A Study On The Influences Of Low Reading Involvement Load On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of Senior High School Students

Vocabulary learning is a very important part in the English learning of senior high. According to the requirement of ordinary senior high curriculum standard, students need to increase a large number of vocabularies most of which are difficult to memorize with flexible usage. Vocabularies become a major obstacle for English learners. Traditional vocabulary teaching methods no longer adapt to the requirement of the new curriculum reform. These years, many linguists point out that a good many vocabularies are acquired incidentally when reading. However, are there any differences between incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading and vocabulary acquisition in class? Do Chinese notes in incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading have an influence on students’understanding of the original English text? All these need further experimental study. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) studied the Involvement Load Hypothesis in the mother-tongue environment. They put forward the view that in different reading tasks, the efforts the learners made to deal with unknown words were different. They confirmed that the higher involvement load the word is processed, the better effect the word’s incidental acquisition has. Besides, the involvement load is measured by three basic psychological states:need, search and evaluation. But this paper attempts to find out the relationship between different reading tasks with notes and incidental vocabulary acquisition in the condition of low involvement load, so as to find an effective way for the learners to memorize words, use words flexibly and keep long-term retention while they read.The subjects were chosen from three classes in Donggang No.1Senior High School. They were asked to finish three different reading tasks with different notes to test their incidental vocabulary acquisition. Later, a questionnaire and a survey were carried out. At last, the results of the tests were analyzed and summarized.The results show that low involvement load with notes has a positive effect on target words’acquisition for senior high school students. It can improve students’incidental vocabulary acquisition and be of certain help in improving students’reading ability.