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OCR
EXTRAMURAL ENGLISH ACTIVITIES AND INDIVIDUAL LEARNER DIFFERENCES online grammatical exercises to practice the given grammatical phenomenon, which may be considered a much more contextualized way of learning than simply checking the explanations in a coursebook. This former learning approach of using interactive exercises, at least to some extent, caters to functional practice (Bialystok 1981) because here, the sentences and the written texts provide a bit more context for learners than simply memorizing the grammatical rules from a coursebook. As for vocabulary learning, Lucas claims that “learning words is not pleasant, but necessary,” and, similarly to other participants, he often creates paperbased word lists and does not prefer to use applications designed specifically for vocabulary learning. Vera also adopts a similar learning approach, which she explains as follows: “I take five words at a time and start adding more, and more and then I try to write all of them down, like a printer.” These learning methods may work in the short term, and learners may be able to obtain good grades on tests at school; however, they certainly do not cater to incidental learning, as writing down the word or expression several times does not enable a learner to encounter, let alone use these words or phrases in context. Yet, extensive exposure to vocabulary items is a prerequisite for intentional and incidental learning (Schmidt 1993, 1995, 2001). Surprisingly, only two participants mentioned that they use smartphone applications for learning vocabulary. In her interview, Lina explained how Quizlet works: [I]t’s a website [...] where you can add words and definitions, but you don’t have to define them. You can just add their meaning, and, well, it helps memorize things. You can set it to show only the words, and then you try to guess their meaning in Hungarian. Or vice versa, you set it to show the Hungarian meaning, and then you guess the English word. It is apparent that she clearly understands the benefits of using applications supporting language learning. Most students, however, only keep reading the vocabulary items and simply try to memorize them. Only a small proportion of students try to form sentences with the items or attempt to contextualize them, which barely supports intentional or incidental learning. Paul, for instance, explained his learning strategies in the following way: I use a word collection; these are words I take notes of in class or while doing homework. I try to memorize these words and expressions, I read them many times, and I try to form sentences with them so I can associate them with something. Furthermore, it appears that one of the participants, Charlie, demonstrates higher linguistic awareness than the other participants and often makes + 72e
