Learning Task Effects On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition For English Majors

The present study was intended to investigate the effects of different learning tasks with different involvement loads on incidental English vocabulary acquisition for Chinese English majors. The three research questions were:(1) What differential immediate learning effects do different learning tasks have on incidental vocabulary acquisition?(2) What different retention effects do different learning tasks have on incidental vocabulary acquisition?(3) Within the same leaning task, which task will lead to the best retention of the target words?Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001), the research was designed. Participants were 73 junior English majors from three intact classes at Chongqing University, who were divided into three groups (Reading Comprehension Group, Summary Writing Group and Free Writing Group), and each group completed one of the three learning tasks inducing different involvement loads after they read a short story of Ernest Hemingway titled"The Battler". The Reading Comprehension Group was asked to check fifteen"true or false questions"which were irrelevant to the target words. The Summary Writing Group was required to write a summary of the story in about 200 words with all the target words. The Free Writing Group was asked to write an article of any style (except a summary of the story) in about 200 words with all the target words. Acquisition and retention of the 8 target words were measured by the immediate vocabulary test and the delayed vocabulary test. And the data were analyzed by the software SPSS.12.0. Results indicated that the subjects could acquire English new words incidentally through different learning tasks. The Summary Writing Group and Free Writing Group performed significantly better than the Reading Comprehension Group in the immediate vocabulary test, but the Free Writing Group did not perform significantly better than the Summary Writing Group. Furthermore, the Summary Writing Group and Free Writing Group performed significantly better than the Reading Comprehension Group in the delayed vocabulary test, and the Free Writing Group performed significantly better than the Summary Writing Group, too. In addition, significant difference was observed within the Reading Comprehension Group and within the Summary Writing Group between the immediate vocabulary test and the delayed vocabulary test. However, no significant difference was found when the mean scores, obtained by the Free Writing Group in the immediate vocabulary test, were compared with those in the delayed vocabulary test. Findings were interpreted in terms of the previous studies and theory on incidental vocabulary acquisition. In addition, implications on teaching and learning for Chinese students of English majors were discussed based on the study results.