An Investigation Of The Effects Of Topic Familiarity And Tasks Of Different IL On English Vocabulary Incidental Acquisition

Incidental vocabulary acquisition was common in first language learning process. Since the90s, theresearchers of SLA began to turn their attention to incidental vocabulary acquisition in second language.There were a lot of relevant theoretical descriptions and empirical researches. At present, the innermechanism of incidental vocabulary acquisition still cannot be clearly explained. Most studies were onesthat tried to discuss the influencing factors. This study aims at exploring the effect of tasks of different ILon incidental vocabulary acquisition under different topic familiarity, and tries to explore the peripheralenvironment that the Involvement load hypothesis stands in.Incidental vocabulary learning is opposite to the "intentional learning", refers to students acquirevocabulary incidentally while engaged in other learning activities, such as reading, listening to Englishsongs. The factors that affect incidental vocabulary acquisition are mainly divided into four categories:lexical factors, learner factors, text factors and task factors. In this thesis topic familiarity is learners’sbackground knowledge, belongs to the category of learners. Tasks of different IL belong to the category oftask factors. According to the noticing hypothesis and the depth of processing theory, if learners canremember a word, they must have noted the word, and have carried on certain cognitive processing. Intheory, tasks of different IL can be used to guide the students indirectly to attend the form and meaning ofEnglish words unconsciously. Based on the comprehensible input hypothesis and the interaction theory ofreading, topic familiarity will help students in understanding of discourse. This thesis introduces topicfamiliarity as a covariate, to explore the peripheral condition that that the Involvement load hypothesisstands on.62college students of art major from two parallel classes of Gansu institute of political science andlaw participated in the experiment. These students were randomly divided into four groups, and each groupwas asked to complete a different task. The four tasks were different in involvement load that they carried.In addition, in order to ensure that the subjects in the same language level, through the forerunnervocabulary level test,10students were excluded from the62students. So there were52subjects. Four taskswere all designed according to4reading passages (two about familiar topics, two unfamiliar topics), andeach passage contained four target words. Task1: the Chinese notes of the target words had been given onthe right blank of the passages. Students were asked to read the four passages, to do the multiple choicequestions on comprehension in which the information were related with the target words. The reasons for my supplying Chinese notes: easy to understand. Since English form and the Chinese meaning have beenmatched, there is no need for students to search. Task2: the Chinese notes of the target words had beengiven on the right blank of the passages. And students were asked to read the four passages. After eachpassage, students were asked to choose proper words among the four target words to fill the blanks. Task3:the Chinese notes were not applied, students were asked to do the blank filling by choosing the properwords among the four target words, and a word list includes the Chinese meaning and example sentence ofsixteen target words were offered to students in experiment group three. Task4: students were asked toread the four passages. After reading each passage, students have to write a summary of each passage aboutthe content in which the four target words were used. And a target-word list was supplied the each student.After completing the task, students were unexpectedly asked to have immediate test and7days laterdelayed test. The test paper was designed according to vocabulary knowledge rating scale. Then I collectedthe data, statistics analyses were made on the main effects of two variables (topic familiarity and tasks ofdifferent IL) and their interactive effect on vocabulary gain and retention by using the method of Univariate,One-Way ANOVA, post-hoc tests, and Plots in SPSS13.0.The results of the study are as follows:(1) this study further confirmed the possibility of incidentalvocabulary acquisition in second language, the students can acquire vocabularies incidentally at someextent in the process of reading.(2) The effect of topic familiarity on college students of art major was notsignificant both on vocabulary gain and vocabulary retention.(3) No matter under what kind of topicfamiliarity, tasks of different IL had significant effect on incidental vocabulary gain and retention. But thedifference in involvement load didn’t necessarily lead to the difference in vocabulary gain and retention.(4)The interactive effect of topic familiarity and tasks of different IL was significant on vocabulary retention.But it was not significant on vocabulary gain.To sum up, this study enriched the empirical studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition in secondlanguage, and further developed it, which had important implications for the second language vocabularylearning of college art students of non-English majors. Equally, this research also had disadvantages: first,the effectiveness of the tasks was not taken into consideration; the students finished the task well or notmay influence learners on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Second, without considering the readingability of students, the outcome of incidental vocabulary acquisition would be influenced. So for futurestudy of second language incidental vocabulary acquisition, the design of the task should match the subjects’ language competence as much as possible.