A Research Into Intentional And Incidental Vocabulary Learning Of Wuwei No.6 Senior Grade Ⅰ Students In Reading Class

The purpose of this study was to do research into intentional and incidental vocabulary learning of Wuwei No.6 Senior Grade I students in reading class.Wilkins said "while without grammar very little can be conveyed, without vocabulary nothing can be conveyed" (Wilkins 1974). Yang Zhigang said that during English teaching and learning, vocabulary was the most difficult part. In middle school for senior students in China, English reading ability is so important that both teachers and students spend a lot of time on reading to improve it. However, although we have made good effort, students' reading ability is far beyond what is expected, which can be proved by students who failed in English test. One of the reasons is vocabulary. Therefore vocabulary learning is very important in English learning.Vocabulary is a set of lexemes, including single words, compound words and idioms. Much research work has been done on L2 learners and college students. The author will concern about the -subjects who are middle school students and whose vocabulary-is below 2000 words. The hypothesis of the research is that the incidental and intentional vocabulary learning approaches can facilitate Wu Wei No.6 Senior Grade One students' vocabulary learning and retention.The research is based on the theories of "Input Hypotheses", "Depth of Processing" and the studies of Cohen and Aphek (1981).Hulstijn (1996). Coady (1997b). To testify the hypotheses, an experimental research has been designed. The sample consists of three natural classes since random sampling was not allowed by the headmaster in the author's school. Each class received one of three treatments: context, context with a word list, a word list. The simple test of matching the words with the correct definition was implemented to measure effects immediately followed and four weeks after treatment. The findings revealed the following:1) Words can be learned in context incidentally by Wuwei No.6 Senior Grade One students in the author's experiment, though incidental vocabulary learning is not more efficient than intentional vocabulary learning.2) Reading with the help of a word list can help the learners not only comprehend the text but also learn a relatively large number of words found in the text.3) Reciting word lists can be an effective way to quickly learn words.4) The retention of words learned from context is better than that of the words learned in the word list.5) Incidental vocabulary learning is less efficient than intentional learning, though they made small gains for senior grade one students.These findings show that both the incidental and intentional learning strategies can facilitate vocabulary learning, though incidental learning strategy is less efficient than intentional vocabulary learning, and we also draw the conclusion that incidental vocabulary learning strategy can facilitate Senior Grade One students' retention. These suggest classroom activities should provide students with integrating vocabulary instructions in order to better serve their educational needs.