A Study On The Effect Of Different Tasks On English Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Audio-Visual Context

Vocabulary learning has been very hot in the field of second language acquisition in recent years. Incidental vocabulary acquisition is drawing more and more attention. Incidental vocabulary acquisition, contrary to intentional vocabulary acquisition, refers to the acquisition process when students intent to comprehend the passage, not the new vocabulary while performing their learning tasks, for example reading a passage, and they acquire the new words incidentally. Therefore, the present study did an experiment on students’vocabulary incidental acquisition in audio-visual context and required the participants to finish three kinds of tasks with different involvement load. It intends to find out the effects of different tasks on English incidental vocabulary acquisition in audio-visual context.The subjects are three parallel classes of90Navigation majors from Dalian Maritime University. The research uses vocabulary pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test to investigate the influence of different tasks on subjects’vocabulary learning. The data collected from this experiment was analyzed by SPSS11.5.The findings of the present study are as follows:Firstly, English learners can acquire vocabulary incidentally in audio-visual context. Secondly, with different tasks, subjects gain different amounts of vocabulary knowledge. According to the results of the study, the Retelling Group gained the most. That is to say, task with higher involvement load produces better vocabulary incidental acquisition than that with lower involvement load generally. Thirdly, in the delayed post-test, task with the highest involvement load induces better word retention effect. Finally, subjects’ English proficiency can affect the vocabulary acquisition. There are significant differences between large vocabulary size group and small vocabulary size on learners’vocabulary incidental acquisition.The results of the study show some theoretical significance and pedagogical implication for vocabulary learning and teaching as well as some limitations.