Vocabulary knowledge is essential to language development and use in second language acquisition. As an important part of foreign language learning, incidental vocabulary acquisition has been paid much attention by experts and scholars. In the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition, the main input methods include reading, listening, reading-while-listening and audio-visual input. Based on the experimental demonstration of the three input methods of incidental vocabulary acquisition, this study summarizes the research results of incidental vocabulary acquisition at home and abroad, and puts forward some suggestions for future research on incidental vocabulary acquisition.
Keywords: Listening, Reading, audio-visual input, incidental vocabulary acquisition, reading-while-listening
