A Study Of The Effects Of Different Noticing Tasks On Vocabulary Learning Through Reading

Vocabulary acquisition has long been the core of the second language acquisition. Since Schmidt has proposed"the Noticing Hypothesis", a great many researchers start to do studies on how to promote the learners'noticing on vocabularies or linguistic forms through pedagogical methods in order that it can facilitate learners to acquire the vocabularies and linguistic forms. At the same time, it has provided a new perspective for research and development of second language acquisition.Based on the Schmidt's Noticing Hypothesis, the present study analyzes the second language vocabulary acquisition from cognitive and psychological perspective. It compares the effects of the three pedagogical methods,"input enhancement, oral output and written output"which can promote the learners'noticing, on vocabularies acquisition through reading. It is hoped that it will be helpful for second language vocabulary learning and teaching.The present study attempts to answer the following three research questions:1. Are two output tasks (oral output and written output) both more favorable for vocabulary learning than enhanced-input task?2. Are there any differences between the oral-output task group and written-output task group in acquiring new words in immediate posttest?3. Will the output task especially the written-output task lead to more retention of new words than the other two tasks?The subjects of this study were 107 freshmen of English majors from the School of Intercultural Studies of Jiangxi Normal University. They were divided into three groups: input enhancement task group, oral output task group and written output task group. The data from this study were compared and analyzed by One-way ANOVA and Paired-samples T-test. The major findings of this research were summarized as follows:1. After the subjects have completed different tasks, it is found that oral output group and written output group perform better than input-enhanced group.2. There is no significant difference between oral output group and written output group in immediate posttest.3. The output task especially written output task can lead to more retention of the new vocabularies in the long-term memory.Based on the above results, some implications can be drawn for second language vocabulary learning and teaching. Firstly, learners and teachers should attach great importance to the function of output in second language vocabulary learning and teaching. They should adopt distinctive methods of output to conduct the output practice, for example, oral interpretation, written composition and text reconstruction. Secondly, teachers should take different pedagogical methods to promote the learners'noticing on vocabulary. Thirdly, the learners should guarantee the repeated review of the vocabularies in order that they can acquire the vocabularies into the long-term memory.