An Empirical Study On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Extensive Reading For College Students

Vocabulary is essential to language and of critical importance to the language learners. There are mainly two approaches to vocabulary learning: intentional vocabulary learning and incidental vocabulary acquisition. Many researchers have done studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading and proved its effectiveness. However, a few of them discussed incidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading for students with different vocabulary levels. This paper aims to explore the relationship between incidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading and different vocabulary levels.Incidental vocabulary acquisition is defined as acquiring vocabulary items as a by-product of language use when the focus of learners'attention is the meaning to be conveyed rather than the linguistic structure (Wesche and Paribakht 1999; Wode 1999). This paper provides the theoretical basis for incidental vocabulary acquisition, and gives a brief literature review of the definition of incidental vocabulary acquisition and differences between incidental vocabulary acquisition and intentional vocabulary learning.Moreover, related theories have been stated, such as Input Hypothesis. At the same time, it also presents some variables that influence the efficacy of IVA through extensive reading and indicates the orientation of the present study. Based on Krashen's (1994) Input Hypothesis, an empirical study was carried out to explore the effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition, the relationship between vocabulary level and incidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading, and examine the retention of lexical gains by the two groups respectively.Fifty-two non-English majors from two classes were chosen as subjects in the research, and there were 26 freshmen and 26 juniors in each group respectively. At the first step, 52 subjects in the two groups were required to take Nation's Vocabulary Levels Test in order to distinguish and ensure different vocabulary levels between the two groups. They were given 20 minutes finishing the test. At the second step, all the subjects were assigned a pretest to test the target words in 10 minutes. At the third step, the subjects were given an English reading material and asked to finish reading it in 50 minutes. After the reading activity, the subjects received a posttest on the target words, and the time limit was controlled at 10 minutes. In comparison with those in the pretest, the word sequence of target words in the posttest was slightly different. At the end of the experiment, a delayed posttest on the target words with slight difference in word sequence was conducted one week after the posttest.The analysis and comparison of the results indicate that incidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading is an effective approach to vocabulary learning for college students in China. Moreover, although Group 1 (lower vocabulary level students) achieved lower scores in both the pretest and the posttest than Group 2 (higher vocabulary level students), Group 1 (lower vocabulary level students) received higher rate of incidental vocabulary acquisition than Group 2 (higher vocabulary level students). In addition, in terms of the retention of lexical gains, the higher level group can retain their lexical gains effectively while the lower level group cannot retain their lexical gains. Thus, it is necessary to apply to incidental vocabulary acquisition approach appropriately for different levels of students in vocabulary learning process. At last, the pedagogical implications and limitations of the current research are discussed and the suggestions for further research are provided.