The Study Of Incidental Vocabulary Learning Based Upon The Involvement Load Hypothesis

To learn a foreign or a second language,learners must acquire many thousand words.It is believed'that the major way of acquiring vocabulary is through processing L2 information,a situation in which learners have no intention to commit the words appearing in the information to memory.This type of vocabulary learning refers to as incidental vocabulary learning.Research on incidental vocabulary learning is of a large variety,and various factors conducive to effective incidental vocabulary learning have been found.Laufer and Hulstijn(2001) proposed Involvement Load Hypothesis to evaluate the factors, holding that the greater the involvement load is,the better the retention of the words would be.However,after their empirical research on this hypothesis,few further studies were conducted.Therefore,this study within the framework of the Involvement Load Hypothesis aimed to examine this hypothesis by investigating the effect of involvement load on English vocabulary acquisition in an incidental learning situation.In brief,the present study attempted to answer three research questions as follows:Q1:Is the task which induces higher involvement load more beneficial for incidental vocabulary learning than the one which induces lower involvement load?Q1.1 In the immediate posttest,does the group performing the task inducing higher involvement load score significantly higher than that performing the task inducing lower involvement load?Q1.2 In the delayed posttest,does the group performing the task inducing higher involvement load-score significantly higher than that performing the task inducing lower involvement load?Q2:Is it possible for learners to gain and to retain productive vocabulary knowledge through reading tasks in an incidental learning setting? If so,Q2.1:Do tasks inducing'higher involvement load result in significantly better immediate gains in productive vocabulary?.Q2.2:Do tasks inducing higher involvement load result in significantly better long-term retention of productive vocabulary?Q3:What is the relation between learners' vocabulary level and their performance in incidental vocabulary learning?In order to address the above questions,three tasks differing in their involvement load were designed and conducted.In terms of the Hypothesis,sentence making task was designed to induce the highest,sentence filling task the second highest,and reading comprehension task the lowest.The participants were given an unexpected vocabulary retention test after completing the tasks,and were given another unexpected delayed posttest one week later.After the completion of all the posttests, the Vocabulary Levels Test was administered to the participants.All the data were analyzed through SPSS 13.0.The results did not completely support for the Involvement Load Hypothesis: tasks with higher involvement load did not necessarily lead to significantly better immediate gains and long-term retention of the target words.For one thing,task features which could not be reflected by involvement factors exerted impact on incidental vocabulary learning;for another,the effects of tasks were constrained by the limited capacity of human processing.Additionally,the role on the learners' part might also take effect,inclusive of their active step from text meaning to word meaning as well as their general motivation of vocabulary extension(which may result in intentional learning).Besides,learners' vocabulary level also influenced their performance in the two posttests.The negative evidence of the research hypotheses raises questions about the validity of the Involvement Load Hypothesis.However,this study might be restricted by several confounding variables such as the subject factor,non-randomization,and time on tasks.Future research should take them into account,and try to reduce their effects to a minimum.This study,providing directions for modification of the Involvement Load Hypothesis,is of considerable theoretical and practical significance.For future research on establishing theoretical constructs which explain the effectiveness of vocabulary-learning tasks,this study has provided preliminary suggestions and offered another empirical testing for the present theoretical construct.The result of the research could provide suggestions for design of vocabulary teaching as well.