This two-year longitudinal study tracks the extent of vocabulary attrition among Arabic-speaking English graduate teachers. Data were collected through pre-post tests of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge. The results showed drastic attrition in vocabulary knowledge soon after the end of formal instruction followed by slight gain, although the gain was not quite back to the level of baseline achievement. Verbs and adjectives were more prone to attrition than nouns. The rate of attrition was greater for productive than receptive lexical knowledge. Interestingly, knowledge at peak attainment emerged as a predictor of attrition over time.Keywords: vocabulary attrition, EFL, KAU, retention, initial knowledge, baseline The State of Foreign Language Attrition ResearchThere has been a great deal of research on various aspects of language acquisition including vocabulary in the last three decades, and as a result we have witnessed new insights being gained, hypotheses generated and evidence and counterevidence cited (Bogaards & Laufer, 2004;Coady & Huckin, 1997;Meara, 1980;Milton, 2009;Nation, 1990Nation, , 2001 Nation & Webb, 2011;Peters, 2013;Schmitt, 2008Schmitt, , 2010Tian & Macaro, 2012). However, there has been comparatively little research into lexical attrition specifically in the foreign language (FL) arena, describing key processes and how quickly or slowly lexical knowledge is forgotten. Yet, more recently attrition and retention of lexical knowledge by adults has received increased attention in the research literature (see Alharthi, 2012;Bahrick, 1984;de Bot & Weltens, 1995;Weltens, 1989). Previous empirical studies that have contributed significantly to the literature on FL attrition at the lexical level have been focused on situations where learners of English rarely use words they know after the conclusion of formal instruction (e.g. Abbasian & Khajavi, 2010;Bierling, 1990;Marefat & Rouhshad, 2007). However, equally interesting is attrition in situations where some possibly limited use is made of the FL after formal instruction has ceased.To take a concrete example, the type of exposure to English for King Abdulaziz University (KAU) graduate students in Saudi Arabia is very often mainly -and in some cases even entirely -confined to the classroom. As a result, this limited exposure is likely to lead to lexical attrition over time. This would create a challenge for EFL majors who are supposed to build up a much larger lexical repertoire which then can help them with their teaching of English. By extension, it is possible that they may find it hard to retain the bulk of their vocabulary knowledge upon leaving KAU and therefore will start to lose their vocabulary. Thus, it appears that once students finish their formal study of English, they are less likely to use the target language. The aim of this research then is to measure the extent of attrition and retention of vocabulary knowledge over time among EFL graduate students. The study focuses on one of the four settings of attrition outli...

Research has highlighted the importance of vocabulary learning in order for L2 learners to cope with the linguistic demands of fundamental skills such as reading and listening. However, few empirical studies have investigated the relative strength of the association of a specific construct of vocabulary knowledge has on the skill of speaking. To understand more fully the practical implications of such a relationship, this paper presents empirical evidence gathered to explore a measure of productive vocabulary knowledge and the degree to which this measure correlates with and is able to predict speaking success. A cohort of 18 sophomore university learners of English as a foreign language (EFL) in Saudi Arabia (SA) completed the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test (PVLT), an oral interview and a speaking task. Test scores derived from PVLT were analyzed to produce a range of descriptive statistics, which underwent correlational analyses to determine the relationship between the measure of PVLT and speaking success. Analyses revealed a consistent pattern of declining scores from the highest to the least frequent word levels. A closer examination of the data showed that the participants’ success across the five-word levels of the PVLT showed better performance on the 2,000 and 3,000-word levels, in fact, the results indicated that only these word levels made a contribution to predicting speaking scores. Based on these findings, we draw implications for vocabulary teaching contexts and provide suggestions for future studies on vocabulary and speaking link.

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This paper reports on a one year, mixed-methods longitudinal case study investigating the neglected area of the perceived reasons why participants forget vocabulary knowledge. The participants were 43 fourth year male Saudi EFL majors at King Abdulaziz University KAU, Saudi Arabia. Quantitative and qualitative data including self-reported questionnaires and retrospective semi-structured interviews offered evidence to support the findings of this study. The reasons associated with lexical attrition centered on lack of practice, instructional and environmental context and nature of the word.

The present study seeks to contribute to our knowledge of the effectiveness of reading in the incidental learning of collocations. The study also addresses the question whether out-of-class exposure such as watching TV, listening to radio or music, reading English books and using social media plays a significant role in the learning of collocations. The research participants were 46 Arabic-speaking young adult EFL learners. They were asked to read a modified text containing 10 pseudo-word collocations and to verify that all were unfamiliar to them. One week later, they read a text containing the actual 21 target collocations, which had been selected on the basis of appearing in instructional materials and a reference corpus, as well as of frequency. Participants were then asked to complete a meaning-recall cloze test in the form of a gap-filling task in which the 21 target collocations were embedded in sentences. Subsequently they were administered a self-report survey about any incidental exposure to English. The analysis of the quantitative results revealed that the target collocations can be learned incidentally through reading although the level of mastery was limited. The survey data showed a positive correlation between the learners' knowledge of collocations and activities such as watching TV, listening to radio and reading English books. The study also confirmed that collocations are particularly difficult for adult EFL learners and is thus an aspect of vocabulary knowledge in need of further empirical investigations.