The Effects Of Different Involvement Loads On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading For Senior High School Students

Nowadays, more and more foreign language researchers and teachers are paying more attention to English vocabulary. They hold a view that vocabulary acquisition is very important for learners in their language learning process. And many linguists point out that the learners acquire a large number of words in an incidental way. In recent decades, incidental vocabulary acquisition has been considered as a new trend in the field of applied linguistics. In second language reading process, researchers inland and abroad have implemented testing on several factors, which may have an impact on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Although incidental vocabulary learning can enhance learners'vocabulary acquisition to a certain degree, what degree the learners can achieve? And what kind of reading tasks can make their acquisition more effective? These all need to be explored. In 2001, Laufer and Hulstijn proposed a theory of Involvement Load Hypothesis for the second language acquisition. This theory was explained from the aspect of the psychological, including need, search and evaluation. It claimed that learners'vocabulary acquisitions and retention would be better with a higher level of task involvement load.The author of this thesis provides an empirical testing. And the present study attempts to carry out an experiment based on the involvement load hypothesis to explore whether senior high school students can acquire vocabulary through reading process or not; and to find out whether tasks with greater involvement load are more effective for learners'vocabulary retention than those with lower involvement load, and whether various involvement loads have an influence on long-term retention of the target words for senior high school students who were enrolled in Tieling Qiushi Middle School in 2010. According to different involvement load of tasks, the subjects were divided into three groups. The three tasks, including multiple choice with marginal glosses, blank filling and sentence making, were given to subjects and the results of the test were analyzed.The overall data analysis showed that the results fully support the involvement load hypothesis. Learners could acquire and retain word knowledge by incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading. Subjects in all three tasks could acquire target words in different degrees. The subjects with higher task involvement load could get better effect than those with lower task involvement; and an important factor determining task effectiveness for vocabulary acquisition was the amount of involvement load that the task induced but with the lapse of time, task effectiveness is becoming less important for the vocabulary retention.