Vocabulary is one of the key components of language proficiency and is crucial for successful communication in a second language. Learners need to acquire large vocabulary sizes in order to understand a range of written and spoken texts, as well as to communicate with ease with others in the target language. Thus, a main concern of language researchers and practitioners has been to find effective approaches to support learners in acquiring the huge vocabulary learning targets. Vocabulary gains in research studies have traditionally been measured using offline tests, e.g., post-treatment vocabulary tests. However, in the last decade, we have witnessed an unprecedented increase in the number of vocabulary studies using eye-tracking, specifically to explore learners’ online processing of new words and their relationship with lexical gains. Until now, eye-tracking and its techniques have been predominantly used in psycholinguistics and cognitive psychology as a measure of cognitive effort and attention allocation. Second language acquisition research has begun to incorporate the utilisation of eye-tracking as a key tool for language acquisition studies.
The aim of this presentation is to provide an overview of what eye-tracking has shown so far in its early stages as a tool to study second language vocabulary learning. The presentation will first provide an introduction to the eye-tracking technique, showing its main advantages and affordances for the study of vocabulary learning. It will then illustrate the use of eye-tracking in vocabulary research, through the presentation of examples from recent studies on learning from reading and subtitled viewing. Directions for future research will be identified as well during the talk.
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