An Empirical Study Of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition On English Reading Of High School Students

The researches on vocabulary study have been highlighted by many experts again since 1970's. And more and more scholars and teachers have put the achievements of the vocabulary study into the practice of their daily teaching. Particularly, incidental vocabulary learning (IVA) has been paid more attention. IVA means that learners acquire vocabulary knowledge during the process of listening and reading. While they are listening to or reading some foreign language materials, the learners attach more importance to the contents instead of the vocabulary itself only. And incidental vocabulary learning is the byproduct of learners'reading and listening.The most noted theory on incidental vocabulary learning is the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and J. H. Hulstijn in 2001. According to their hypothesis, there are three elements contained in a whole process of learners'reading. They are need, search and evaluation. Different reading tasks have different involvement loads, which leads to a fact that different involvement loads have obviously different effects on the efficiency of learners'vocabulary retention.So far, most of the studies on IVA in China have paid more attention to English majors or non-majors in universities and colleges. Few studies have been executed in senior high schools in China. Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and J. H. Hulstijn in 2001, the present study carried on an empirical study in a Chinese senior high school with the aim to find the answers to the following questions:1. Is it true that Chinese senior middle school students acquire and retain vocabulary incidentally through reading?2. Do different reading tasks have different effects on middle school students'vocabulary retention? If so, to what extend they are differentiated from each other?3. How do different reading tasks have different effects on middle school students'vocabulary retention?The findings of the present study are expected to supply a gap in the field of IVA in China and enrich the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and J. H. Hulstijn.The students coming from three different normal classes in No. 12 Middle School of Taiyuan participated in the study. A passage with 12 target words was chosen as the reading material for the test. The whole experiment consists of three steps. In the first step a pretest was executed in order to be sure that the number of the target words that the subjects are familiar with is lower than 5%. In the second step all the three groups of students took part in a reading task. They read the same passage but with different reading tasks (Group One, reading comprehension; Group Two, reading and translating the sentences containing the target words; Group Three, reading and making sentences with the target words). Having finished the reading tasks, all the participants were demanded to finish the immediate test that had been designed previously. Then the papers were collected by the teachers. Two weeks later, a posttest was executed. The results of the present study can be concluded as follows:1. It is true that the Chinese senior high school students can acquire and memorize vocabulary knowledge incidentally through reading. But different reading tasks have different effects on learners'IVA. The means and standard deviations in SPSS show the obvious differences among the three groups.2. The reading task with higher involvement load has more efficient effect on the retention of learners than the reading task with lower involvement load.3. And in the current study the word-focused reading tasks (Task 3 and Task 2) affect learners'retention more efficiently than reading comprehension only (Task 1), as Task 3 and Task 2 involve more workload than Task 1.The findings are instructive for the English teaching in senior high schools. Firstly, English teachers are supposed to encourage the students to read English reading materials after school or in their spare time as many as possible. Secondly, teachers can design some reading activities of higher involvement with the aim to help students acquire vocabulary more efficiently. Lastly, some more methods should be offered to students to enrich their vocabulary.