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The majority of vocabulary is learned receptively through reading or listening (Jenkins, Stein, & Wysocki, 1984; Nagy, Anderson, & Herman, 1987; Nagy & Herman, 1987; Nagy, Herman, & Anderson, 1985). When vocabulary is taught in the classroom, learning is also likely to be receptive. Teachers may tell learners the meaning of a word, provide a definition, or use the word in a sentence, but they are less likely to ask students to use an item, apart from spelling or pronouncing it. Vocabulary learning tasks are also more likely to be receptive than productive. Receptive activities, such as looking up words in a dictionary, matching words with their meanings or definitions, guessing from context, and learning from word pairs (words are most often learned receptively in L2-L1 pairs) are more common than productive activities, such as cloze exercises or writing tasks. Receptive tasks may be more popular because they are easier to design, grade, and complete than productive tasks. However, it has never been demonstrated that receptive learning is more effective than productive learning. In fact, research indicates that the opposite may be true.
Most research on reception and production has focused on either receptive and productive vocabulary size (Laufer, 1998; Laufer & Paribakht, 1998; Morgan & Oberdeck, 1930; Waring, 1997a) or whether receptive knowledge is gained before productive knowledge (Aitchison, 1994; Channell, 1988; Melka, 1997). Surprisingly, there is very little research that compares receptive and productive learning. However, research on learning word pairs sheds some light on this issue. Research on learning from word pairs suggests that the type of learning--receptive or productive--affects the type and amount of knowledge gained (Griffin & Harley, 1996; Stoddard, 1929; Waring, 1997b). If words are learned receptively, then learners are likely to gain significantly more receptive knowledge, whereas productive learning leads to larger gains in productive knowledge. This provides a possible explanation for why a learner's receptive vocabulary may be larger than his or her productive vocabulary, a situation described in current research (Laufer; Laufer & Paribakht; Waring, 1997a). Given that vocabulary learning is predominantly receptive, learners are more likely to gain receptive knowledge than productive knowledge. Findings also indicate that productive tasks may be more effective if only one task is used (Griffin & Harley).
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