The Effects Of Different Input Modes On Senior High School Students’ Incidental English Collocations Acquisition

Incidental vocabulary acquisition has been a major field of research in second language acquisition.Previous researchers had paid great efforts on exploring how incidental vocabulary acquisition could be promoted and input mode has been considered as a significant factor in promoting vocabulary acquisition.However,most of existing studies focused on the acquisition of single words.Researches have already shown that the acquisition of collocations is held to be even more useful in language production.Especially for senior high school students,the insufficient acquisition of collocations will not only hinder students’ understanding of the text in the process of listening and reading,but also affect the accuracy of students’ oral and written expressions.Therefore,on the basis of input hypothesis,noticing hypothesis and the theory of depth of processing,this study intends to compare three input modes i.e.reading,listening,and reading-while-listening on incidental collocation acquisition and addresses the follow questions: 1)Which input mode is the most effective way for students’ incidental collocation acquisition and retention? 2)What are the effects of three input modes on students’ incidental acquisition and retention of the form and meaning of collocations? 3)What are students’ attitudes towards three input modes on incidental collocation acquisition?An experimental study was adopted.The participants were ninety students from three parallel classes in senior one at Jiayuguan No.1 middle school.The study which lasted five weeks included a pilot test,treatment,immediate tests and delayed tests.Participants in three classes were instructed to experience three different input modes successively : reading story + completing reading comprehension tasks,listening to story + completing reading comprehension tasks,and reading-while-listening story + completing reading comprehension tasks.Reading comprehension tasks made the participants focus on understanding of the materials to ensure the occurrence of incidental acquisition.Then the immediate test which included two aspects of collocation knowledge(form and meaning)was conducted after treatment.The delayed test was carried out in the next week before the new treatment.Additionally,a semi-structured interview was carried out to explore students’ attitude towards incidental collocation acquisition in three input modes after the last delayed test.The results show that:1)Reading-while-listening is more effective than reading input on students’ incidental collocation acquisition,although there is no significant difference between reading-while-listening and reading.Listening mode is the least effective on students’ incidental collocation acquisition.What’s more,reading-while-listening is the most effective input mode on students’ incidental collocation retention.2)Among two aspects of collocation knowledge,it is easier for students to acquire the form than the meaning of collocations.As for three input modes,reading-while-listening has a great effect on form acquisition and reading and reading-whilelistening have the same effect on meaning acquisition,but listening is inferior to both of them.In terms of the retention of collocations,reading-while-listening is the most effective mode on collocation form retention,while reading is slightly better than reading-while-listening on collocation meaning retention.There is no significant difference between reading and reading-whilelistening on collocation meaning retention.3)The majority of students believe that reading is the best input mode on comprehension of the passages,but reading-while-listening is the best mode on incidental collocation acquisition.Most of them have a strong preference in reading-while-listening in collocation acquisition,while it is a little difficult for them to acquire collocations in listening mode.This study compares the effects of three different input modes on senior high school incidental collocation acquisition and reading-while-listening is more effective for students’ collocation acquisition.Therefore,teachers in senior high school need to pay more attention to collocations,and try to encourage students to be more exposed to the reading-while-listening mode to promote incidental collocation acquisition.