| This study was carried out to find out the effect of textual enhancement (TE) in second language (L2) vocabulary acquisition.With regard to the effectiveness of TE, controversy exists.Some researchers found that TE had no effect on intake, acquisition, or comprehension, such as Alanen (1995), Leow (1997a,2001) and Overstreet (1998). Others (Shook1994;Jourdenais et al.1995;Lee2007) found a positive effect of TE on noticing, intake and production and even on learning. Although TE has received considerable attention in recent second language acquisition (SLA) research, it does not reach a consensus on the issues of the effect of TE in SLA.Thus,the effectiveness of TE needs to be further studied.On the theoretic basis of information processing model,this study was undertaken to find out the effects of TE in different learning conditions, with junior school freshmen as the subjects.The study answered the following two questions:1) How does TE affect L2vocabulary acquisition in incidental vocabulary learning?2) How does TE affect L2vocabulary acquisition in intentional vocabulary learning?The experimental results suggest that the TE has facilitated students’ L2vocabulary acquisition not only in incidental learning but also in intentional learning. From the results of the questionnaire, the students in the experimental group paid more attention to the target words than those in the control group.The study shows that it is necessary for teachers to promote learners’attention on targeted L2vocabulary. In meaning-based teaching, teachers could enhance the characteristics of target forms to trigger learners’noticing.Besides the significance of this study, there are some limitations in the measuring tools and the times of TE treatment for multiple reasons. Future studies may consider implementing TE for many times to improve learners’attention to the language forms. |
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