Involvement Load Hypothesis "An Empirical Study

The issue of L2 vocabulary acquisition has been a subject of great interest so far. However, it still needs further study to find out how to acquire 12 vocabulary effectively. With research of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition (IVA) going further, many researchers propose that vocabulary acquisition can be achieved through different tasks while the depth of processing is the determining key of it. However, it is not going to be easy to define the concept of "processing depth". B. Laufer and J. H. Hulstijn (2001) proposed the task-induced involvement load hypothesis (ILH) which made it easier to judge the effect of involvement load on IVA word retention performance.The present study is set to investigate the validity of ILH with students in Chinese senior high school as participants by finishing three kinds of tasks (answering questions, writing the meaning of target word, making sentences with target words).The present study proved that the effect of IVA is different with different IL and that task with higher IL can produce greater gains for the target words. However, the effect of IVA is also related to the purpose of the task, that is task with the purpose of acquiring the meaning of target words can not necessary lead to effective vocabulary acquisition in form. There is no direct connection between them.The present study has found that although IVA is an important way to acquire vocabulary, it never indicates that teachers can give up conventional vocabulary teaching or let the students read without guidance. On the contrary, students' incidental vocabulary acquisition requires teachers'active participation and unremitting efforts. The teachers can intervene in pure reading by setting reading tasks for learners, which can effectively promote vocabulary acquisition. These findings have certain guidance and enlightenment in vocabulary teaching.