The Effects Of Tasks With Different Involvement Loads On Incidental Acquisition Of Receptive And Productive Vocabulary

During recent two decades, researchers at home and abroad have been conducted many studies and experiments to investigate factors that may affect incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) through reading, especially in the field of second language acquisition. Under this circumstance, some theories concerning IVA have emerged, among which, Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn is one of the representatives. The present study tries to examine the effects of reading tasks with different involvement loads on IVA of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis.The present study mainly addresses five research questions:1. Does IVA happen after reading tasks are completed?2. If it dose, are tasks with higher involvement loads more effective on IVA of receptive/productive vocabulary knowledge than tasks with lower involvement loads in the immediate vocabulary tests?3. If it does, are tasks with higher involvement loads more effective on IVA of receptive/productive vocabulary knowledge than tasks with lower involvement loads in the delayed vocabulary tests?4. Do tasks with higher involvement loads yield better receptive/productive vocabulary knowledge retention than tasks with lower involvement loads?5. Is there correlation between IVA of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge in the same task?These research questions were investigated through an empirical study with99non-English freshmen who have been learning English as a foreign language as subjects;10target words involved. These students were divided into6groups (Group1,2,3,4,5, and6) to complete three reading tasks (Task Ⅰ, Ⅱ, and Ⅲ) with different involvement loads. Group1and Group2were assigned to complete task Ⅰ (reading the passage and completing comprehension questions which were related to the target words). Group3and Group4were required to complete task Ⅱ (reading and filling in blanks). Groups5and Group6were assigned to finish task Ⅲ (reading and blank-filling with dictionary use). After subjects completed these tasks, Group1, Group3and Group5were tested receptive vocabulary; and Group2, Group4and Group6were tested productive vocabulary knowledge. The experiment was mainly composed of four steps:vocabulary level test, reading tasks, immediate vocabulary test and delayed vocabulary test.After these tests, Statistics Package for Social Science (SPSS) and Microsoft Office Excel2003was used to compute the test results. Descriptive statistics, one-way analysis of variance (one-way ANOVA), multiple comparisons, correlation analysis, and paired-samples T test were applied to analyze the data.The major findings are:IVA did happen after subjects completed tasks, which indicates tasks with involvement loads do have effects on IVA. In the immediate vocabulary test, in terms of receptive vocabulary, the ILH is totally supported; while as for the productive vocabulary, the ILH is partially supported. However, in the delayed test, the ILH is partially proved in the IVA of receptive vocabulary knowledge; when comes to the productive vocabulary knowledge, ILH is not true. Moreover, there is no significant difference of vocabulary retention between tasks with higher involvement loads and lower involvement loads; and there is weak correlation between the IVA of receptive and productive vocabulary induced by the same task.Based upon the results, the author put forward some pedagogical implications, limitations of the current study and suggestions for future researches.