A Study On Non-English Majors' Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is one of the three core elements of English and foundation of English learning. The more vocabulary is mastered, the higher level of English the learner will have. Yet in the literature of English language teaching and learning, a recurring theme has been the neglect of vocabulary knowledge. The teaching and learning of vocabulary have been undervalued in the field of SLA throughout its varying stages and up to the present day (Zimmerman, 1997). Guiding college students to acquire an adequate vocabulary is an important task that is often neglected in China.During the past decades, studies have shown that wide reading contributes to incidental vocabulary acquisition. In the past 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 tasks----has been rarely explored in the studies available.The purpose of this study is to examine the effect of reading tasks with different involvement load on the acquisition of English vocabulary and the effect of time-on-task on incidental vocabulary acquisition in Chinese colleges. Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis for L2 vocabulary learning proposed by Laufer & Hulstijn (2001), three reading task conditions (reading comprehension & answering comprehension questions; reading comprehension & filling in exercises; reading comprehension & writing original sentences) will be compared in my study, as to the effectiveness on the vocabulary acquisition. The present study addresses the three key research questions as follows:1. Is incidental vocabulary acquisition possible for Chinese Non-English majors in their reading?2. Do different reading tasks affect the students'incidental vocabulary acquisition?3. Does the factor of time-on-task affect the retention of vocabulary? In this study, the author investigated four classes of Jining College sophomores, and the students were randomly assigned to the three different learning tasks during normal class time. After the completion of the task, the work sheets were collected, and the students were unexpectedly given an immediate posttest in which they were required to provide Chinese translation or English explanations for a list of twelve target words. Two weeks later, they received the same test again. In the first test, the time on task was not controlled. In the second test, the time on task was kept identical.The results of the study indicated that learners could incidentally acquire a certain number of words through reading, and the number varied with different reading tasks and that when time-on-task was considered as a separate variable, the efficacy of tasks on vocabulary retention was not only subject to the involvement load factor but also sensitive to the factor of time-on-task.In a pedagogical sense, these results have indicated that firstly, teachers should make tactful exploitation of multiple tasks with different involvement loads to foster optimal vocabulary development in learners. Secondly, since tasks with different involvement load will have different effects on word retention, teachers could design tasks varying in involvement load for words depending on the type of reinforcement they want to provide. Thirdly, since time-on-task does play some role in helping vocabulary retention, teacher should balance the time spent on tasks to achieve best acquisition results. Lastly, teachers should make strategic decisions with regard to what learning tasks to be used for different words and balance the use of several simpler tasks with a few involving tasks for best acquisition results.However, the current investigations conducted still have several restrictions. On the one hand, it only investigated the short-term effect of tasks with different involvement loads on vocabulary learning. Future research should therefore examine the long-term effect by providing learners with multiple exposures to the target words.On the other hand, only three tasks (reading, reading plus fi11-in, and writing original sentences) were investigated in their effectiveness on incidental vocabulary learning. Since the list of task type is endless, it is important for further research to examine more tasks with different involvement loads. Future research should also be done concerning the effectiveness of those activities on the retention of lexical items in a long term. Hopefully, by clarifying the effectiveness of different learning tasks on incidental vocabulary learning, the current study could make some contribution to L2 pedagogy.