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A Study Of The Effects Of Task-induced Involvement Load On College English Incidental Vocabulary Learning

Posted on:2010-07-29Degree:MasterType:Thesis
Country:ChinaCandidate:L LiangFull Text:PDF
GTID:2155360302462598Subject:English Curriculum and Pedagogy
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Vocabulary plays a decisive role in second language acquisition and is the most essential element in communication. Due to limited class time and the need to focus on many language skills, teachers are not likely to spend enough time in class on vocabulary building for students. Researchers have found that incidental vocabulary learning, or vocabulary acquisition can take place as a by-product of reading. However, recent studies have shown that a certain amount of reading-related tasks prove efficient for retention of vocabulary. In explaining the superiority of one task over another, most of the researchers suggested that the more effective the task required is the deeper level of processing of the new words than the other task.Hulstijn&Laufer (2001) proposed the Involvement Load Hypothesis and defined criteria by which we could assess the tasks in terms of the depth of processing them and know which task is more effective than another with regard to the learning of new vocabulary items while reading.The purpose of the study is aimed at studying the effects of students'incidental vocabulary learning through different task-induced involvement load based on involvement load hypothesis. The tests, interview and questionnaire are conducted to collect relevant data. The participants in this study are 120 students in three intact parallel classes from non-English majors. They are sophomores from Liaoning Normal University. Three tasks of the tests, which are different in amount of involvement load in terms of word processing, are designed. They are reading comprehension, gap-filling and sentence writing. The tasks are assigned to three classes randomly. There are immediate test and delayed test for three groups. SPSS Statistic Software Package 16.0 is run to analyze the statistical data of the experiment and questionnaire.The results indicate that Task-induced involvement load is closely related to the degree of vocabulary retention. There is significant difference in higher involvement load tasks for students'vocabulary retention than low involvement load tasks. Vocabulary knowledge can be retained longer in tasks with a higher involvement load than in tasks with a lower involvement load. Finally the study discusses its limitation and provides our language teachers with some reasonable suggestions and recommendations.
Keywords/Search Tags:Incidental Vocabulary Learning, Involvement Load Hypothesis, Task-induced Involvement Load, Vocabulary Retention
PDF Full Text Request
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