Studies On Factors Promoting Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Reading By Non-English Majors

Incidental vocabulary learning (IVL) occurs without the specific intent to focus on vocabulary. Some researchers think it has many problems, one of which is students'frequent failure to acquire vocabulary incidentally. However, as an approach, it is proved to be able to enlarge students'vocabulary, and thus it is vital to find the factors to promote IVL. The present study is carried out to explore three factors'efficiency. This study tries to answer these questions:1. Do reoccurrence of unknown words, marginal glosses and dictionary use work in promoting IVL through reading?2. Which one is more efficient to promote IVL through reading considering the short-term memory: marginal glosses, dictionary use or inferring meaning from the context, three combined with reoccurrence?3. Which one is more efficient to promote IVL through reading in the long-term run: marginal glosses, dictionary use or inferring meaning from context?To answer these questions, four posttests based on a reading passage were administered to subjects, and the data about recognition of words, retention of words'meaning in isolation and in context were analyzed. This study finds that three factors can promote IVL through reading; marginal glosses are more efficient to promote IVL through reading than dictionary use and inferring meaning from the context in the short-time run; in the long-term run, inferring meaning is more efficient to promote IVL through reading, dictionary use is second and marginal glosses last if we consider the proportion of scores in the delayed test to those in the immediate test in retention of meaning in isolation. If only the quantity of learned words is considered, MG performs best.The study has both theoretical and practical value. However, further research is still desired.