“I Learned It on TikTok”: Conceptualising a Multimodal Framework for Incidental English Vocabulary Learning Through Short-Form Video Content

Learners now come across English in many of the digital spaces they use every day. TikTok is one such space, where users may encounter English while watching videos for entertainment, information, or social interaction. Videos on the platform often combine spoken language, visuals, subtitles, on-screen text, captions, and comments. This means that an unfamiliar word may be heard, seen in written form, and understood with the help of what is happening in the video. When this happens without the user deliberately trying to study vocabulary, it can lead to incidental vocabulary learning. Research on audiovisual viewing and informal digital learning shows that vocabulary can develop through this kind of meaning-focused exposure. Not every encounter, however, leads to learning. A word may not attract the learner’s attention, its meaning may remain unclear, or it may be forgotten after the video ends. Some words, however, may become more familiar when learners notice them, infer their meaning from the surrounding context, and encounter them again. This paper proposes a Multimodal Incidental Vocabulary Learning Framework to show how this process may occur during everyday TikTok use. It includes six processes: multimodal exposure, noticing, contextual meaning construction, repeated encounters and reinforcement, retention, and potential receptive or productive use. These processes are not expected to occur in the same way for every word or every learner. What happens may depend on the learner’s attention and prior knowledge, the support available in the content, and whether the word appears again. The framework therefore focuses on what may happen between first encountering an unfamiliar word on TikTok and developing more stable vocabulary knowledge.

Tiktok, Incidental Vocabulary Learning, Multimodal Input, Short-Form Video, Informal Digital Learning

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