The Effects Of Continuation Task And Working Memory Capacity On EFL Learners’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Incidental vocabulary acquisition(IVA)is one of the focuses of second language acquisition(SLA)research,most of which centers on reading activities.Wang Chuming(2010)proposed the use of continuation writing tasks to promote foreign language learning,which has attracted attention in the field of foreign language teaching.Relevant studies have confirmed the promotion effect of continuation tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition.However,few studies have compared the sub-tasks of continuation task and considered the significant role of working memory in second language vocabulary acquisition.Additionally,there is still no consensus on the effects of working memory on incidental vocabulary acquisition.The present study controlled the types of continuation task and working memory capacity(WMC),to explore the effects of two different continuation writing tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition of EFL learners with different working memory capacities from three aspects of vocabulary knowledge(form recognition,meaning identification and usage).Two research questions were specified as follows:(1)What are the effects of different continuation tasks on the incidental vocabulary acquisition of EFL learners with the same working memory capacity?(2)What are the effects of different working memory capacities on the incidental vocabulary acquisition of EFL learners in the same continuation task?Participants were 125 second-year EFL learners from a junior high school in a southwestern province.They were divided into 4 experimental groups and 4 control groups.The experimental groups were: a group with higher WMC completing a continuation task after a reading activity,a group with lower WMC completing a continuation task after a reading activity,a group with higher WMC completing a continuation task after a reading-while-listening activity,and a group with lower WMC completing a continuation task after a reading-while-listening activity.Before the formal experiment,the control groups participated in a pilot test to determine the target words,arrange the experimental procedure,and improve the experimental design.The experimental groups were asked to read or reading-while-listening to a narrative without an ending in a given time,and then write the ending using the target words as required.After the experiment,an immediate posttest was conducted at once and a delayed posttest was administered four weeks later.The results of statistical analysis show that:(1)The continuation task effectively promoted IVA.When the WMC was the same,the effect of the two types of continuation tasks is similar.However,for learners with lower WMC,continuation task after reading was more conducive to the immediate acquisition of target word usage,while continuation task after reading-while-listening was more conducive to the acquisition of word form and meaning.And as time went on,the advantages of word form recognition became more and more manifest.(2)When performing the same continuation task,learners with higher WMC performed significantly better than learners with lower WMC in both the two posttests.For continuation task after reading-while-listening,the gap between learners with different WMCs in form recognition and meaning identification widened over time,while the gap in vocabulary usage and total score narrowed over time.The current study enriched the research on continuation tasks and working memory and put forward some suggestions for teachers to make better use of continuation tasks to promote learners’ vocabulary acquisition.