On Effects Of Depth Of Vocabulary Knowledge, Tasks And Inferencing Strategy On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

According to the research development of second language acquisition, the study on acquisition of vocabulary has become more and more popular and been paid much more attention. Generally, there are three main factors affecting the effect of vocabulary learning: personal language proficiency; learning strategies and external influences, for example teachers or learning materials. Moreover, there are mainly two kinds of ways to learn English: class learning and personal learning. Many experts had done various studies and they proved that many vocabularies are learned through reading incidentally. Then what are the factors that affect incidental vocabulary learning?As the further development of research on task-based teaching method and incidental vocabulary learning, many scholars had done many studies on the factors that influence vocabulary acquisition. The Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by B. Laufer and J. H. Hulstijn (2001) suggests that during the reading process different involvement load of tasks yield different result of word retention. And students' language proficiency and learning strategies influence their learning efficiency. The present study is just going to search the main factors that influence the acquisition of vocabulary for second language learners. Mainly the following factors are discussed: 1. Learner's own depth of vocabulary knowledge; 2. Inferencing method and success when learning through reading; 3. Tasks done during the reading process.Based on analyzing the influencing factors theoretically, the present study launched experimental test for 56 learners who are sophomores of non-English major. The process of the test is divided into three parts. In the first part, the learners are required to read an article with ten unknown target words and then guess the meaning of these 10 words while writing their thinking process when inferring the strange words. The introspective think-aloud method is used by the students, who are trained before the experiment, to testify whether they guess the meanings successfully or not. In the second part, after finishing reading and guessing, students are asked to do some tasks about understanding the idea of the passage and the ten target words. In the last part, the ten target words are tested two times for testifying the retention of them, one time after the experiment immediately and second time two weeks later delayed. The data coming from the experiment shows that the language proficiency, guessing methods and tasks, the three factors can all influence the incidental vocabulary acquisition of second language learners to some extend. Therefore, students should try their best to make progress on their language proficiency, learn and use certain strategies to enhance learning efficiency. To the teachers and researchers, increasing the contact frequency of words to students is an effective way to help them learn vocabulary more quickly and efficiently. Meantime, the data from the present study also testify and supply some of the former researches.Finally, the article put forward the weak points of the experiment caused by the restriction of external factors both in the theory and practice aspect. At the same time, some suggestions are proposed for future research on incidental vocabulary acquisition.