Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Junior High School Extra-curricular English Reading,

Vocabulary is the core of the language. "No grammar, a little can be conveyed; No vocabulary, nothing can be conveyed."(Wilkins, 1972) Researches in incidental vocabulary acquisition are prosperous abroad. In China, however, little attention is paid to it, let alone any longitudinal studies. The author of this empirical study has carried out an extensive reading experiment and two surveys attended by 141 Junior One students for one school year. The author has also conducted the grouped experiments involving different reading purposes, reading tasks, vocabulary sizes and reading materials. The learners' gains and retentions of incidental vocabulary are explored through three vocabulary tests. After collecting the scores of vocabulary tests, The author makes use of the statistic tool - SPSS version 13.0 (Statistical Package for Social Sciences) to analyze the raw data.The author has analyzed the empirical results and interpreted them in the light of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, Information Processing Model and the "noticing" assumption. The author finally has the following research findings: 1) The junior middle school students are able to obtain the vocabulary incidentally through extracurricular reading. 2) Given the same amount of time, the reading tasks "read and retell" and "read and answer questions afterwards" have no significant effects on the gains and retentions of incidental vocabulary. 3) The junior middle school students with larger vocabulary perform better than those with smaller vocabulary. 4) The junior middle school students can obtain more vocabulary while reading the materials with pictures. 5) "Reading with tasks" promotes better incidental vocabulary acquisition than "reading only", and the "reading only" group and the non-reading group show no significant differences in the gains and incidental vocabulary acquisition.The research findings of the present study may throw some light on the English language teaching and learning in the Chinese classroom. The author proposes that it will be more effective for students to enlarge their vocabulary by extensive reading of the interesting materials rather than through learning wordlists by rote; and that in order to improve students' efficiency in gains and retentions of incidental vocabulary, it is necessary and important for teachers to monitor the students' extensive reading by giving them some reading tasks and helping them build up an individualized battery of reading strategies at the same time.