| The research on vocabulary acquisition has been gradually drawing the attention of language scholars and educators. Quantities of studies have indicated the feasibility and effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA). As a by-product of language learning activities, IVA does not require learners to memorize words intentionally; however, it does account for a substantial proportion of the vocabulary growth. The present study focuses on the incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.In the past two decades, research at home and abroad has been conducted to examine the factors that may influence IVA through foreign (second) language reading, including the effect of word-guessing ability of learners, the effect of word frequency, the effect of different reading tasks and the effect of topic familiarity. In addition, those previous studies on IVA were usually designed with a single factor. However, little attention was paid to the effects of input enhancement; and research with more than one factor has rarely been studied.As a result, the present study, by means of 2X2 factorial between-subjects design, investigate the effects of the input enhancement and task-induced involvement on IVA within the framework of Involvement Load Hypothesis and Noticing Hypothesis. The input enhancement appears as boldface while the task-induced involvement as different reading tasks. The present study addresses three key questions:(1) Whether input enhancement has effects on the immediate and delayed vocabulary knowledge scale (VKS) posttests? If it does, how does it affect?(2) Whether task-induced involvement has effects on the immediate and delayed VKS posttests? If it does, how does it affect?(3) Whether task-induced involvement and input enhancement have interaction effects on the immediate and delayed VKS posttests? If they do, how do they affect?Those questions were answered in the present study. The subjects were 115 non-English major sophomores, who came from two parallel classes. The reading material with the enhanced input was randomly assigned to one class, leaving the other to read the material without enhancement. Each class was equally divided into two groups, each of which dealt with a different reading task. The immediate posttest was conducted the moment the subjects finished the reading task. Another delayed posttest followed two weeks later, which was the same as the immediate one except the different order of the same target words. Neither of posttests was informed to the subjects in advance.The raw data was processed and analyzed with the help of Statistics Package for Social Science (SPSS) 17.0. The major findings are:(1) The input enhancement does have significant effects on IVA. The present study supplements the effects of input enhancement found by Kim, not only on the acquisition of grammatical forms, but also the acquisition of meanings.(2) The task-induced involvement has significant effects on IVA, which supports the hypothesis posited by Hulstijn and Laufer, that is, the task with a higher involvement load conduces to better word retention.(3) there are no enhancement X involvement significant interaction effects in the immediate and delayed VKS posttests. It means that the effects of involvement on the two posttests are not significantly influenced by the different levels of the enhancement or vise verse. However, the combination of a higher involvement load with enhanced input leads to better word retention in the immediate VKS test than a higher involvement load alone.The current study confirms the positive effects of "Involvement Load Hypothesis" and "Noticing Hypothesis" on IVA. In the vocabulary teaching practice, teachers or educators can adjust reading tasks according to specific demands; meanwhile, they can also enhance the perceptual saliency of vocabulary based on different conditions. For second or foreign language learners, extensive reading is quite an effective way to enlarge their vocabulary. At last, the limitations of the present study and suggestions for further study are put forward. |
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