Intensive Learning And Free Reading

Since the birth of modern linguistics, linguists have been paying attention to syntax. In the 1970s, as SLA (Second Language Acquisition) came into being as an independent science, a large number of researchers showed enormous interest in how second language is acquired. However, most of linguists in that field still focused on the acquisition of syntax. In the past twenty years, more and more researchers and teachers began to realize the importance of vocabulary acquisition. The research in that circle involves many aspects including acquisition method, acquisition mechanism etc. In the past ten years, some researchers showed great interest in the input means of L2 vocabulary acquisition, and concentrated on the relation between reading and word learning. They argued that incidental learning is and should be the major method in vocabulary acquisition. Stephen Krashen, one of the representative proponents, proposed a FVR (Free Voluntary Reading) model. The FVR model encourages language learners to choose reading materials freely and read them at their will. Krashen suggested FVR is the optimal method for language learners, including L2 learners to enhance their vocabulary. In China, some teachers employ this method and encourage their students to take it as the most effective method for vocabulary enlargement.When judged from the subjective L2 learning experience of the present author and other postgraduate English majors, it is doubted whether FVR can be applied effectively to advanced Chinese English learners. Hence, in this thesis, it is intended to explore the answers to the following three questions: 1) Can Chinese undergraduate English majors acquire word knowledge by the Free Reading Method? Can they acquire word knowledge by the Intensive Learning Method as well? 2) Which method, the Free Reading Method or the Intensive Learning Method, can achieve better acquisition result, i.e., more word knowledge? 3) What are the features of word knowledge retention acquired by two methods?To seek objective answers to those questions, the author did a set of experiments, which consisted of five groups of experiments and one comprehensive test. There are three items in each group: a passage for reading, a word list for intensive learning, and a test examining the acquisition result of new words in the passage and word list. For examining the effectiveness, the reading passages were prepared to meet the requirements of FVR. Every new word in the word lists is made up of its spelling, phonetic transcription, part of speech, meaning and an example sentence. For the necessity of equality in comparison, the words are singled out from concrete passages rather than from dictionaries, each word possesses only one part of speech and one meaning. And the number, part of speech and level of the new words in each word list are identical with those contained in the reading passage within the same experimental group. The test within each experimental group employs the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS) method. The purpose is to investigate subjects' acquisition achievements, esp. the meaning and part of speech of new words in that group. The method used in the final comprehensive test is the same as the one used in the separate groups, but it contains all the new words of those five groups. The purpose of this test is to examine the word knowledge retention in terms of time span.The global analysis on the experimental data manifests the following results: 1) both the Free Reading Method and the Intensive Learning Method are effective to undergraduate English majors in their word acquisition; 2) the Intensive Learning Method is significantly superior to the Free Reading Method when the subjects were tested one day after they learned the words; 3) the results of the Final Comprehensive Test at the end of 7 weeks experiment indicates the word knowledge acquired by the Intensive Learning Method is still more than that acquired by the Free Reading Method, but their difference is no more significant in statistics. The further T- Test...