In a variety of fashions, ESL student writers can learn to work along the lines of a practical-theoretical continuum in the ethnographic model of writing. They can (a) draw on what they know or what is accessible to them; (b) expand upon their knowledge by reading, observation, and discussion;(c) describe a set of concrete facts in the practical text component of their work that captures or shows the salient issues they want to write about; and (d) extend their discourse into new areas of analysis in the theoretical text component through reflection and by interpretation of the meaning of the actions, events, stories, or cases presented in the practical text. The end result for students is greater knowledge, of not only language, but themselves and the world.

Using a posttest-only control group design, this study evaluated the role of instruction and compared the effectiveness of two methods of presentation—word lists and video-graphic cues—on the university-level second language students’ (N = 64) ability to guess the meaning of unfamiliar lexical items contained in a videotape of an academic lecture. Subjects were randomly assigned to four treatment groups and told they would be tested after viewing the lecture on vocabulary items only. The first experimental group (VIDEO-GRAPHIC) saw a version of the tape on which computer-generated textual cues appeared. These video-graphic cues resembled closed captioning. Vocabulary items appeared on the videotape as the lecturer said the word and remained visible while the speaker gave the contextual clue to the word’s meaning. The second experimental group (WORD LIST) saw the same lecture without the visual cues. Both experimental groups received a list of the vocabulary items on which they would be tested after viewing the lecture. These words were listed in the order they would come up during the lecture. The subjects in both experimental groups also received instruction in guessing word meanings from context. The third treatment group (INSTRUCTION) received only this instruction in guessing; they did not see the video-graphic cues nor receive a word list of vocabulary items. The last group (CONTROL) saw the videotape without text and received neither a word list nor instruction in guessing. After viewing the lecture, the subjects were tested on the vocabulary in context items contained in the academic lecture. A one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Tukey’s Honestly Significant Difference Test (HSD) indicated that the subjects in the video-graphic group scored significantly higher (p<.05) on the vocabulary test than the students in the word list group and that both groups scored significantly higher than the instruction-only and control groups (p<.05).