A Study On The Effects Of Genres And Reading Tasks On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition For English Majors

Based on the Schema Theory, Involvement Load Hypothesis, the present study aims to explore the effects of genres and reading tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) through reading. The four groups of 109 participants are from four parallel classes of first-year English majors in Huaiyin Normal University. They were required to finish four different tasks respectively:reading a narrative text plus guessing and true or false task or reading a narrative text plus guessing and filling-in task; reading an expository text plus guessing and true or false task or reading an expository text plus guessing and filling-in task. After completing the reading tasks, the participants were given an unexpected vocabulary test about the eight target words and one week later, they were given a delayed vocabulary test. The data from this experiment was analyzed by SPSS 17.0.It can be concluded from the analysis of the data (1) With the same involvement load, different genres had different effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention and narrative texts were more effective for vocabulary acquisition and retention than expository texts; (2) Within the text of the same genre, in general, the task with a higher involvement load was more facilitative to incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention than the task with a lower involvement load. However, in the immediate vocabulary test, there was a significant difference between the mean score of the narrative groups, whereas there was no significant difference between the mean score of the expository groups; (3) In the delayed vocabulary test, though there was a significant difference between the performance of each group in the immediate vocabulary test and the delayed vocabulary test, the four groups had retained some target words and there was a significant difference between the mean score of the four groups in the delayed vocabulary test which demonstrated that text genres and reading tasks did affect the long-term memory of the incidental vocabulary acquisition. Therefore, the present study only provides partial support for involvement load hypothesis and the influence of text genres on incidental vocabulary acquisition needs further research in a larger scale.