| Language input is very important to second language learning (SLA), SLA can not even happen without language input. How input frequency affects SLA has drew people's attention. Ellis (2002) claimed that frequency was a fundamental mechanism in every domain of language processing and frequency was critical in language processing. The evidence of his hypothesis is mostly from the findings in cognitive science and psycholinguistics, especially the investigation of computational simulations based on connectionism. Nevertheless, the empirical studies on the effects input frequency on language acquisition are still lacking and insufficient.Many studies have been carried out to examine the relationship between input frequency and second language acquisition. It has been found that input frequency does have an influence on L2 acquisition (Ferris 1988, Rott 1999, Horst 2000, Liu YanMei 2000, Zhou DanDan 2006, Wang Lei 2008). However, there still exist some problems and questions which need to be dealt with. For example, in Ferris's study (1988), no measures were taken to strictly control the numbers of encounters of the target words and participants had other opportunities to meet the target words. Therefore, the number of occurrences of a word in the texts might not be an accurate reflection of the number of encounters of the target word. In Rott's study (1999), only six new words were exposed to the subjects. Such a small sample of target words can not guarantee a comprehensive picture of the effete of input frequency. In Liu YanMei's study (2000), only there frequencies (1,2, and 3) of words are taking into consideration, the higher frequencies are not paid attention to.Even though some empirical studies were supportive of a role for frequency (Bley-Vroman 2002, Hulstijn 2002, Eubank & Gregg 2002, Gass & Mackey 2002, Larsen-Freeman 2002), causal claims should be made cautiously. Some other factors such as cognitive salience, noticing of learners, complexity of word meaning, L1 transfer and communicative need may also have an influence on SLA.As there are some problems and unclear questions about the effects of input frequency in previous studies, this paper aimed at further investigating the effects of input frequency of textbooks on L2 vocabulary acquisition. The research questions are:(1) What is the relationship between input frequency and L2 vocabulary acquisition?(2) What factors may influence the efficacy of input frequency?103 senior high school students were participated in the study. The vocabulary test was administered and the major findings of the study are as following:(1) The results of the data analysis show a clear tendency that correction rates of the target words in the vocabulary tests increase with the increase of the input frequency. The higher the input frequency is, the higher the correction rates are. Therefore, it can be said that input frequency does have an effect on the acquisition of L2 vocabulary as previous studies have manifested.(2) Even though the general tendency is that input frequency has an effect on the acquisition of L 2 vocabulary, it can not fully account for all vocabulary acquisition. In this study, we can see that words with higher input frequency may not have higher correction rates and words with lower input frequency may have higher correction rates.(3) According to this research, the number of lower frequency words is two times of the higher frequency words, which indicated scientific and systematic consideration of vocabulary recycling needed to be concerned in the textbook.Based on the research findings, the researcher comes to the conclusion that the input frequency has high positive correlations with second language vocabulary acquisition. The Input Frequency Hypothesis is empirically investigated in vocabulary acquisition. The words with higher input frequency are learnt first. Nevertheless, input frequency effects are insufficient for second language vocabulary acquisition. |
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