Effects Of Task Type And Involvement Load On EFL Learners’ Immediate And Delayed Vocabulary Acquisition

Task-based L2incidental vocabulary acquisition has come to the forefront in thefield of L2vocabulary acquisition. Motivated by the assumption that some tasks aremore advantageous than others, numerous L2researchers and teachers have designeda variety of L2reading-related L2vocabulary learning tasks to improve the efficiencyof L2vocabulary teaching and learning. The previous research on L2incidentalvocabulary acquisition was implicitly or explicitly based on the input-outputhypothesis and the involvement load hypothesis, especially the latter. Although thisline of research improves our better understanding of the role of input-output cycleand the task-induced involvement load in contributing to L2vocabulary acquisition,lots of issues remain to be resolved, among which are how to better define theconstruct of involvement load, and how task type and involvement load contributeseparately and interactively to the acquisition of different components of L2vocabulary knowledge. This study is an attempt to investigate how task type andinvolvement load affect the acquisition of L2receptive and productive vocabularyknowledge across time. Specifically, it addresses the following questions:1. How do task type and involvement load affect EFL learners’ immediate vocabularyacquisition?1) Does task type have a significant main effect on EFL learners’ immediatevocabulary acquisition?2) Does involvement load have a significant main effect on EFL learners’immediate vocabulary acquisition?3) Is there any significant interaction between task type and involvement load onEFL learners’ immediate vocabulary acquisition?2. How do task type and involvement load affect EFL learners’ delayed vocabularyacquisition?1) Does task type have a significant main effect on EFL learners’ delayed vocabulary acquisition?2) Does involvement load have a significant main effect on EFL learners’ delayedvocabulary acquisition?3) Is there any significant interaction between task type and involvement load onEFL learners’ delayed vocabulary acquisition?This study adopts a factorial design with two between-subjects factors, L2vocabulary acquisition being the dependent variable. Task type (input and output) andinvolvement load (low and high) constitute the between-subjects variables. L2vocabulary acquisition is measured twice, one for immediate recall of the target wordsand the other for delayed retention of the target words.100second-year non-English majors from two intact classes at Nanjing Universityof Technology participated in the experiment. They were randomly assigned to one ofthe four L2vocabulary acquisition tasks. Participants in the first group had to performthe semantic matching task (input) after reading the relevant sentences with the targetwords glossed in the following brackets, with the resulting involvement load beinglow. Participants in the second group were required to perform the same semanticmatching task as those in the first group, but they had to consult the mini-dictionaryfor each target word appearing in each reading sentence, with the resultinginvolvement load being high. Participants in the third group had the same sentencereading as those in the first group (low involvement load), but followed by writingeach target word (output), given its definition. And participants in the fourth grouphad the same target word writing task as those in the third group, but did the samesentence reading exercises as those in the second group (high involvement load). Atest of L2vocabulary size test before the experiment was conducted to determine the18target words for the task design and the immediate and delayed tests of L2vocabulary acquisition, and a modified version of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS)was used to measure the participants’ L2receptive and productive vocabularyknowledge. Time on task in all the L2vocabulary acquisition tasks was held constant.MANOVAs and one-dependent variable ANOVAS were conducted, with thefollowing major findings: On the immediate test of L2vocabulary acquisition, task type has a significanteffect on the acquisition of L2vocabulary knowledge (p <.05), and its effect size ismedium (η2=.067). However, there is no significant effect of involvement load onthe acquisition of L2vocabulary knowledge (p>.05), nor does the interactionbetween task type and involvement load reach a significant level (p>.05). Furtheranalyses indicate that a significant effect of task type is produced on the acquisition ofL2receptive vocabulary knowledge, with a medium effect size (p <.05, η2=.050),though no significant effect of task type is found on the acquisition of L2productivevocabulary knowledge (p>.05). Involvement load produces no significant effect onthe acquisition of L2receptive or productive vocabulary knowledge (p>.05).The delayed test of L2vocabulary acquisition produced similar findings to whatthe immediate one did. Task type affects L2vocabulary knowledge significantly (p<.05), with a medium effect size (η2=.063). Neither involvement load nor itsinteraction with task type makes significant contribution to the acquisition of L2vocabulary knowledge (p>.05). Further analyses indicate that there is a significanteffect of task type on the acquisition of L2receptive vocabulary knowledge, with amedium effect size (p <.05, η2=.047), though there is no significant effect of tasktype on L2productive vocabulary knowledge (p>.05). Involvement load produces nosignificant effect on the acquisition of L2receptive or productive vocabularyknowledge.This study fails to support the involvement load hypothesis, but partly supportsthe input-output hypothesis, indicating the advantage of output over input in theacquisition of L2receptive vocabulary knowledge. The failure of this study to supportthe involvement load hypothesis indicates that the hypothesis is conditional upon anumber of factors like operationalizing involvement load and the quality of researchdesign. This study also provides L2teachers with some insights into how to improvetheir L2learners’ vocabulary knowledge.