A Study On Effective Vocabulary Acquisition For Non-english Majors In Reading Class

Vocabulary learning is an integral part of language learning. Scholars at home and abroad have done quite a few researches on vocabulary acquisition. However, as to the question whether L2 vocabulary are gained through intentional or incidental learning, researchers hold different opinions on this. Hulstjin (1992) rightly points out that the question is not so much whether learning in context is beneficial, but exactly what form it should take to be most effective. By comparing and analyzing the effectiveness and drawbacks on the intentional learning and incidental learning, the author considers the reading plus specific vocabulary exercises benefit the longer and better retention, which supports the Involvement Load Hypothesis developed by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001).The present thesis aims at investigating the effects of the two approaches to vocabulary learning. They are incidental vocabulary learning and combination of the incidental vocabulary with intentional vocabulary learning. This thesis, by the means of experiment, testes the different effects of English vocabulary learning for the non-English major students. 80 vocational college sophomore students are chosen as subjects and are divided into two classes. Each class adopts different vocabulary learning method. After the treatment, an immediate vocabulary test is carried out and the delayed vocabulary test is administered two months later for their recall of 10 words that have appeared in text. The data collected is analyzed by SPSS 11.5. The results indicate that the combination of the incidental vocabulary with intentional vocabulary learning leads to greater gains both in short time and long time. The vocabulary size does not affect the learners'vocabulary acquisition in the combination learning method. But the vocabulary size exerts great influence on the productive vocabulary knowledge in the incidental learning.Based on the above experiment results, the author gets some teaching implications: classroom settings should be supplemented with direct instruction to make the vocabulary learning process more direct and efficient.