PONE-D-19-34526

Exploring the effect of lexical inferencing and lexical translation on undergraduate EFL students’ vocabulary acquisition

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Foltz,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

I am sorry to have kept you waiting. Your manuscript (PONE-D-19-34526) was reviewed by two experts on language learning, and their comments are appended at the bottom of this letter. As you will see, they saw some merits in your study but also provided several major concerns. As an academic editor, I have read the manuscript myself. My view on the current version of your manuscript largely overlaps with the reviewers'.

Both Reviewers stated that the vocabulary size increase addressed under the research questions 4 and 5 is not easily acceptable. They both pointed out that, as you yourself mentioned in the manuscript, it might be merely due to the fact the learners took the same test twice. If you choose to revise your manuscript, I strongly request that you focus on the research questions 1, 2, and 3 (and remove 4 and 5). The two reviewers also request that some methodological details (e.g., target words, texts, dictionary) should be provided. I agree.

Given Reviewer 1's suggestion to request "Minor Revision" and Reviewer 2's suggestion to "Reject," my editorial decision here is "Major Revision." If and only if you find it possible to satisfy the reviewers' and my requests, please revise and resubmit your manuscript. Please note that this does not guarantee eventual acceptance of your manuscript. If resubmitted, depending on the quality of the revised manuscript, I might try to send it to the same reviewers or reject it right away at the editorial stage. Whether or not you resubmit to PLOS ONE, I hope that you will find the present reviews beneficial to your study.

Finally, there are some more minor issues:

line 52: VLS strategies

-> VLS (because S stands for strategy)

line 222: Likert scale always

-> scale: always

line 208: relevant for the current

-> relevant for the current ... what?

lines 243, 247: "family = poisson"

-> These analyses are not for count data. Please reconsider or justify your analyses.

line 280: "used as a general estimate of proficiency"

-> What kind of proficiency are you talking about here? Did you use GPAs as a general estimate of language proficiency?

line 303: "at the same time"

-> This sounds slightly misleading. What about "within the same session"?

line 348: "Participants' average ....

-> I found this line slightly awkward and difficult to understand.  You are talking about the difference in proficiency... are you?

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Apr 09 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Koji Miwa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Journal Requirements:

When submitting your revision, we need you to address these additional requirements.

1. Please ensure that your manuscript meets PLOS ONE's style requirements, including those for file naming. The PLOS ONE style templates can be found at

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2. Your ethics statement must appear in the Methods section of your manuscript. If your ethics statement is written in any section besides the Methods, please move it to the Methods section and delete it from any other section. Please also ensure that your ethics statement is included in your manuscript, as the ethics section of your online submission will not be published alongside your manuscript.

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: Review of PONE-D-19-34526

Overall I find the study well designed and executed and the paper well-presented and thorough. I find the research questions to be answered appropriately by the method and analysis, though I am a little more skeptical than the authors about the reasons for increased vocabulary size over the duration. My hunch is that it is primarily a practice effect from taking the same test twice. I feel this makes RQs 4 and 5 somewhat unnecessary. Nevertheless, the authors’ approach to these questions and the discussion that they provide is interesting and well supported. Therefore, I recommend minor revisions but would suggest some more hedging and consideration of the counter-arguments regarding the increase in vocabulary size.

Major comments

My major concern reading the paper was the increase in vocabulary size (addressed in RQ4 and RQ5). The average increase of 506 words over five weeks is barely believable in terms of normal second language word learning, but when considering that this increase is actually derived from an increase in the average score of just five words (5.06 words, without considering distractors), it becomes more realistic. The authors provide a very well-researched and argued discussion (line 648~) of this finding, which makes the finding reasonably palatable. Nevertheless, it requires a little more explanation. At present, only one sentence mentions “Finally, participants completed the same test twice within a period of five weeks, which may have somewhat inflated the scores of the second test” (lines 668-669). To me, this is what I assumed while reading the paper, from the RQs onwards. Basically, I was puzzled why vocabulary size was measured twice in such a short duration using exactly the same test – it seems obvious that the test itself would play some role in learning, especially if it contains the same items. The first test provides an opportunity to notice words that are only partly known or completely unknown, followed by potential opportunities to learn these words during the learning period, resulting in an overall increase in vocabulary size on the second test. This narrative does seem to fit with the research though – that is, focused training on vocabulary learning should in fact provide this kind of learning opportunity. Nevertheless, I think one sentence does not quite do justice to the most likely reason why such a large increase in vocabulary size was observed, that is, a practice effect.

Also, on re-reading the Method section I noticed on line 276 that the formula may partly explain the increase in vocabulary size over the duration. Incorrect guessing (i.e., selecting pseudowords) is penalized in the formula; therefore, it is plausible that the increase in vocabulary size over the five weeks may also be partly due to reduced guessing (or increased awareness of) pseudowords the second time that participants took the test. Basically, this adds weight to the counter-argument that the increase in vocabulary size was due to a practice effect of taking the same test twice, rather than a real increase in word knowledge over the period.

Minor points

- line 89 - change ‘brain” to ‘lexicon’

- Could the target/control words be included as an appendix?

- Were any of the items borrowed words (loanwords) sharing form and meaning in Arabic and English? I assume not, but this should be mentioned at some point when describing the materials because cognates/loanwords are often easier to learn than non-cognates/non-loanwords.

- Replace ‘mean’ with M, ‘estimate’ with β, and ‘std.error’ with SE in the text?

- Line 231 - why was a GLM with quasipoisson distribution used instead of a non-parametric two-group test (e.g. wilcoxon test)?

- L243 - as above, why was a GLM with Poisson distribution used instead of t-test? I think a sentence should be provided explaining use of GLMs for these two-group comparisons.

- L266-268 this sentence needs correcting for grammar

- L307 - avoid contractions

- L339 - ‘test session’ should be ‘training session’ I think

- L363 - participants knew M=9.2 of 24 target words before training. Describing this as a ‘minority’ is true, but it is still a large proportion of target words that cannot be learned because they are already known.

Reviewer #2: This study follows a within-participants experimental design to analyse and compare the effectiveness of two vocabulary learning strategies, i.e., lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation, in the vocabulary development of undergraduate EFL learners. The participants had to learn a total of 24 target words using these two vocabulary strategies (12 words in each) over two training sessions. After the treatment, participants had to complete a translation task including the 24 target words and 24 control words, a vocabulary size checklist and a vocabulary strategies questionnaire. Generalised linear models showed that participants’ knowledge of the target words improved to a similar extent under both learning conditions, suggesting that the two strategies have a comparable learning effect on vocabulary development. This learning was also affected by the participants’ vocabulary size, with larger breadth of vocabulary leading to larger learning gains in both conditions. The authors also claim that learners’ vocabulary size increased as a result of the treatment and discuss the factors that might have led to this increase.

This study is interesting and generally well though through, and there is certainly merit in examining the effect of these two very popular learning strategies in L2 vocabulary development. However, the manuscript in its current form does not meet the quality requirements to warrant publication in PLOS ONE. The paper attempts to address many research questions, which consequently has affected the coherence of the paper and the discussion of the main aim. More importantly, there are certain methodological issues that required more rigorous control and consideration and have affected the quality of the results and the discussion.

These and other issues are described below in more detail, along with comments and suggestions on how they might be addressed in order to warrant publication in future attempts.

See attached pdf for more comments.

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If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Review PONE D-19-34526.pdf

PONE-D-19-34526R1

Exploring the effect of lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation on undergraduate EFL students’ vocabulary acquisition

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Foltz,

Thank you for submitting your manuscript to PLOS ONE. After careful consideration, we feel that it has merit but does not fully meet PLOS ONE’s publication criteria as it currently stands. Therefore, we invite you to submit a revised version of the manuscript that addresses the points raised during the review process.

Your manuscript (PONE-D-19-34526_R1) was reviewed by the same two experts from the previous round. As you will see below, both reviewers commented that you revised the manuscript well to the extent that it is now almost ready for publication. I agree with both reviewers. I found the manuscript easier to read, with the story revised properly and necessary information supplied sufficiently. 

Although your journey is almost coming to the end, I would like to direct your attention to further suggestions provided by Reviewer 2. I find the reviewer's concern important. In your revision, I request that you respond to Reviewer 2's comments fully and revise the text appropriately. 

We would appreciate receiving your revised manuscript by Jul 02 2020 11:59PM. When you are ready to submit your revision, log on to https://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/ and select the 'Submissions Needing Revision' folder to locate your manuscript file.

If you would like to make changes to your financial disclosure, please include your updated statement in your cover letter.

To enhance the reproducibility of your results, we recommend that if applicable you deposit your laboratory protocols in protocols.io, where a protocol can be assigned its own identifier (DOI) such that it can be cited independently in the future. For instructions see: http://journals.plos.org/plosone/s/submission-guidelines#loc-laboratory-protocols

Please include the following items when submitting your revised manuscript:

• A rebuttal letter that responds to each point raised by the academic editor and reviewer(s). This letter should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Response to Reviewers'.
• A marked-up copy of your manuscript that highlights changes made to the original version. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Revised Manuscript with Track Changes'.
• An unmarked version of your revised paper without tracked changes. This file should be uploaded as separate file and labeled 'Manuscript'.

Please note while forming your response, if your article is accepted, you may have the opportunity to make the peer review history publicly available. The record will include editor decision letters (with reviews) and your responses to reviewer comments. If eligible, we will contact you to opt in or out.

We look forward to receiving your revised manuscript.

Kind regards,

Koji Miwa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

[Note: HTML markup is below. Please do not edit.]

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

**********

6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: The authors have comprehensively addressed both reviewers' comments and have made significant revisions that have improved the manuscript considerably. I am happy to recommend that this paper be accepted. There are just a handful of minor textual clarifications that I believe need addressing to finalise the paper for publication.

1) I think a little reworking of the text is needed from lines 107 and 720. In these sections, the authors discuss the estimated lexical knowledge required for successful inferencing, citing Nation, who suggests 98% coverage needed for lexical inferencing, and Laufer & Ravenhorst-Kalovski, who say knowledge of 8-9000 words needed to achieve this coverage. Were these researchers were talking about a specific type of text, that is, academic texts? In other words, to read typical academic texts, knowledge of 8-9000 words is required to reach 98% coverage. The authors do not mention the genre but should do so in the section starting line 107.

Also, in the discussion from line 720 the authors suggest that 98% coverage is perhaps not required for successful inferencing because the participants were successful even though they had average vocabulary sizes of 3-4000 words, not 8-9000 words. But then from line 730 (and also from 429 where the texts are described in the methodology) the authors suggest that the texts used in this study were most likely simpler than typical academic texts, which is why participants could achieve successful inferencing. It is unclear to me whether the 98% coverage at 8-9000 words really applies in this case. Basically 98% coverage depends specifically on the lexis present in the texts and the learners’ lexical knowledge (a beginner learner can reach 98% coverage of some children’s books). Without reporting the specific number of words and their frequencies in the texts, it is difficult to convincingly challenge the claims by previous researchers.

The argumentation in these sections should therefore be clarified.

2) I found the following text (from line 690) somewhat misleading as well: “the current results are fully compatible with the idea that just guessing can lead to incorrect learning as we found that participant [-s missing here] who were better at guessing the correct meanings of target words during the training also showed higher learning than participants who were less successful at guessing correctly during the training.”

It seems to me that the evidence does not suggest that ‘guessing can lead to incorrect learning’ but instead suggests that ‘guessing can lead to no learning’. The authors would may wish to modify the text to resolve this issue.

3) From line 695: “strategies should explicitly be taught or should arise naturally in the language learner” – I think the latter part needs changing to “…or should be adopted naturally’ or similar. It seems odd to say strategies arise in someone.

Reviewer #2: See attached document.

I would like to commend the authors for their huge efforts to review and rewrite this manuscript. I feel that these have improved the paper considerably.

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

[NOTE: If reviewer comments were submitted as an attachment file, they will be attached to this email and accessible via the submission site. Please log into your account, locate the manuscript record, and check for the action link "View Attachments". If this link does not appear, there are no attachment files to be viewed.]

While revising your submission, please upload your figure files to the Preflight Analysis and Conversion Engine (PACE) digital diagnostic tool, https://pacev2.apexcovantage.com/. PACE helps ensure that figures meet PLOS requirements. To use PACE, you must first register as a user. Registration is free. Then, login and navigate to the UPLOAD tab, where you will find detailed instructions on how to use the tool. If you encounter any issues or have any questions when using PACE, please email us at figures@plos.org. Please note that Supporting Information files do not need this step.

Attachments

Attachment

Submitted filename: Reviewers comments - R1.pdf

Exploring the effect of lexical inferencing and dictionary consultation on undergraduate EFL students’ vocabulary acquisition

PONE-D-19-34526R2

Dear Dr. Foltz,

We’re pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it meets all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you’ll receive an e-mail detailing the required amendments. When these have been addressed, you’ll receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will be scheduled for publication.

An invoice for payment will follow shortly after the formal acceptance. To ensure an efficient process, please log into Editorial Manager at http://www.editorialmanager.com/pone/, click the 'Update My Information' link at the top of the page, and double check that your user information is up-to-date. If you have any billing related questions, please contact our Author Billing department directly at authorbilling@plos.org.

If your institution or institutions have a press office, please notify them about your upcoming paper to help maximize its impact. If they’ll be preparing press materials, please inform our press team as soon as possible -- no later than 48 hours after receiving the formal acceptance. Your manuscript will remain under strict press embargo until 2 pm Eastern Time on the date of publication. For more information, please contact onepress@plos.org.

Kind regards,

Koji Miwa, Ph.D.

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments: