Words at first exposure: How EFL proficiency influences incidental and intentional vocabulary learning in an unfamiliar language

The study explores incidental and intentional vocabulary learning in first exposure setting among high-proficiency (HP) and low-proficiency (LP) English-as-a-Foreign-Language learners (EFLLs) learning vocabulary in a novel language. The study involved 72 university EFLLs − 37 with HP and 35 with LP in English. Participants’ incidental and intentional vocabulary learning was assessed through their performance on a translation recognition task following a letter search task. To determine the impact of incidental vocabulary learning on intentional vocabulary learning, participants’ performance on words included in the letter search task was compared with their performance on the translation recognition task of new words. Results indicate that while both groups exceeded chance level in incidental vocabulary learning, the HP EFLL group demonstrated better incidental and intentional vocabulary learning abilities compared with the LP group. LP EFLLs exhibit a flatter learning curve and improve only from the first to the fourth block while HP EFLLs significantly improve across all four blocks. Finally, both groups exhibited an incidental learning effect, but this effect seemed to be eroding in the HP EFLL group. These results extend previous findings by indicating that the incidental learning effect is not similar across all proficiency levels.