Work

Crisis-driven vocabulary in an immersion context: International students’ learning strategies and COVID-19 lexical knowledge during the 2020 pandemic

Year: 2026

Type: article

Abstract: The COVID-19 pandemic precipitated rapid lexical expansion. For international students in English-dominant environments, this intersected with academic immersion demands. Drawing on Schmitt’s (1997) taxonomy, this descriptive-exploratory study examines vocabulary learning strategies (VLS) and COVID-19 lexical knowledge of 69 international students (Arabic L1 dominant, 62.9%) at an Australian university during September–November 2020. A 35-item adapted VLSQ and a 31-item COVID-19 vocabulary test were administered online. Determination strategies ranked highest (M = 3.34), followed by cognitive (M = 3.27), memory (M = 2.92), metacognitive (M = 2.72), and social strategies (M = 2.61). Item-level analysis shows the two highest-ranked individual strategies are both cognitive: listening to pronunciation (M = 4.29) and media engagement (M = 3.90). The Internet (43.5%) and social media (26.1%) were the primary reported vocabulary sources. Composite vocabulary knowledge was 61.5% (SD = 16.5%), with a moderate awareness–knowledge correlation (Spearman ρ = .645, p < .01). Fifteen of 31 items showed knowledge exceeding awareness, particularly for transparent compounds (e.g., Super Spreader: knowledge 75.4%, awareness 37.7%), suggesting morphological inference operates independently of prior encounter. Under compressed immersion conditions (institutional enrolment at an English-medium university during pandemic-era restrictions on face-to-face interaction), social strategies remained systematically underutilised despite institutional availability of interactional affordances. This pattern is more parsimoniously explained by self-regulatory and ecological factors than by environmental access alone, though the pandemic confound necessitates cautious interpretation and confirmatory testing under uncompromised immersion conditions.

Source: Social Sciences & Humanities Open

DOI: 10.1016/j.ssaho.2026.103949

Author: Hashim Asiri

Institutions: King Khalid University, Macquarie University

Language: English

Topic: Second Language Acquisition and Learning

Subfield: Developmental and Educational Psychology

Field: Psychology

Domain: Social Sciences

SDGs: Quality education, Good health and well-being

Open Access status: gold

Estimated APC paid: $1,180