Effects Of Case-based-teaching-involved Task And Self-reading Task On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of Business English

Acquiring of vocabulary is regarded as one of the most important parts of the mastery of a language for it is the basis of the other learning activities, especially for the second language learners. English for Specific Purposes (ESP) is a branch of English which is relevant to certain special kinds of profession or subject. As a practical branch of ESP, Business English (BE) involves specific linguistic knowledge which focuses on dealing with the different issues in trading fields, such as finance, logistics and international trade. In the acquisition of Business English, learners are supposed to acquire the language as a practical tool or medium to apply in the business situations. Therefore, the specific semantic and lexical characteristics of Business English require specific learning tasks and teaching methods. Historical and practical backgrounds manifest that the second language learners of Business English encounter different hindrance in the acquisition of the vocabulary. Case-based teaching is an interactive teaching method in which the teacher creates situations for the learners on the basis of typical cases, and guides them to acquire the theoretical knowledge and conclude regulars through the analysis and discussion of the cases. Moreover, it can push the learners to combine their theoretical knowledge with practical reality and to seek out more ways which are suitable and useful in real life. Due to the current investigations of incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) which mainly involve reading activities and the attempt to enhance acquisition of BE vocabulary, and based on the theoretical foundations and previous researches on incidental vocabulary acquisition, Depth of Processing Hypothesis, Involvement Load Hypothesis, Business English and the case-based teaching method, this study tests the effects of case-based-teaching-involved task and self-reading task on the incidental acquisition of BE vocabulary, examining whether involvement of the case-based teaching method can effectively enhance incidental acquisition of BE vocabulary, more specifically, the receptive or productive acquisition of BE vocabulary. In this study, an experiment was conducted, which involved64Business English-major freshmen of Lanzhou University of Arts and Science who had the same general English proficiency level and same vocabulary level. They were randomly divided into2groups. Participants of Group1were further divided into6groups and were required to analyze and discuss the case-based passage which contained33target words, and the activity was based on5questions which were given by the teacher and relevant to the passage. And then, the teacher examined the results of the discussion and summarized the key points of the business case. Participants of Group2were required to read the same material by themselves and to retell the general ideas of the passage. These two different tasks both ensured the acquisition of the target words was incidental. On completion of the assigned tasks, all participants received an unexpected immediate test in the same form for the target words, which consists of four separate parts which involved both receptive and productive acquisition:word identification test, word meanirig test, L1semantic equivalence test and sentence-making test. Two weeks later, all participants were required a delayed test which had same parts of word meaning test, L1semantic equivalence test and sentence-making test. In order to reduce the memory trace, the order of the delayed test was changed. The results of this study showed that it is possible for Chinese second language learners to enhance incidental acquisition of Business English vocabulary through involvement of case-based teaching method. However, the hypotheses were partially supported. The results of the present study can be specifically concluded as follows:(1) It is possible for Chinese Business English learners to improve incidental vocabulary acquisition with the involvement of case-based teaching method.(2) On the basis of incidental vocabulary acquisition, the Involvement Load Hypothesis, researches on Business English and also the pedagogical review of the case-based teaching method, the case-based-teaching-involved task does not show more obvious enhancing effect than the self-reading task in the immediate test of incidental acquisition of target words, both on receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition.(3) With the two different types of the vocabulary acquisition, the present study finds that the involvement of case-based-teaching method more obviously enhances the long-term productive acquisition of target words than the self-reading task.