A Study On The Effects Of Different Reading Tasks On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

The importance of vocabulary in foreign language learning has been widely recognized by learners and teachers. Furthermore, the issue of vocabulary acquisition is receiving more and more attention in second language research. But it is far from clear how learners acquire vocabulary and how it can be taught effectively. One essential question is what tasks are most effective for vocabulary retention. The current paper aims to provide a partial answer to this question.The thesis firstly introduced the theoretic background of incidental vocabulary acquisition and the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Hulstijn&Laufer, 2001). The Involvement load is a construct that describes the motivational and cognitive dimensions of a task based on the belief that deeper and more elaborate processing of words will increase retention.The empirical study in the thesis adopted the involvement index, proposed by Hulstijn & Laufer, to explore the effectiveness of different learning tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition. The subjects consisted of two classes of non-English majors. In the first experiment 41 students were assigned three tasks with different involvement loads respectively (reading, reading plus filling-in and writing). They were not informed of any posttests on the target words and spent 18, 25 and 32 minutes finishing their tasks respectively. In the second experiment 30 students were assigned the same tasks but the time to finish them was controlled at 35 minutes. After the tasks, students received an immediate posttest on the target words and a week later a delayed posttest with the order of the target words changed randomly.After analysis and comparison, the results reveal that learning tasks with higher involvement load are generally more effective for incidental vocabulary acquisition than tasks with lower involvement load and the factor of time-on-task plays some role in vocabulary retention (students in the second experiment performed better than those in the first experiment). Therefore, teachers can design tasks varying in involvement load for words and make all efforts to balance the effect of tasks and class hours.Therefore, this thesis tests and complements the involvement load hypothesis (Hulstijn&Laufer, 2001). The relatively low retention rates in the experiments indicate that one exposure to a lexical item is far from enough to leave a deep impression for future retention. Some Complementary measures (e.g., repeated exposures to target words on the part of learners) are thus essential for an effective vocabulary acquisition. But teachers must balance the class hours and different tasks according to different purposes and different abilities of the students.In the end, the thesis lists some limitations of the present study and provides some suggestions for further research.