An Empirical Study On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of Different Task-induced Involvement Loads In College English Listening Class

Vocabulary learning is crucial in second language acquisition. How to motivate and promote students'vocabulary acquisition in the process of teaching has long been viewed as a key task in the field of SLA. Linguists have investigated through abundant researches that by employing different kinds of classroom reading tasks, L2 learners could acquire vocabulary incidentally. However, researches on IVA through listening tasks are few.In designing tasks, can we say one task is superior to the other? If yes, how should we evaluate and manipulate them? Laufer & Hulstijn (2001) proposed the Involvement Load Hypothesis, which claims that different tasks may induce subjects'different level of depth in word processing and therefore bring about different effect of word retention. This depth of processing can be measured by the involvement load, which is made up of three elements: Need, Search and Evaluation. And the higher the involvement load induced by the task is, the better word retention effect will be.Hence, based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis, two college English classroom listening tasks are designed in this study for the purpose of investigating subjects'performance in L2 IVA word gain and retention. Meanwhile, this study also takes into consideration and studies the relationship between subjects'vocabulary size and their word gain as well as the relationship between subjects'listening comprehension and their word gain in listening tasks with different involvement loads.The thesis consists of six parts: the first part introduces research background, research aims and significance and states the definitions of core terms in the present study. Part two is the literature review, which presents definitions of intentional and incidental vocabulary acquisition and then clarifies the relationship between tasks and L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition. Then, the connection between Involvement Load Hypothesis and incidental vocabulary acquisition is introduced and relevant researches home and abroad are presented. After that researches designed to test Involvement Load Hypothesis through listening tasks are listed. Finally, effects of textual, lexical and learner-related factors that may have influence on incidental vocabulary acquisition are analyzed and defined and then countermeasures are presented. The third part is the theoretical framework of the research. It introduces the birth of the Involvement Load Hypothesis; three components of the involvement construct; the definitions of task-induced involvement load and involvement index and finally presents the assumption of the hypothesis. The fourth part mainly introduces research hypotheses, operational definitions of the variables, participants, instruments and research procedures. Sixty-eight non-English-major freshmen who come from two parallel classes of a certain College of Northwest Normal University are chosen as the subjects of the study. Task one (i.e. Dictation—Checking and Listening in details—Reading aloud after the speaker) and task two (i.e. Listening comprehension questions—Checking and Listening in details—Reading aloud after the speaker (words glossed)) that are designed to bear different involvement loads are assigned to the experimental groups randomly. In order to eliminate the sense of strangeness that subjects may experience and increase their adaptation to the designed tasks, the researcher trained the subjects before the experiment with the tasks designed in the study once a week for 11 times in the multimedia classroom. The whole experiment which lasts for four weeks consists of vocabulary tests, listening comprehension tests, immediate word gain tests, delayed word retention tests and the questionnaire. In the fifth part, raw data collected from the experiment are processed by employing statistic measures such as correlations and t-tests in SPSS 13.0 and the results of the study are (1) the validity of the Involvement Load Hypothesis is proved, i.e. tasks that induce higher involvement load surpass remarkably lower-involvement-load tasks in IVA word gain and retention; (2) the results of the study indicate that there is a positive relationship between subjects'vocabulary size and their word gain; but no significant correlation between subjects'listening comprehension and their word gain is observed in listening tasks with different involvement loads. The sixth part sums up the main findings and the implication and significance of the research. This study tests and enriches the Involvement Load Hypothesis and is helpful to L2 IVA in college English listening class. Based on the findings of this study, the significance of the promotion of L2 IVA word gain and retention combined with effective classroom listening tasks is emphasized; and finally, suggestions on improving and bettering studies of the same kind are put forward.