Effects Of Task On Incidental Vocabulary Learning By Adult Chinese Learners Of English-Testing The Involvement Load Hypothesis

This study investigates, within the framework of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, how task features affect the effects of language learning tasks on incidental learning of English vocabulary by adult Chinese EFL learners. It tests the Involvement Load Hypothesis with a view to find in what respects and to what degrees the Hypothesis predicts the effectiveness of task on incidental vocabulary learning, to find the ways to modify and improve the Hypothesis, and to broaden and deepen knowledge about task, an important unit of analysis in both second language pedagogy and research, and vocabulary learning, a central issue in language learning..Six language-learning tasks, which were different in amount and distribution of the involvement load, were designed to investigate the effects of a) the involvement load as a whole and b) the individual components of the involvement load. One hundred and forty-seven first-year students from Nanchang University, who were divided into 6 task groups equivalent in English proficiency, performed these tasks. The experiment was conducted in a period of 3 weeks. A pretest, an immediate posttest, and two delayed posttests (arranged one week after the treatment, one in decontextualized situation, and the other in contextualized situation) were administered. The results were analyzed both quantitatively and qualitatively.The results showed that tasks with higher involvement load did not necessarily lead to better retention. The effects of task on learning are constrained by the limited capacity of human processing. The study also found that the three components of the involvement load, need, search, and evaluation were not the same in effect on improving retention. More components were suggested to be added to the construct of involvement load.The above findings suggest that, as a first attempt to bring the two strands of task research and vocabulary learning together and build a framework for the relation in between the two factors, the Involvement Load Hypothesis still calls for a lot of amendment, and that the Hypothesis has value in theoretical perspectives, but is subject to a lot of constraints in implementation.