EFL students’ vocabulary learning in NS-NNSe-mail interactions: Do they learn newwords by imitation?

The present study investigated Japanese students’ EFL vocabulary development throughe-mail interactions with a native English speaker (NS), with primary focus on students’ imitationof new words. According to sociocultural theory, learners can internalize new linguisticknowledge by imitating an expert’s expressions to create his/her own utterances. This study,therefore, specifically examined whether (1) students could imitate the new vocabulary itemsprovided by the NS tutor, and (2) they could retain these items at the end of the project. Anexamination of the e-mail log showed that students did imitate and use some of the lexisprovided by the NS. The results of the post-test also revealed that some of the imitated wordswere subsequently retained. However, there were some words that had been learned withoutimitation. The questionnaire survey and the students’ interview comments indicated thatstudents memorized a considerable number of new words provided by the NS by repeatedlyreading them in e-mail text, as well as in other learning contexts, such as regular classes andindependent study, through noticing, retrieving, and generating the meaning/form of eachword (Nation, 2001). The study concluded that vocabulary learning via e-mail takes place notonly by a single process such as imitation, but also by a combination of various processesfunctioning in an integrated manner