A Study Of The Effects Of English Reading Tasks On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of College Students

Vocabulary is a central element to foreign language learners. A certain amountof vocabulary could be helpful for language learners to develop their languageabilities. Therefore, how to enlarge learners’ vocabulary becomes an important issuein the area of foreign language learning and study. Research shows that reading canpromote vocabulary acquisition. The present thesis aims to find out the relationshipbetween incidental vocabulary acquisition and reading tasks, and how to enrichlearners’ vocabulary effectively through different reading tasks.The subjects in the present study are182freshmen of non-English majors fromfour intact classes in Shenyang Aerospace University and the study of four differentreading tasks were employed in their language acquisition. The first three tasks’involvement loads increase gradually, the fourth one being in the same involvementload as third one. There followed an immediate test and a delayed test after theyfinished the reading tasks. The target words in the delayed test were the same as in theimmediate test but in different order. After the experiment, the data were collected andanalyzed by SPSS16.0.The results have shown that learners can acquire vocabulary incidentallythrough reading, and tasks with different involvement loads have different effects onvocabulary acquisition and retention. Besides, vocabulary acquisition and retentiontend to be better with higher task involvement load, which confirms the InvolvementLoad Hypothesis. The different reading tasks with the same involvement loads have different effects on vocabulary acquisition and retention. Among the three factors ofInvolvement Load Hypothesis,“evaluation” plays a more important role invocabulary acquisition and retention.The present study shows that based on Involvement Load Hypothesis, differentreading tasks can be designed to enlarge learners’ vocabulary and develop theirlanguage abilities.