Effects Of Topic Familiarity On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

It is acknowledged that vocabulary is of great importance in language learning. Incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading is generally regarded as a most efficient way of learning vocabulary (Krashen, Coady, Huckin, et al.). In the past two decades, researchers provided support to second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading not only theoretically but also empirically. However, the nature of incidental vocabulary acquisition is still not completely known and there is still great space to explore in this field.The present study aims to investigate the effects of topic familiarity on second language incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Three key questions are proposed in the present research: 1) Does readers'topic familiarity enhance their vocabulary acquisition? 2) What effects does topic familiarity have on readers'incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading? 3) What effects does topic familiarity have on readers'retention of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading?The experiment design was mainly borrowed from Pulido's study (2004). The participants were 56 Chinese college non-English major sophomores. They were required to read two expository passages, of which one is more familiar and the other is less familiar. The passages were confirmed by a topic familiarity questionnaire. Nonsense words were taken as the target words. There were three separate sections in the research. During Section 1 all participants completed the topic familiarity questionnaire. Section 2 was conducted one week later. Firstly, all the participants read the two expository passages of which the topics were more or less familiar to them (confirmed by the topic questionnaire) and completed reading comprehension test. After that, they were required to complete three vocabulary tests one by one: intake, translation production and translation recognition. Section 3 was conducted four weeks after Section 2. Translation production and translation recognition were administered once again.All data were collected and put into SPSS 17.0 for analysis. Results show that the effect of topic familiarity is not significant on their incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention in translation production test. But in translation recognition test, the effect of topic familiarity is positively significant on their incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention. The findings indicate that topic familiarity is an influential factor in incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Chinese college non-English major students can turn to their background knowledge to infer the new words'meaning and comprehend passages. Besides, pedagogical implications and suggestions for future researches are discussed.