LEXICAL RETRIEVAL AND AUTOMATIZATION IN EFL SPEAKING: THE ROLE OF DIGITAL ORAL PRACTICE IN UNIVERSITY CONTEXTS
Keywords:
Lexical retrieval, vocabulary automatization, EFL speaking, digital oral practice, productive vocabulary, technology-enhanced language learning.Abstract
The inability to retrieve known vocabulary during spontaneous speaking remains a major obstacle for English as a Foreign Language (EFL) learners. Although university students often possess substantial receptive vocabulary knowledge, limitations in lexical retrieval speed and automatization hinder their spoken performance. Drawing on psycholinguistic and skill acquisition perspectives, this study examines whether digitally mediated oral practice can facilitate the automatization of receptive vocabulary into productive use in EFL speaking. Using a quasi-experimental design, the study was conducted with undergraduate EFL learners at a public university in Uzbekistan. The experimental group engaged in digitally mediated oral retrieval tasks, including repeated spoken output, timed responses, and feedback-supported practice, while the comparison group received conventional speaking instruction. Data were collected through pre- and post-speaking tasks and analyzed in terms of lexical retrieval speed, accuracy, and productive use of target vocabulary. The findings demonstrate that learners who participated in digital oral practice showed significantly greater gains in productive vocabulary use and retrieval fluency than those in the comparison group. These results suggest that technology-mediated speaking tasks can support lexical automatization, thereby narrowing the gap between receptive knowledge and productive oral use. The study contributes to research on vocabulary use in speaking by emphasizing retrieval-based processes rather than vocabulary acquisition alone.
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