SSLA, 27, 33–52+ Printed in the United States of America+

DOI: 10+10170S0272263105050023

RECEPTIVE AND PRODUCTIVE

VOCABULARY LEARNING

The Effects of Reading and Writing

on Word Knowledge

Stuart Webb
Koran Women’s Junior College

This study investigates the effects of receptive and productive vocab-

ulary learning on word knowledge. Japanese students studying
English as a foreign language learned target words in three glossed
sentences and in a sentence production task in two experiments.
Five aspects of vocabulary knowledge—orthography, syntax, asso-
ciation, grammatical functions, and meaning and form—were each
measured by receptive and productive tests. The study uses an inno-
vative methodology in that each target word was tested in 10 differ-
ent ways. The first experiment showed that, when the same amount
of time was spent on both tasks, the reading task was superior. The
second experiment showed that, when the allotted time on tasks
depends on the amount of time needed for completion, with the writ-
ing task requiring more time, the writing task was more effective. If
the second experiment represents authentic learning, then a stron-
ger argument can be made to use productive vocabulary learning
tasks over receptive tasks.

The majority of vocabulary is learned receptively through reading or listen-

ing ~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 learn-
I wish to acknowledge the generous input of the following people in the evolution of this paper:
Paul Nation, Jonathan Newton, and Jim Dickie from Victoria University of Wellington, and the anon-
ymous SSLA reviewers, for their helpful comments+
Address for correspondence: Stuart Webb, Koran Women’s Junior College, Chuo-ku, Fukuoka-
shi, Japan 810-0045; e-mail: swebb@fka+att+ne+jp+

© 2005 Cambridge University Press 0272-2631005 $12+00 33

34 Stuart Webb

ers 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 dictio-
nary, matching words with their meanings or definitions, guessing from con-
text, and learning from word pairs ~words are most often learned receptively
in L2-L1 pairs! are more common than productive activities, such as cloze exer-
cises 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 pro-
ductive learning+ In fact, research indicates that the opposite may be true+
Most research on reception and production has focused on either recep-
tive 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 pro-
ductive 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+ Find-
ings also indicate that productive tasks may be more effective if only one task
is used ~Griffin & Harley!+
To my knowledge, there has been no research comparing receptive and
productive learning, apart from the studies that investigated learning from word
pairs+ Crow and Quigley ~1985! investigated two different approaches to vocab-
ulary learning to determine which promoted greater gains in receptive knowl-
edge; however, both approaches involved receptive and productive tasks+
Considering the implications of the word pair studies, this lack of research is
surprising+ If receptive learning is better suited to developing receptive knowl-
edge, then it may not be efficient to use productive tasks in a learning pro-
gram in which the primary aim is to improve receptive skills+ Similarly, if the
goal is to increase production, receptive tasks may be less beneficial+
One weakness of the word pair studies ~Griffin & Harley, 1996; Stoddard,
1929; Waring, 1997b! is that vocabulary gains were measured only with tests
of meaning and form+ Researchers tend to agree that knowing a word involves
much more than simply knowing its meaning and form and have proposed
different criteria for vocabulary knowledge ~Aitchison, 1994; Laufer, 1997;
McCarthy, 1990; Miller, 1999; Nation, 1990, 2001; Richards, 1976!+ Nation’s ~2001!
vocabulary knowledge framework lists nine different aspects of knowledge
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 35

involved in knowing a word, each of which can be broken down into receptive
and productive knowledge+
Although meaning and form must be considered the most important aspects
of vocabulary knowledge, in some cases they seem inappropriate as a mea-
sure of the relative efficacy of tasks+ For example, it should be expected that
tasks that provide learners with both meaning and form—such as learning
from word pairs, the keyword technique, and learning from glossed sentences—
may be effective in promoting semantic knowledge+ However, it might also be
expected that the presence of context in the learning from glossed-sentence
tasks promotes larger gains in knowledge of syntax and grammar than the
other two tasks+ If research investigating those tasks does not measure gains
in all three aspects of knowledge ~i+e+, syntax, grammar, and meaning!, the
results may be misleading+ Similarly, reading tasks may contribute to larger
receptive gains in syntax, grammatical functions, and meaning and form than
writing tasks, which may lead to larger gains in productive knowledge+ How-
ever, at present I know of only three studies that have measured receptive
and productive gains in multiple aspects of knowledge ~Schmitt, 1998, 1999;
Schmitt & Meara, 1997!+
The present study aimed to gain further insight into the effects of recep-
tive and productive learning tasks on vocabulary knowledge+ Two experi-
ments were designed to determine the relative efficacy of learning from three
glossed sentences and sentence production on receptive and productive knowl-
edge of orthography, syntax, grammatical functions, association, and mean-
ing and form+

EXPERIMENT 1

Experiment 1 was undertaken to determine whether other receptive and pro-

ductive tasks contribute to vocabulary knowledge in the same manner as learn-
ing word pairs+ Research on learning from word pairs suggests that a reading
task would promote larger gains in receptive knowledge and a writing task
would promote larger gains in productive knowledge ~Stoddard, 1929!+

Participants

The participants in this experiment were 66 Japanese native speakers from

one first-year English as a foreign language ~EFL! class at Kyushu University
in Japan+ Their mean score on version 1 of the Vocabulary Levels Test ~Schmitt,
2000! at the second 1,000-word level was 27+6030, which indicated that they
were in control of that level and had receptive knowledge of almost all the
2,000 most frequent words ~Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001!+ Proportional
scores on the Vocabulary Levels Tests indicate the proportion of words known
at a given level+ The learners’ mean score on version C of the Productive Vocab-
ulary Levels Test at the second 1,000-word level was 15+1018, which suggested
that they had mastered that level and had productive knowledge of approxi-
36 Stuart Webb

mately 1,800 of the 2,000 most frequent words ~Laufer & Nation, 1999!+ The
learners were randomly assigned to the experimental groups+

Design

The experiment was conducted within one 90-minute class period+ Learners
were divided into two experimental groups+ Learners in the receptive treat-
ment encountered each target word with its L1 meaning in three glossed sen-
tences+ Nonsense words matched with the meanings of low-frequency L2 words
were selected as target words+ The use of nonsense words rather than authen-
tic words eliminated the possibility of the learners having any knowledge of
the target words+ The target words were presented on the left of the L1 trans-
lations, which were in turn followed by the sentences+ In each sentence, the
target words were underlined and written in bold; for typographic reasons, they
appear in italics here+ In ~1!, the meaning of the target word dangy is “boulder+”

~1! dangy The dangy was as large as a small house+

On the way up the mountain we passed a dangy+
He stood on the biggest dangy to get a better view+

In the productive treatment, the target words were presented in the same word
pairs followed by space to write each target word in a sentence, as in ~2!+

~2! dangy _____

Instructions on how to complete each treatment were written at the top of

each page in both English and the learners’ L1+ In the receptive treatment, the
learners were simply told to learn the words, whereas in the productive treat-
ment, they were told to write each word in a sentence in English and learn
the words+ The learners were given 12 minutes to complete the treatments,
following findings from pilot studies that showed that the slowest learners
were able to finish the productive task in 12 minutes+ The learners were told
that they would be tested after the treatments but were not told the nature of
the tests+ After completing the treatments, the learners were given 10-page
test booklets+ There was one test per page, which they were instructed to
complete in order+ Once a test was finished, the learners were not allowed to
go back to revise any answers+ They were carefully supervised to prevent this,
thus eliminating the possibility of a learning effect from subsequent tests+
Learners were given as much time as needed to finish a test+

Target Words

Ten target words were used in this experiment: six nouns and four verbs+ This
ratio was used because nouns and verbs are the most common parts of speech
found in natural text; the 6:4 ratio approximates their proportional frequency
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 37

of occurrence ~Kucera & Francis, 1967!+ All of the target words were taken
from the fifth frequency band in the COBUILD dictionary+ This band contains
the 6,601st to the 14,700th most frequent words+ The target words were: loco-
motive, visage, lane, abode, boulder, crave, doze, sob, abhor, and dagger+
In the experiment, the L2 forms of the target words were replaced with 10
nonsense words to ensure that the learners had no prior knowledge of the
target words+ All of the nonsense words were disyllabic and were created to
resemble English words phonetically and orthographically+ Because of the pos-
sibility that the learners could mistake the nonsense words for real words
that were orthographically similar, the spellings of the nonsense words did
not always conform to common spellings+ However, in pilot tests, Japanese
learners were able to pronounce all the words correctly and reported that
they believed the nonsense words to be authentic English words+ Given that
the learners in the experiments were not aware that nonsense words were
used, authentic vocabulary learning should have occurred+ Seven of the non-
sense words were five letters long, and three were six letters long+ The non-
sense words and the target words that they replaced were as follows: ancon
“dagger,” cader “doze,” dangy “boulder,” denent “visage,” faddam “abode,” hodet
“lane,” masco “locomotive,” pacon “sob,” sagod “abhor,” and tasper “crave+”
There were several advantages to using nonsense words rather than low-
frequency words+ First, it ensured that learners had no prior knowledge of the
target words+ Finding target words that no learners have encountered previ-
ously proves very difficult, as there are often target words familiar to some
learners+ To avoid this, very infrequent target words may be used+ Unfortu-
nately, infrequent words do not often occur in text with very frequent words,
rendering the use of authentic texts difficult+ Another advantage of nonsense
words is that the need for a pretest to measure for prior knowledge of the
target words is eliminated+

Sentence Contexts

The contexts were taken from the British National Corpus+ Because the amount
of information a context provides about a target word may influence learning
gains ~Webb, 2002!, an attempt was made to select equally informative con-
texts+ Using a four-point scale, two native speakers rated the contexts on the
amount of information they provided about a target word+ In all the sen-
tences used in the experiment, it was unlikely that the exact meaning of the
target words could be inferred from one context+ However, information in each
context could lead to partial knowledge of the target word’s meaning+ It should
be noted that the contexts were not meant to define the target words but
rather to represent typical sentences that learners are likely to encounter
when reading+ Extensive pilot testing was used to ensure that learners were
familiar with all of the running words in the contexts+ Contexts that con-
tained words unknown to any learner in the pilot tests were simplified or
discarded+ Controlling the running words in the contexts ensured that the
38 Stuart Webb

learners would quickly understand the sentences and also eliminated the
chance of a learning reduction due to other unknown words+

Dependent Measures

After the treatments, the learners were administered 10 tests that measured
knowledge of orthography, association, syntax, grammatical functions, and
meaning and form+ Although multiple aspects of knowledge were measured, it
should be noted that successful scores on the tests still may not indicate that
the learners have acquired full lexical knowledge+ Gaining full knowledge of a
word is likely to take much longer and involve much more than reading three
sentences or writing one+ The reason for measuring multiple aspects of knowl-
edge is to provide a more accurate assessment of the relative efficacy of the
tasks+
Each test enabled learners to demonstrate a specific aspect of word knowl-
edge productively or receptively+ The tests were carefully sequenced to avoid
the risk of earlier tests affecting answers to later tests+ Instructions and exam-
ples were provided for each test in English and Japanese+ Because the aim of
this study was to determine how the learning tasks affected each aspect of
knowledge, it was important to isolate each type of knowledge+ In an earlier
study ~Webb, 2002!, it was found that scoring successfully on the tests may
not be dependent on gaining knowledge of meaning and form, despite the
fact that association, syntax, and grammatical functions are closely linked
with meaning and form+ If a test involved more than one aspect of knowl-
edge, the gain would be unclear+ Moreover, how each type of knowledge influ-
enced the scores on that test would also be uncertain+ These concerns
eliminated the possibility of using any tests that provided context to cue recall,
despite suggestions that context is essential on receptive tests ~Crow, 1986!+
Almost all receptive and productive test formats can be criticized on two
grounds+ First, they tend to ignore most aspects of knowledge apart from mean-
ing and form ~Melka, 1997!+ Second, all tests involve both receptive and pro-
ductive knowledge to some extent ~Crow, 1986; Waring, 1999!+ In receptive tests
~e+g+, multiple choice, translation, and matching!, learners must produce the
meanings of target words or distracters to recognize the correct response,
whereas in productive tests ~e+g+, cued recall and translation!, learners must
recognize the prompt to recall the target word+ Consequently, there are many
different testing methods, none of which appear ideal+ Melka stated that “it is
not obvious that any particular form of test is either specifically or ade-
quately suited for testing either reception or production” ~p+ 97!+ It is doubt-
ful that any test will be without criticism until there are clear and concise
definitions of reception and production+ One solution would be to alter the
definitions to conform to what is being tested+ In this study, receptive and
productive knowledge are defined by the learning outcome demonstrated by
the tests+ Because the completion of most tests involves receptive and pro-
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 39

ductive processes, skills, and abilities, reception and production are perhaps
best defined as a product of learning+
All of the productive tests had a similar format in which a decontextual-
ized cue prompted a response+ The learners were cued with the target words
and had to produce a response that demonstrated the aspect of knowledge
being measured+ The receptive tests of orthography, syntax, association, and
grammar employed a multiple-choice format, and the receptive test of mean-
ing used a translation format+ The receptive and productive tests were selected
for the following reasons: ~a! they clearly demonstrated receptive or produc-
tive knowledge, ~b! the aspects of knowledge could be isolated in the tests,
~c! they did not require context, ~d! they were easy to understand and quick
to complete, and ~e! the tests had proven effective in two previous experi-
ments ~Webb, 2002!+

Test 1: Productive Knowledge of Orthography

On the first test, which measured productive knowledge of orthography, the

learners heard each target nonsense word pronounced twice and then had 10
seconds to write it correctly+ If there were any spelling mistakes the answers
were marked incorrect+ Because the learners were at the intermediate level
and were likely to have learned most—if not all—of the rules of spelling, aural
cues would be enough to lead them to write at least a close approximation of
the target words+ If responses with minor spelling mistakes were marked as
correct, then it could not be determined whether a correct response was due
to the learning task or the aural prompt+ On all of the other productive tests,
spelling was not a determining factor in scoring if the response could be clearly
understood+

Test 2: Receptive Knowledge of Orthography

The second test measured receptive knowledge of orthography; the learners

had to circle the correctly spelled target words, which appeared with three
distracters+ The distracters were created to resemble the target words both
phonetically and orthographically+ In ~3!, the target words are dangy and hodet+

~3! ~a! dengie ~b! dengy ~c! dungie ~d! dangy

~a! hodet ~b! holat ~c! halet ~d! hedet

Usually, all productive tests need to be completed before receptive tests to

avoid a learning effect+ However, it was highly unlikely that the receptive test
of orthography would contribute to a learning effect in this study for two rea-
sons: ~a! the target words were used as cues on three of the four remaining
productive tests, and ~b! the determining factor on the other test measuring
40 Stuart Webb

productive knowledge of meaning and form was whether the learners could
link the L2 form with its L1 meaning rather than spelling the L2 form correctly+

Test 3: Productive Knowledge of Meaning and Form

Productive knowledge of meaning and form was measured by means of a trans-

lation test; the learners were given the L1 meanings and asked to write the
words that the meanings had been paired with in the treatment+ The aim of
this test was to determine whether the learners could link the L2 form of the
target words with their L1 meanings+ To score correctly in ~4!, the learners
had to write the target nonsense word masco beside the L1 translation with
which it was paired+

~4! _

Because the aim of the first two tests was to determine whether learners
could write the target words correctly and recognize the correct spellings of
the target words, spelling was not the determining factor for a correct answer
in this test+ Therefore, spellings that demonstrated that the learners could
link the L2 form with its L1 meaning were marked correct+ In ~4!, close approx-
imations of the target word masco ~e+g+, mosco, masko, or mascoe! were accept-
able responses+

Test 4: Productive Knowledge of Grammatical Functions

The productive knowledge of grammatical functions test was essentially a sen-

tence construction test+ Learners were cued with the target words and had to
write each one in a sentence+ It was made clear in the instructions to the par-
ticipants that the only determining factor for a correct response was using the
target words with grammatical accuracy+ For example, the target word masco
“locomotive” would have been scored as incorrect for The girl mascoed to school
and correct in both The masco left the station early and It is a masco+

Test 5: Productive Knowledge of Syntax

In word association research, the productive knowledge of syntax test has

traditionally been used with responses often classified as either paradigmatic
~demonstrating productive knowledge of association! or syntagmatic ~demon-
strating productive knowledge of syntax; Soderman, 1993!+ On this test, the
learners had to produce a L2 syntagmatic associate beside the cues, which
were the target words+ A common-sense approach was used when evaluating
responses because L2 learners often respond with more variety and less uni-
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 41

formity than native speakers on word association tests ~Meara, 1983!+ A com-
parison of the native-speaker and learner responses was considered, but this
may not be sensitive to partial gains and might be better suited to determin-
ing whether learners gain full knowledge of syntax+ In the current study, mea-
suring for partial knowledge provides a more useful assessment of the relative
efficacy of the tasks+ Therefore, in both the productive tests of association
and syntax, a common-sense approach to marking was employed+
Examples of acceptable responses for the target word masco, which had
been paired with the Japanese translation of locomotive, were words com-
monly encountered in context with locomotive, such as station, tracks, left, and
arrived+ Words less frequently found in context with locomotive—such as clock,
ate, and hard—were marked as incorrect+ Because the following test mea-
sured productive knowledge of association, paradigmatic associates were
marked as incorrect+ This was carefully explained in the instructions to the
participants+

Test 6: Productive Knowledge of Association

This test was designed to measure knowledge of paradigmatic associations;

learners were presented with the target words and asked to write an associ-
ate beside each item+ Coordinates, superordinates, subordinates, antonyms,
and synonyms were all scored as correct+ Because the previous test mea-
sured productive knowledge of syntax, syntagmatic associates were marked
as incorrect, as was carefully explained in the instructions+ Examples of some
acceptable responses for masco “locomotive” were train, airplane, and vehi-
cle+ The method of scoring the responses was the same as in the productive
test of syntax+

Test 7: Receptive Knowledge of Grammatical Functions

This test measured receptive knowledge of grammatical functions by means

of a multiple-choice test+ Learners were presented with three sentences con-
taining each target word and had to choose the correct one from three choices+
Knowledge of the target word’s part of speech enabled the learners to select
the correct answer+ Because the productive knowledge of grammatical func-
tions test was perhaps the most demanding test, it was important to have a
second test that was sensitive to smaller gains+ If the learners knew that masco
“locomotive” was a noun, in ~5! they would be able to choose ~a! as the cor-
rect answer+

~5! ~a! It is a masco+

~b! It mascoed+
~c! It is very masco+
42 Stuart Webb

Test 8: Receptive Knowledge of Syntax

On this test, the learners circled the responses that were most likely to ap-
pear in context with the target words+ All distracters were words that the
learners were likely to know, and they were the same part of speech as the
correct answer+ The target words dangy “boulder” and hodet “lane” are illus-
trated in ~6! and ~7!+

~6! dangy ~a! fall ~b! wash ~c! walk ~d! catch

~7! hodet ~a! drive ~b! sit ~c! take ~d! know

Test 9: Receptive Knowledge of Association

On this test, the learners had to circle the responses that were paradigmatic
associates of the target words+ All distracters were words that the learners
were likely to know, and they were the same part of speech as the correct
answer+ This is illustrated for the target words dangy “boulder” and hodet “lane”
in ~8! and ~9!+

~8! dangy ~a! stone ~b! plant ~c! tree ~d! person

~9! hodet ~a! park ~b! highway ~c! garden ~d! building

Test 10: Receptive Knowledge of Meaning and Form

This was a receptive translation test in which the target words cued responses
of L1 form+ An argument can be made that a receptive translation test involves
both receptive and productive processes ~Waring, 1999!; however, the same
argument can be made for most receptive tests+ Because the learners had
learned the answers in the treatments, a recognition test would have been
extremely easy+ The receptive translation test was better suited for this exper-
iment because it was more demanding, requiring learners to recall rather than
recognize meanings+ In ~10!, the learners were required to write the Japanese
translation of locomotive beside the target nonsense word masco+

~10! masco _

Results

The descriptive statistics ~means, standard deviations, and number of sub-

jects! of vocabulary knowledge scores for the 10 dependent measures are
reported in Table 1+ A multivariate analysis of variance ~MANOVA! was per-
formed, using the scores on the 10 dependent measures+ The independent vari-
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 43

Table 1. Means and standard deviations of learning conditions on

dependent measures: Experiment 1
Tests

Meaning
Orthography and form Association Syntax Grammar

Learning condition P R P R P R P R P R

Writing ~n 5 31!
M 8+13 8+74 7+61 8+84 7+32 8+84 5+94 8+32 8+39 9+03
SD 2+05 1+34 1+84 1+59 1+89 1+19 2+54 1+30 1+75 1+30
Reading ~n 5 35!
M 9+17 9+49 9+43 9+09 8+71 9+06 7+29 8+74 9+06 9+54
SD 1+46 0+89 1+12 1+84 1+47 1+26 2+88 1+40 1+73 0+98

Note+ Maximum score 5 10+ P 5 productive, R 5 receptive+

able was the type of learning task—writing each target word in a sentence
and reading each target word in three sentences+ The MANOVA revealed an
overall significant difference between the two tasks, F~10, 55! 5 5+07, p , +001+
Figure 1 and Table 1 show that the learners who completed the receptive
task had higher scores than the productive group on all of the dependent mea-
sures+ Significant differences were found on the productive tests of orthogra-
phy, F~1, 64! 5 5+76, p , +05, receptive orthography, F~1, 64! 5 7+21, p , +01,

Figure 1. Mean scores for the reading and writing tasks on dependent mea-
sures: Experiment 1+ PO 5 productive knowledge of orthography, RO 5 recep-
tive knowledge of orthography, PM 5 productive knowledge of meaning and
form, RM 5 receptive knowledge of meaning and form, PA 5 productive knowl-
edge of association, RA 5 receptive knowledge of association, PS 5 produc-
tive knowledge of syntax, RS 5 receptive knowledge of syntax, PG 5 productive
knowledge of grammar, RG 5 receptive knowledge of grammar+
44 Stuart Webb

Table 2. Means and standard deviations of combined receptive and

productive scores for each aspect of word knowledge: Experiment 1
Aspects of word knowledge

Learning condition Orthography Meaning and form Association Syntax Grammar

Writing ~n 5 31!
M 16+87 16+45 16+16 14+26 17+42
SD 2+81 3+09 2+67 3+25 2+68
Reading ~n 5 35!
M 18+66 18+51 17+77 16+03 18+60
SD 2+22 2+68 2+47 3+65 2+51

Note+ Maximum score 5 20+

productive meaning, F~1, 64! 5 24+10, p , +001, productive association,

F~1, 64! 5 11+33, p , +01, and productive syntax, F~1, 64! 5 4+04, p , +05+
Table 2 shows the combined receptive and productive scores for each
aspect of vocabulary knowledge+ A MANOVA revealed an overall significant
difference between the two treatments, F~5, 60! 5 2+51, p , +05, for the com-
bined scores+ Significant differences were found for orthography, F~1, 64! 5
8+28, p ,+ 01, meaning, F~1, 64! 5 8+44, p , +01, association, F~1, 64! 5 6+46,
p , +05, and syntax, F~1, 64! 5 4+29, p , +05+ However, no significant difference
was found for grammar+
Overall, the results indicate that both treatments were very effective+ Large
gains in knowledge of orthography, association, meaning and form, syntax,
and grammatical functions were made by both groups+ However, the results
show that the receptive task is superior to the productive task on both pro-
ductive and receptive measures+ This contrasts with previous research on word
pairs ~Griffin & Harley, 1996; Stoddard, 1929; Waring, 1997b!+ One factor that
may have contributed to this result was time+ The amount of time given ~12
minutes! was based on how much time the slowest learners needed to com-
plete the productive writing task in a pilot study+ In the pilot study, it was
found that most students needed only 8 minutes to complete the reading task+
Thus, learners in the receptive group may have used alternative strategies,
such as learning word pairs receptively and productively or creating mnemon-
ics+ Although some learners in the productive group may have also used other
strategies, the amount of time they had on average would have been less than
was available to the receptive group+ To clarify the gains from each task, a
second experiment was performed+

EXPERIMENT 2
Design

Experiment 2 involved the same tasks as experiment 1 but differed from the
previous design in three respects+ First, experiment 2 used a same-subjects
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 45

design+ One experimental group completed both tasks+ This reduced the num-
ber of learners required and also decreased the possibility of individual dif-
ferences influencing the results+ Second, in experiment 1, the learners were
given an equal amount of time ~12 minutes! to complete their tasks; however,
in experiment 2, the learners were given only enough time to complete each
task and were instructed to begin the second task as soon as they had com-
pleted the first+ The treatment booklets were collected after the completion
of the second task, which reduced the likelihood that learners used alterna-
tive learning strategies when completing the tasks+ Time was considered to
be a function of the tasks and was not controlled+ Therefore, it was likely that
time on tasks and on target words would covary+ Hulstijn and Laufer ~2001!
took a similar approach, arguing that time should not be considered a sepa-
rate variable but an inherent property of a task+ Third, in experiment 1, the
learners knew that they would be tested at the conclusion of the treatments+
Because this may have motivated them to use other learning strategies, the
learners in experiment 2 were not told that they would be tested+ The instruc-
tions, however, remained the same: in the reading task, learners were told to
learn the words, whereas in the writing task, they were told to write each
word in a sentence in English and learn the words+

Participants

The learners in this experiment were 49 Japanese native speakers from one
first-year EFL class at Kyushu University in Japan+ Their mean score on ver-
sion 1 of the Vocabulary Levels Test at the second 1,000-word level was 27+10
30, which indicated that they had receptive knowledge of almost all of the
2,000 most frequent words ~Schmitt, Schmitt, & Clapham, 2001!+ Their mean
score on version C of the Productive Vocabulary Levels Test at the second
1,000-word level was 14+8018, which suggested that they had productive knowl-
edge of approximately 1,750 of the 2,000 most frequent words+ The learners
were randomly assigned to the experimental groups+

Target Words

Twenty target words were selected for this experiment: 10 low-frequency tar-
get words from the first experiment ~set A! and 10 different low-frequency
words ~set B!+ Both sets of target words comprised six nouns and four verbs+
All of the target words were taken from the fifth frequency band in the COBUILD
dictionary+ The target words from set A were: locomotive, visage, lane, abode,
boulder, crave, doze, sob, abhor, and dagger+ The target words from set B were:
lick, spear, recluse, pawn, landfill, mourn, convent, pier, reef, and marinate+ Non-
sense words replaced the L2 forms of the 20 target words+ The 10 nonsense
words from the first study and an additional 10 nonsense words were used+
The same criteria from the first study were used to create the new words+
46 Stuart Webb

The 20 nonsense words and the target words that they replaced in version 1
of experiment 2 were as follows: ancon “dagger,” cader “doze,” dangy “boul-
der,” denent “visage,” faddam “abode,” hodet “lane,” masco “locomotive,” pacon
“sob,” sagod “abhor,” tasper “crave,” copac “mourn,” gishom “marinate,” hat-
taw “convent,” ictay “spear,” mesut “lick,” nasin “landfill,” nuggy “pawn,” tagon
“recluse,” toncop “pier,” and dapew “reef+”
Four versions of the treatment were created to ensure that interlexical and
intralexical factors and order of the tasks did not influence the results+ Half of
the learners completed the productive task first; the other half completed the
receptive task first+ Half of the learners did the receptive and productive tasks
with set A of the target words, and the other half had set B+ After completing
both treatment tasks, the learners were administered the same 10 tests mea-
suring vocabulary knowledge from experiment 1+ The order of the words alter-
nated between sets A and B on the tests to avoid a bias toward one of the
tasks+

Results

The descriptive statistics ~means, standard deviations, and number of learn-

ers! of vocabulary knowledge scores for the 10 dependent measures are re-
ported in Table 3+ A repeated-measures MANOVA was performed, using the
scores on the 10 dependent measures to analyze the within learners factor+
The independent variable was the type of learning task—writing each target
word in a sentence and reading each target word in three sentences+ The
MANOVA revealed an overall significant difference between the two tasks,
F~10, 39! 5 2+79, p , +05+ MANOVAs were also used to determine that the order
of the treatments ~reading first and writing second or vice versa!, F~10, 87!5

Table 3. Means and standard deviations on dependent measures for the

reading and writing tasks: Experiment 2
Tests

Meaning
Orthography and form Association Syntax Grammar

Learning condition P R P R P R P R P R

Writing ~n 5 49!
M 3+59 6+45 3+73 4+45 3+35 6+12 2+45 5+84 4+08 6+69
SD 2+14 2+35 2+63 2+65 2+31 2+28 2+45 2+36 2+53 2+21
Reading ~n 5 49!
M 2+63 5+29 2+08 2+69 1+98 4+88 1+53 5+02 2+78 5+86
SD 2+13 2+08 2+36 2+26 2+04 1+92 1+72 2+42 2+41 2+48

Note+ Maximum score 5 10+

Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 47

Figure 2. Mean scores for the writing and reading tasks on dependent mea-
sures: Experiment 2+ PO 5 productive knowledge of orthography, RO 5 recep-
tive knowledge of orthography, PM 5 productive knowledge of meaning and
form, RM 5 receptive knowledge of meaning and form, PA 5 productive knowl-
edge of association, RA 5 receptive knowledge of association, PS 5 produc-
tive knowledge of syntax, RS 5 receptive knowledge of syntax, PG 5 productive
knowledge of grammar, RG 5 receptive knowledge of grammar+

1+54, p 5 +137, and the word sets ~reading set A and writing set B or vice versa!,
F~10, 87! 5 1+48, p 5 +162, had no significant effect+
Figure 2 and Table 3 show that the writing task led to significantly higher
scores than the reading task on all measures+ The repeated-measures MANOVA
revealed significant differences on the productive tests of meaning, F~1, 48! 5
19+53, p , +001, association, F~1, 48! 5 14+99, p , +001, orthography, F~1, 48! 5
7+62, p , +01, syntax, F~1, 48! 5 10+92, p , +01, and grammar, F~1, 48! 5 11+86,
p , +01+ Significant differences were also found on the receptive tests of mean-
ing, F~1, 48! 5 24+23, p , +001, orthography, F~1, 48! 5 9+57, p , +01, associa-
tion, F~1, 48! 5 12+52, p , +01, grammar, F~1, 48! 5 6+90, p , +05, and syntax,
F~1, 48! 5 4+18, p , +05+
It should also be noted that the scores in experiment 2 were much lower
than those in experiment 1+ Table 3 shows that these scores ranged from 1+5
to 2+8 for the reading task and from 2+5 to 4+1 for the writing task+ However, in
experiment 1, the scores ranged from 7+3 to 9+4 for the reading task and 5+9 to
8+4 for the writing task+ The large drop in performance in experiment 2 was
likely due to the higher learning demands on the students; whereas in exper-
iment 1, the students had to learn 10 target words, in experiment 2 they had
to learn 20+
The combined receptive and productive scores for each aspect are shown
in Table 4+ A repeated-measures MANOVA revealed an overall significant dif-
ference between the two tasks for the combined scores, F~5, 44! 5 5+44, p ,
+01+ According to this measure of significance, the productive task was more
effective than the receptive task on the tests of orthography, F~1, 48! 5 12+48,
p , +001, meaning, F~1, 48! 5 24+27, p , +001, syntax, F~1, 48! 5 8+81, p , +01,
48 Stuart Webb

Table 4. Means and standard deviations of combined receptive and

productive scores for each aspect of word knowledge: Experiment 2

Aspects of word knowledge

Learning condition Orthography Meaning Association Syntax Grammar

Writing ~n 5 49!
M 10+04 8+18 9+47 8+29 10+78
SD 3+90 5+04 4+29 3+86 4+39
Reading ~n 5 49!
M 7+92 4+78 6+86 6+55 8+63
SD 3+95 4+45 3+65 3+68 4+37
Note+ Maximum score 5 20+

association, F~1, 48! 5 17+34, p , +001, and grammatical functions, F~1, 48! 5
11+64, p , +001+ The scores indicate that the writing task is the more effective
of the two tasks, but it should also be noted that both conditions resulted in
considerable learning in a short period of time+ Interestingly, the tests of mean-
ing resulted in the lowest combined scores+ This suggests that studies that
measure only meaning may be unable to find a significant result when there
have in fact been significant gains in other aspects of vocabulary knowledge+
It should also be pointed out that if knowledge of meaning was the sole crite-
rion for learning, then the productive task was nearly twice as effective as the
receptive task+

DISCUSSION

Experiment 1 examined vocabulary learning from a different receptive ~read-

ing three glossed sentences! and productive ~sentence production! task+ The
results indicate that both tasks were very effective methods of gaining recep-
tive and productive knowledge of all aspects+ Research investigating L2 inci-
dental vocabulary learning has shown that vocabulary gains tend to be lower
and take longer than intentional vocabulary learning tasks ~Day, Omura, & Hira-
matsu, 1991; Dupuy & Krashen, 1993; Horst, Cobb, & Meara, 1998; Hulstijn,
1992; Pitts, White, & Krashen, 1989!+ However, the results of this study con-
trast with earlier findings that claim receptive learning to be more effective in
contributing to receptive knowledge, whereas productive learning may be
better suited to increasing productive knowledge ~Griffin & Harley, 1996; Stod-
dard, 1929; Waring, 1997b!+ Learners who completed the reading task outper-
formed the writing group on all 10 dependent measures+ Significant differences
were found on the productive measures of orthography, syntax, meaning, and
association as well as on the receptive test of orthography+ The superior scores
of the learners assigned to the receptive task condition on the productive
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 49

measures—and not the receptive measures—are puzzling+ Previous research

indicated that if the reading task were more effective, receptive test scores
would improve ~Griffin & Harley; Stoddard; Waring, 1997b!+ There are several
possible explanations for this result+ First, if receptive knowledge is easier to
gain than productive knowledge, as research suggests ~Morgan & Oberdeck,
1930; Stoddard; Waring, 1997a, 1997b!, then both tasks may have allowed the
learners to gain enough knowledge of the target words to score well on the
receptive measures+ The multiple-choice format on the receptive tests of syn-
tax, grammar, and association may have also contributed to the high scores,
given that they allowed the learners at least a 25% chance to score correctly
by guessing, whereas the productive tests did not+ Second, ceiling effects on
the receptive tests may have reduced the possibility of finding significant dif-
ferences+ Finally, it is possible that the experimental design confounded the
results+ In the treatment, both groups were given the same amount of time ~12
minutes! to complete their tasks, but, although some learners struggled to
finish the writing task on time, learners from the receptive group had ample
time to finish the reading task+ Although this was a function of the tasks—
writing usually takes longer than reading—it may also be a function of recep-
tive and productive learning in general+ Waring ~1997b! found that students
took longer to learn productively from word pairs than receptively+ Any extra
time may have allowed the receptive group to process greater input more
deeply or use alternative strategies to help them to score higher on the pro-
ductive measures+ However, if the receptive group used other learning strat-
egies, it cannot be clear how the reading task affected the outcome+ Still, the
results indicate that, if learners spend an equal amount of time on tasks, a
receptive task—or combination of tasks—may be superior to a productive task+
Moreover, this experiment shows that receptive learning tasks may be better
not only at developing receptive knowledge but also yield significantly greater
gains in productive knowledge+
The purpose of experiment 2 was to clarify the results of experiment 1 and
better understand how receptive and productive learning tasks contribute to
vocabulary knowledge+ It involved the same reading and writing tasks as exper-
iment 1, but the time on task was not controlled+ The results of experiment 2
show that learners gained significantly more knowledge on all 10 dependent
measures from the sentence production task than from the reading task+
Although this result supports previous research in that it shows productive
learning to be more effective in promoting productive knowledge, it also con-
trasts with previous research that has shown receptive learning to be condu-
cive to gaining receptive knowledge+ It can be argued that the productive task
was more effective on the receptive measures because the learners were likely
to have spent more time on the productive task than on the receptive task+
Experiment 1 demonstrated that, when the time of both tasks is equal, the
sentence production task results might show less improvement+ Although the
results of experiment 1 are interesting and useful, the question remains as to
whether its receptive treatment reflects authentic vocabulary learning+ Are
50 Stuart Webb

students actually going to spend more time reading sentences than they feel
they need? This is unlikely without them having been instructed to do so+ The
tasks in experiment 2 are certainly ecologically valid—both tasks are often
used inside and outside the classroom+ Informal observation has shown that,
when teaching a word, teachers usually give students one or more examples
of the new vocabulary item in context, and many student dictionaries provide
three examples of an item in context+ Teachers may also ask students to write
new vocabulary in sentences, and students regularly write new words in lists
with their meanings and in context in order to learn them+ If we consider the
time spent on the tasks to be a function of the tasks and consider the results
to be ecologically valid, then writing a sentence may be a more effective
method of gaining vocabulary knowledge than reading three sentences+ More-
over, this experiment indicates that productive learning is superior to recep-
tive learning not only in developing productive knowledge but also in producing
larger gains in receptive knowledge+
As mentioned previously, the overall gain scores in experiment 2 were much
lower than in experiment 1+ Although the scores for the reading task may par-
tially reflect the fact that learners may have used other strategies to learn the
target words, this was less likely to occur for the writing task+ It is therefore
likely that the drop in scores is the result of the increase in target words from
10 in experiment 1 to 20 in experiment 2+ Students may be able to learn 10
words from reading and writing tasks in a relatively short period of time; how-
ever, attempting to learn more words may have an adverse effect on vocabu-
lary gains+ This result suggests that both teachers and students need to be
aware of vocabulary learning limits+ Language learners can be made aware of
these limits by performing learning tasks with different numbers of words to
determine how many items they can acquire+ Additionally, teachers who use
these learning tasks may be able to set vocabulary learning goals for students+
The experiments also highlight the importance of using multiple tests to
measure vocabulary gains+ Many vocabulary acquisition studies have mea-
sured only one aspect of knowledge—meaning—with only one test+ Experi-
ment 1 showed that no significant differences would have been found between
the groups if only a receptive measure of meaning had been used+ However,
there were significant differences on four of the five productive tests and one
of the receptive tests; this indicates that using only receptive or productive
tests to measure learning might provide misleading results+ Using receptive
and productive tests to measure an aspect of knowledge and testing multiple
aspects of knowledge may give a much more accurate assessment of the degree
and type of learning that has occurred+
Combined, the experiments demonstrate that both tasks contributed to all
five aspects of knowledge that were measured+ This expands on previous find-
ings that have shown that contextualized learning tasks contribute to mean-
ing and form ~Dempster, 1987; Griffin, 1992; Laufer & Shmueli, 1997; Pickering,
1982; Prince, 1996; Seibert, 1930!+ Although it should not be surprising that
reading and writing tasks contribute to multiple aspects of vocabulary knowl-
Receptive and Productive Vocabulary Learning 51

edge, it has been rare to measure aspects of knowledge apart from meaning+
Because most vocabulary learning tasks probably promote several aspects of
knowledge, measuring multiple aspects of knowledge seems necessary to fully
determine their relative efficacy+

~Received 24 June 2004!

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