiliar topics, with 30 target words assigned to one of three tasks: word list, flashcards, or fill-in-the-gaps. Immediate and delayed post-tests (three weeks later) were administered using the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS). Despite the small sample size, significant differences in retention are noted across proficiency levels and task types over time. Results from repeated-measures ANOVAs showed that topic familiarity alone did not significantly impact vocabulary acquisition. However, the interaction between topic familiarity and task type was significant, as were the effects of task types and proficiency levels individually. The interaction between task type and proficiency level also showed a significant effect on vocabulary learning. Participants generally performed better with the fill-in-the-gaps method, but these effects decreased over time. The study highlights the importance of considering both proficiency levels and task types for effective vocabulary instruction.

This study investigated the effects of multisensory memory strategies of pairing visual and aural learning strategies of aural lexical advance organizers (LAO) and read-alouds on 146 Korean high school students learning the meaning and pronunciation of 18 unfamiliar English words. In this quasi-experimental design, the control group learned the words on a single mode of written LAO and silent reading as opposed to two treatment groups of aural LAO and silent reading, and of aural LAO and read-alouds, respectively. The effects were tested three times via pre-, post-(immediately after learning), and delayed (30 days later) tests. The immediate and long-term effects were examined by detecting the differences across the three groups in post- and delayed-tests by one-way ANOVA, and the retention of effects was examined by paired t-tests in each group across the three tests. The results indicated that pairing aural LAO and read-aloud strategies was most effective in learning and retention of both vocabulary meaning and pronunciation.

This study examines the claim that vocabulary learning and retention are dependent on a task's involvement load (i.e., need, search, evaluation), as proposed by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001a). The study aims at comparing the effects of task types and task involvement load on vocabulary retention for Korean EFL university students. More specifically, this study was designed to test whether differential levels of task involvement loads lead to equally effective results to vocabulary retention when the total involvement index being equal. Three types of productive word-focused tasks (gap-filling using a dictionary, writing original sentences, and gap-filling through word transformation) were used to examine the interplay of involvement index and task types. The result indicated that there were significant main effects of task types, test types, and proficiency levels. The results also indicated that there were significant interaction effects of task types on the retention tests, proficiency levels on the retention tests, and task types×proficiency levels on the retentions. The pedagogical implications and further research directions are discussed.