Nare K. Hakobyan

American University of Armenia, Armenia

Abstract

The increasing popularity of listening to podcasts for the purpose of improving English among Armenian teenagers raises the question as to what impact this might have on incidental vocabulary learning. A positive impact would be very welcome, especially in Armenia, where podcasts might prove to be one of the few affordable technology applications. This prospect gave rise to a mixedmethod, quasi-experimental study designed to answer the following research questions: (1) What is the relationship between incidental vocabulary learning and extensive listening to podcasts? (2) What is the relationship between the frequency of occurrence of the target vocabulary in podcast episodes and incidental vocabulary learning? (3) What is the relationship between the distribution of occurrence of the target vocabulary across the podcast episodes and incidental vocabulary learning? The instruments applied for data acquisition were Updated Vocabulary Levels pre- and postTests, project-designed pre- and post- tests, weekly listening comprehension tests, digital listening journal analyses and a post-survey. The results indicate that extensive listening to podcasts leads to significant vocabulary growth.

Keywords

Incidental vocabulary acquisition, extensive listening to podcasts, vocabulary frequency, vocabulary distribution