Research On The Effect Of Written Output Task On Non-English Majors' Productive Vocabulary Competence

According to Nation(2001), productive vocabulary are the words used properly in speaking or writing in addition to the recognition of the pronunciation, forms and meanings of the words. And receptive vocabulary are the words whose pronunciation,form and meanings are known to the learners, but it is difficult for them to extract or use the words correctly. It is a common problem among the college students that their productive vocabulary lags behind receptive vocabulary. As students' ability to use a second language is increasingly valued, their productive vocabulary competence has naturally become the focus of vocabulary researchers.Among the studies on how to improve productive vocabulary competence,experiments testing the effect of output tasks on productive vocabulary competence play an important role. However, most of them, especially researches at home are short-term and one-off experiments, which is not very convincing. In addition, the post-tests of most of these researches are limited to the test of the retaining of the restricted target words, in other words, the controlled vocabulary. However,productive vocabulary includes controlled productive vocabulary and free productive vocabulary(Laufer & Nation, 1999). The former refers to the productive vocabulary produced when learners are asked to finish certain objective items while the latter refers to the productive vocabulary produced when learners are asked to speak or write freely about one or several given topics.To investigate whether output tasks(written output tasks in the present study),i.e. the task of summary writing with target words have effective impact on college non-English majors' both short-term controlled productive vocabulary competence and long-term free productive vocabulary competence, a semester-long experiment was carried out in the present study. It aimed to answer the following questions:1). Is the written output task more effective than language input only in improving college non-English majors' productive vocabulary competence?2). Does the written output task have positive impact on college non-English majors' both controlled and free productive vocabulary competence?The participants of this study were freshmen, non-English majors. Two parallel classes the author taught were randomly chosen as experimental and control class.Before the experiment, the Controlled Productive Vocabulary Level Test was used as the pre-test to ensure the original productive vocabulary competence of the two classes were identical or similar to each other. This experiment lasted one semester,for about four months. During the four-month experiment, the students in the control class were taught by the teacher with input only while those in the experimental class with written output task of summary writing after necessary input. Such instructions took place every other week, totally 8 lessons.Three post-tests were administered during the semester. The first one was an immediate post-test of controlled productive vocabulary, which was carried out afterthe first experimental lesson. The second one was a delayed post-test of controlled productive vocabulary, which was carried out one week later. The last one was a delayed post-test of free productive vocabulary, which was carried out at the end of the semester. It was a writing task. The participants were required to write a topic-given composition about 150 words within 30 minutes. Its aim was to investigate the effect of the written output task on long-term free productive vocabulary competence.After analyzing the test data by SPSS and the software named Range, the present study obtains two findings: the written output tasks is more effective than language input only in improving college non-English majors' productive vocabulary competence; the written output tasks has positive impact on college non-English majors' both controlled and free productive vocabulary competence.Regardless of the limitations, the present study has contributed to show the effect of written output task on non-English majors' productive vocabulary competence, and thus provides some pedagogical implications for improving college students' productive vocabulary competence.