Wednesday 21 October, 16.00 – 17.30 on Teams
Abstract: A major concern in vocabulary research has been to find the most effective way to teach and learn new vocabulary. Although the lexical gains accruing from different learning approaches have traditionally been measured by offline tests, researchers have recently started to use eye-tracking to examine vocabulary learning, providing a direct record of learners’ allocation of attention during the learning process. The combination of offline and eye-movement data provides a new and fuller picture of the vocabulary acquisition process. The last few years have witnessed a remarkable increase in the number of vocabulary studies using eye-tracking to explore the online processing of new words in different learning conditions, with a particular focus on learning from reading (e.g., Elgort et al., 2018; Godfroid et al., 2013, 2018; Pellicer-Sánchez, 2016; Pellicer-Sánchez et al., 2020).
This presentation will provide an overview of existing eye-tracking research on vocabulary learning from different conditions. It will illustrate how the use of eye-tracking has helped researchers gain a better understanding of the process of vocabulary learning from reading and of the relationship between eye-movements and performance measures.