An Experimental Study On The Effect Of Task On L2 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

During the past decade, researchers and commentators have pointed to the importance of vocabulary acquisition for second language (L2) learners. Studies have shown that wide reading contributes to incidental vocabulary acquisition. In the recent two decades, research at home and abroad has been conducted to examine several factors that may influence incidental vocabulary acquisition during L2 reading. However, in the review of the studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition, the author found that a potential factor-the reading purpose-has been rarely explored in the studies available.The purpose of this experimental study is to examine the effect of reading tasks with different involvement load on the acquisition of English vocabulary in Chinese college. Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis for L2 vocabulary learning proposed by Laufer & Hulstijn (2001), in my study, two reading task conditions (Reading comprehension & answering comprehension questions, Reading comprehension & writing original sentences) will be compared as to the effectiveness on the vocabulary acquisition. The present study is likely to address the two key research questions as follows:1) Do intermediate Chinese learners of English acquire and retain vocabulary incidentally through reading after completing designed task?2) Will Tasks with a higher involvement load be more effective for vocabulary retention than tasks with a lower involvement load?Fifty freshmen from HuaXia College of Wuhan University of Technology participated in the experiment. The pretest showed that the participants were of similar proficiency level and the target words to be learned were unfamiliar to them. They were randomly assigned to one of the two tasks with different amount of involvement load and were asked to read the texts. On completing all of the tasks, the participants were unexpectedly tested on the retention of the target words that in the texts. In the quantitative analysis, all the data were to be run by the powerful software—SPSS 12.0.The results indicated that learners could incidentally acquire a certain number of words through reading, and the number varied with different reading purposes. Therefore, when teachers design their reading tasks, they should take such factors as different reading purposes. Only in this way can the learners with different readingabilities make progress in incidental vocabulary acquisition.