Effects Of Semi-structured Writing Task On Adult L2 Vocabulary Learning

In recent years, L2 vocabulary acquisition research is brought to the central stage of second language research. This study is to explore the role of structured writing tasks in adult EFL learners' vocabulary teaching and learning.To better understand how writing is used as a tool to improve adult ESL/EFL vocabulary instruction, a systematic literature review outlined in an integrative theoretical framework was conducted. True vocabulary acquisition with long-term retention occurs only with meaningful exposure in situations in which real communication takes place, spoken or written. The Output Hypothesis (Swain, 1985), however, is based on the idea that understanding language and producing language are different skills, and that the second skill can only be developed by pushing the learner to produce output by speaking or writing. Hulstijn's (1998) study showed that students who did longer original writing retained more vocabulary.The present study is conducted to (a) shed more light on the effectiveness of semi-structured writing for EFL students' receptive and productive vocabulary learning by examining its effect on retention and use of word knowledge and (b) further explore the effect of the text variable exposure frequency on the word learning process and some individual differences in the possible benefit or non-benefit of the writing tasks.The present study used a quasi-experimental design to examine the effect of semi-structured writing tasks in adult EFL learners' vocabulary teaching and learning. University non-English majors (n=60) in Shanghai participated in the study and they received intensive English classes using whole-language method with particular emphasis on target vocabulary for twelve weeks and a semi-structured writing task is assigned to the treatment group for comparison purposes.A readability calculation on six randomly-sampled excerpts (Total words: 104, 123, 103, 160, 139 and 72) from the textbook that the participants are exposed to during the twelve-week intervention is performed. The assignment of the control and experimental group is first of all for convenience purpose, and secondly, it is based on the premise that two classes are equal in their vocabulary size. The premise is evidenced by a pre-test given prior to the study (see Appendix II). According to the results, there is no statistical significance between the two groups. Based on this finding, we treated the two groups as equal in respect to their vocabulary performance at the starting point of the study.Besides the same instruction the two classes receive in class, Class II, as an experimental group, is asked to write an essay on a given topic every two weeks for twelve consecutive weeks by using the learned words and phrases in the Target Vocabulary List of each unit (see Appendix I). Class I, as a control group, do not receive any experiment.Post-test(see Appendix IV) is intended to test the performance on the productive aspect of the targeted vocabulary and it focuses on students' deep understanding of the target words and phrases (see Appendix I) and the differences between the two groups (control group and experimental group). The results of the post-test showed that there was significant difference between the two groups' performance on sentence construction, comparatively with the other items (there was little difference between the two groups' performance, however the mean scores of the experimental group are all higher than those of the control group). According to further analysis of the scores in different section in the item of sentence construction, the scores of the students from the experimental group centralized from 20-50, while the scores of the students from control group were distributed from 0-50. Furthermore, the effects of writing tasks were different from item to item. According to the survey after the post-test (see Appendix VII), the students with the habits of picking up English at their spare time (listening to English songs or watching English movies) got relatively high scores of pre-test and post-test, and the writing tasks were welcomed by most students in the experimental group.Based on the above analyses, the main findings are: 1) semi-structured writing tasks have a significant effect on sentence construction of the target words; 2) the effect of structured writing tasks on the learning of the usage of verbs is more significantly than the usage of nouns or adjectives; 3) if learners learn the words receptively, then they are likely to gain significantly more receptive knowledge, whereas productive learning leads to larger gains in productive knowledge; 4) Individual differences affect their writing tasks and vocabulary acquisition. The students who were interested in English learning and had stored more knowledge of English had relatively adequate vocabulary for them to write, and the more they wrote for the structured writing tasks, the more vocabulary they had in their mind.