The Effect Of Task-induced Involvement Load On L2Vocabulary Learning

The"Involvement Load Hypothesis”，since its proposal by Laufer and Hulstijn in2001，has attracted much attention in the past decade for it adopts the concept of "involvement load to quantify learners’ cognitive efforts，enabling researchers to carry out empirical research to investigate the effects of different reading tasks on second language vocabulary acquisition． The hypothesis contends that the higher involvement load a reading task induces，the better it can promote L2word learning．A lot of experiments have been conducted to confirm the hypothesis．However，because of the deficiency of the hypothesis itself and differences in research designs of different studies,no consistent conclusions have been achieved so far．Therefore．this paper aims to explore the relationship among the"presupposed involvement load"proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn， the"actual involvement load"devoted by learners and L2vocabulary learning．Three research questions will be answered in this paper：(1)Is the"presupposed involvement load" consistent with the "actual involvement load"?(2) Can the "presHpposed involvement load"predict L2vocabulary learning reshlts efiectively?(3)Can the"actual involvement load"predict L2vocabulary leaming results efiectiVely?Research findings show that：(1)The"presupposed involvement load"is inconsistent with the”actual involvement load" in that the former is signincamly higher thail the latter, especially in terms of the cognitive dimension of the"involvement load"，namely,"search" and "evaluation"；(2) The "presHpposed involvemeilt load" can not predict the L2vocabulary learning results efiectiVely in that participallts accomplishing Yeading tasks with higher"presupposed involvement load"do not necessarily perform significantly better than those completing tasks with lower"presupposed involvement load"with respect to both immediate word learning and longer retention；(3)The"actual involvement load"is positively coitelated to the L2vocabulary learning outcolile in that the more the participallts are actually involved in the reading tasks，the better the words are acquired， but the superiority disappears with regard to longer retention．The findings have some pedagogical implications．First，sinee it is true that the more the1earners are inv01Ved in the teading tasks，the better the words are acquired，it is necessary to design tasks which induce higher involvement load for words especially important for learners to know. Second,the teacher needs to pay much attention to learners’ cognition in addition to task designs,thus making sure the "presupposed involvement load"be fully realized.Moreover, regular rehearsal of newly learnt words is important for longer retention.