An Empirical Study On Intentional Learning In L2 Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary deserves more attention than phonetics, phonology or syntax because meaningful communication cannot be achieved without an adequate vocabulary of the target language. With the widespread acceptance of Krashen's input hypothesis theory, incidental vocabulary learning featured by extensive reading has been acknowledged by many foreign researchers as an ideal method in facilitating L2 vocabulary acquisition. And it is commonly agreed that opportunities for incidental vocabulary learning should occupy more time than the intentional vocabulary learning characterized by explicit instruction. Based on this theoretical assumption, many instructors in China believe that vocabulary learning could be left to learners to handle after class by means of extensive reading.The present author doubts the superiority of this widely proposed reading method in the English vocabulary development of Chinese college science and engineering majors. The thesis attempts to explore a detailed comparison between incidental method and intentional method from both global and specific perspectives. To seek objective and convincing results about the research, the author has administrated one questionnaire and conducted one experiment consisting of two groups of subjects who were treated differently with extensive reading input and explicit instruction input, and attended one immediate test (one day after different treatments) and two delayed tests (one week and one month after treatments).The data analysis of the exploratory experiment manifests the following results:i) Globally speaking, both intentional method via instruction and intentional learning method through extensive reading are beneficial to Chinese college science and engineering majors in their English vocabulary acquisition. The intentional method is significantly and consistently superior to the incidental method in acquiring the total vocabulary knowledge with the time ranges of one day, one week and one month. However, the overall vocabulary knowledge acquired from incidental learning through extensive reading can last longer than that from intentional method via instruction.ii) Specifically speaking, in comparison with acquiring receptive word knowledge, it is more difficult for subjects to acquire new vocabulary productively both with the two inputs. The intentional method can retain receptive vocabulary longer than incidental method. Both methods can not retain productive vocabulary knowledge longer than one week. With the time ranges of one day and one week, the intentional instruction method is significantly superior to the incidental reading method in both receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition. But with the time range of one month, the intentional instruction method can only keep its significant superiority to the incidental reading method in receptive word competence, not in productive competence. Conclusively, in the aspect of achieving receptive and productive vocabulary retention, intentional learning method still shows greater advantage over incidental method.The present research implies that both incidental reading method and intentional instruction method can facilitate the process of vocabulary acquisition. However, instructors need to lay more emphasis on intentional vocabulary learning by creating frequent opportunities for students to receive classroom instruction on target vocabulary so as to consolidate and deepen their lexical knowledge into long-term memory. Meanwhile, the present study suggests that language instructors should provide more systematical instruction on promoting learners' acquisition of productive vocabulary knowledge.In conclusion, the present study is a quantitative and qualitative effort that involves a questionnaire and a large amount of literary references, statistics description and analysis. It is expected that the study will shed light on both Chinese college English vocabulary teaching and learning.