A Study Of Reading And Writing Task-based Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition By Senior High School Learners

In recent years, incidental vocabulary acquisition has been viewed as a new trend of learning L2 vocabulary acquisition at abroad. Most studies are about reading tasks. The studies about the comparison of reading and writing tasks are fewer. The present study mainly investigates the effects of reading and writing tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition in the senior high school. Meanwhile, the present study also validates the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The more the task-based involvement loads, the better the effects of tasks on vocabulary retention. This study partially supported Involvement Load Hypothesis, but the quantitative criteria of some involvement components need to be modified. In this study, the subjects were 91 students in Grade Two from three intact classes in Beipiao senior high school. They were divided into three groups, including reading group, writing group and reading plus writing group. Three groups were randomly assigned to three tasks. The reading materials and target words were selected from the English textbook published by People Education Publishing house. After they completed three tasks inducing different involvement loads, three groups all had the immediate vocabulary test and the delayed vocabulary test two weeks later. The vocabulary acquisition test was designed on the Wesche & Paribakht's Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (1996). All the data were collected and analyzed by the software SPSS 15.0.The present study addressed three research questions:(1) To what extent can senior high school learners incidentally acquire vocabulary through reading and writing tasks? (2) Is the task inducing a higher involvement load more effective than the task inducing a lower involvement load? (3) What effects does each task have on incidental vocabulary acquisition in the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests?The results of vocabulary acquisition tests in three groups were analyzed and discussed. The main findings are concluded as the following:the senior high school learners can incidentally acquire partial vocabulary knowledge through reading and writing tasks. The effect of reading plus writing task on incidental vocabulary acquisition is better than two other tasks. In addition, the productive tasks on vocabulary retention are most obvious. But the difference between productive tasks is not significant.The present study has a great significance both in theory and practice. In theory, this study verifies the Involvement Load Hypothesis. In practice, the task-based incidental vocabulary acquisition is facilitative for junior English learners. Therefore, this study proposes some suggestions of acquiring L2 vocabulary learning through different tasks for senior high school learners.