The Role of Topic Familiarity and Rhetorical Organization of Texts in L2 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

In L2 learning literature it is known that both topic familiarity and rhetorical organization contribute to reading comprehension. However, the role of these two factors in L2 vocabulary learning has not been investigated. In the present study 64 intermediate EFL learners read four narratives which were different in terms of topic familiarity and rhetorical organization. Each passage contained four glossed words. The acquired knowledge of the new words was measured using a vocabulary knowledge scale. The results showed content familiarity plays a more important role in the meaning-making process needed for incidental vocabulary acquisition. Implications of the findings will be discussed.