| Vocabulary is a fundamental component of language so learning vocabulary is an initial and dominant goal for foreign language learners. As Wilkins (1982) said "without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed." Furthermore, the number of vocabulary that a learner mastered will certainly have great effect on his linguistic competence. Obviously, a learner with inadequate vocabulary knowledge will be doomed to fail in the further development of second language acquisition.Thus it can be seen that vocabulary teaching and learning constitute a major problem for EFL teachers and students. By learning new words, students have difficulties in pronouncing, using and spelling the English words as well as grasping their meanings. In order to gain some knowledge about the above mentioned problems, this paper has examined to what extent extensive reading affects vocabulary acquisition and explored whether 20 weeks extensive reading program could enhance target word's knowledge of the learners in the aspects of the acquisition of words' spelling, pronunciation and meaning. Meanwhile, the present study also investigated the differences between passage reading and novel reading as far as incidental vocabulary acquisition is concerned. In this case study, the author manages to assess acquisition and retention of a relative large number of the target words (215 Ws in all) from the receptive and productive, oral and written aspects by observing the performance of the three investigated subjects with different language proficiency. Analyses were conducted on the data obtained from two experiment tasks given and designed by the author. From the experiments the author made the following discoveries:1. Incidental acquisition of target words occurred during both two kinds of reading experiments (passage reading and novel reading). Therefore, it is reconfirmed the idea that learners can develop their vocabulary knowledge through extensive reading. The research of this paper shows that there is a range of vocabulary acquisition benefits from extensive reading. Experimental studies have shown that not only is there improvement in acquiring vocabulary meaning, but there is improvement in spelling the words. In short, extensive reading is a useful tool for English learners to enhance their vocabulary knowledge.2. Word frequency directly affects effective learning of target words. More frequent words were more likely to be learned than less frequent words. Further, it is rather safe to assume that increasing the number of occurrences of target words will lead to higher acquisition rates.3. Language proficiency had no significant effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition, it is likely that the relationship between IVA and language proficiency is very fragile.4. Novel reading has proved to be a more efficient way than passage reading to enhance incidental vocabulary acquisition. Because vocabulary learning is not an all-or-nothing piece of learning for any particular word, but that it is a gradual process of one meeting with a word adding to or strengthening the small amounts of knowledge gained from previous meeting. For passage reading, there are less repeated opportunities to meet target words within meaningful context when compared with novel reading. Therefore, if the small amount of learning of a word is not soon reinforced by another meeting, then that learning will be lost. It is thus critical important in an extensive reading program that learners have the opportunity to keep meeting words that they have met before.From the above discoveries, it is received wisdom that people do learn most of their vocabulary knowledge from extensive reading. Krashen states that "reading is good for you. The research supports a stronger conclusion, however. Reading is the only way, the only way we become good readers, develop a good writing style, an adequate vocabulary, advanced grammar, and the only way we become good spellers"(1993:23).
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