The importance of vocabulary knowledge gained through incidental learning is well documented. The growth of incidental vocabulary knowledge is especially crucial for middle school students due to the complex words encountered in their studies. However, research on incidental vocabulary acquisition for middle school students is lacking. The purpose of this study was to compare the relative effectiveness of three instructional conditions (reading, writing, and reading and writing) on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention with middle school students in an English as a first language (L1) environment. In this within subjects repeated measure study, 263 eighth-grade participants received treatment in three instructional conditions with three differing levels of involvement load. Data from 2,893 individual student measures were used to evaluate the influence of instructional conditions on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention. Analysis of mixed-effects models showed that participant scores on the reading and writing condition were consistently higher than the writing only or the reading only condition. These results indicate that instructional tasks with higher involvement loads (e.g., reading and writing or writing) offer benefits to L1 middle school students for the incidental vocabulary acquisition necessary to be academically successful.

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The incidental music for Chansons de Bilitis is little known and rarely performed. However, the relegation of this work to the realms of obscurity is highly unjustified. Chansons de Bilitis requires an unusual combination of instruments: two flutes, two harps, and celesta in addition to a reciter. The work is a theater piece in the tradition of melodrama, with spoken text and background music in alternation. Despite the rather unique nature of the work, many of the melodic, textural, and orchestrational devices for which Debussy is noted are evident. The music is throughcomposed; each movement mirrors and emphasizes the meaning and mood of the accompanying poem. Because of the fragmentary nature of the music and its rather subordinate role in the total theater work, the primary emphasis in gaining an appreciation of the value of the work lies in an investigation of its historical background.

In recent years, advances in computer technology have allowed increasingly rich multimedia content to be incorporated into educational materials in many fields, including the field of language teaching. Yet as visually appealing as such products may be, we must ask whether multimedia-enriched materials actually improve learning in a measurable way. If so, individual curriculum makers can then decide whether the benefits of the multimedia materials justify the cost of purchasing and implementing them. This study attempted to examine the effects of multimedia glossary aids on incidental vocabulary acquisition rates of L2 learners of Japanese. Subjects included 35 third- and fourth-year students of Japanese at a large private university in the United States, who read a Japanese short story using an online web application that included a multimedia-enriched glossary. A total of 27 keywords were selected from the text for inclusion in the glossary. A third were annotated with English text definitions only; another third had an English text definition plus a picture illustration; the final third had an English text definition plus a video illustration. An unannounced post-test measured vocabulary gains. A logistic mixed models regression was performed to test for differences in acquisition rate across the annotation types. Also, due to the unique dual nature of Japanese orthography, which includes both the phonemic kana and so-called ideographic kanji characters, the regression also examined interaction between orthographic representation of the keyword and annotation type on acquisition rate. A significant result (p<0.0001) was found for annotation type as a main effect, with video-annotated words showing the highest acquisition rates. Additionally, a significant interaction (p=0.0139) was observed between orthography and annotation type, indicating that multimedia glossary annotations may have affected the acquisition of phonemic kana representations of keywords differently than they affected ideographic kanji representations.

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No description available.