A Study On Incidental Productive Vocabulary Acquisition In Reading For EFL Learners

The study investigated effects on incidental acquisition of L2 productive knowledge of word form with the framework of the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn(2001).Chinese non-English majors in the present study are assigned to finish four kinds of learning tasks with varying involvement loads after reading a passage,in order to explore which task is more effective in fostering word form learning and retention and further testify the validity of the hypothesis.The study intends to find out whether it can predict the productive vocabulary effectiveness.The subjects of the present study were one hundred and nine non-English major sophomores in Qufu Normal University who came from three intact classes with equivalent English proficiency.Four learning tasks(blank filling,reading comprehension,sentence translation and sentence making) were randomly assigned to the subjects.The experiment was conducted over a period of four weeks.Data were collected from three tests(a pilot test,an immediate posttest after treatment and delayed posttest two weeks after treatment).SPSS 13.0 was used to analyze the data.The results showed that learners could acquire the written form knowledge in incidental learning,but the attrition of word form knowledge was great over two weeks.The results of this study partially support the Hypothesis:the Hypothesis could predict the effects of tasks on L2 productive vocabulary retention,but it did not prove that the higher involvement load necessarily led to the better vocabulary learning.No significant difference was found among the average scores of four groups.The three components of the involvement do not bear same weight in promoting retention,and the definition of the strong or moderate form of each component need being refined.Tasks with the same amount of involvement load led to similar retention.Output tasks were superior to input tasks in fostering productive knowledge retention,but the significant superiority disappeared in delayed posttest.The results also offer some pedagogical implications based on the results for vocabulary teaching in high schools.Teachers are recommended to design specific word-formation exercises to help students master the productive vocabulary knowledge,combining intentional learning to consolidate lexical productive knowledge retention.However,exercises like comprehension questions,fill-in blanks and sentence making which orient language meaning processing,are more suitable for receptive vocabulary knowledge learning.Revision and rehearsal of the newly-acquired lexical knowledge are strongly needed to yield better retention.