Effective Treatment of Vocabulary when Teaching L2 Reading: The Example of Yoko Tawada’s Wo Europa anfängt

Second language (L2) learners comprehend more when they are prepared for novel vocabulary that they encounter in a text. Input-based incremental (IBI) vocabulary instruction (Barcroft, 2012) provides L2 instructors and learners with a means of achieving this goal by (a) presenting optimal input to learners at the right time during a reading-focused lesson and (b) promoting the gradual development of different aspects of word knowledge over time. The approach draws on theoretical advances and research findings related to lexical input processing, including the benefits of acoustically varied input and opportunities for target word retrieval. This paper explains the IBI approach and demonstrates how it can be applied when teaching authentic texts, using as an example L2 German and Wo Europa anfängt (1991) by Yoko Tawada, a narrative that addresses themes such as transnationalism, migration, borders, and cultural identity.