Empirical Study Of Task-Induced Involvement Load On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition By Chinese Low-Intermediate Learners Of English

Incidental vocabulary acquisition has become an especially popular subject abroad. The development of cognitive psychology greatly inspired the researches on this issue. In China, few empirical studies of this type were conducted and more theoretical thinking and empirical work are needed to enhance the cognitive study of incidental vocabulary acquisition. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) put forward their Task-induced Involvement Load Hypothesis for L2 vocabulary acquisition and research, which is supposed to be the most noticeable one in recent years. Their purpose is to find out the definite criteria which could be observed, manipulated,and measured so that researchers could grade L2 vocabulary learning task in terms of the depth of processing it involves and know which task is more effective than the others. The involvement construct is designed on two dimensions, with one motivational component: need; and two cognitive components: search and evaluation. It can be formalized and operationalised by devising tasks with various degrees of the three components, and therefore,can be submitted to empirical investigation. Its basic assumption is that retention of unfamiliar words is conditional upon the degree of involvement load in processing these words.The present study was intended to come up with an answer to the question...