Effects Of Task Involvement Load On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In A Second Language

The important role of vocabulary knowledge in learning language is well discussed and has aroused the interest of many foreign language teachers and linguists. Most linguists believe a large proportion of vocabulary is acquired incidentally. Incidental vocabulary learning is a new term that has turned up in the field of applied linguistics in recent decades. The reason why the kind of acquisition is called "incidental" by some linguists is because the vocabulary acquisition is not the aim but a by-product in the learning activities.Laufer and Hulstijn did a number of studies on incidental acquisition, in recent years. They proposed the "Involvement Load Hypothesis" in 2001, which claimed that vocabulary gain and retention would be higher with a greater level of task involvement load. The Hypothesis was explained from the view of psychological cognition, such as need, search and evaluation. The present study examined the effects of task-involvement load on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Forty-eight college students (English as foreign language) were randomly assigned to one of the following four treatments: (1) reading and comprehension questions irrelevant to target words (words glossed). (2) reading and comprehension questions relevant to target words (words glossed). (3)...