The Effect Of Task Involvement And Task Type On English Majors’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Reading

Laufer & Hultijin proposed the Involvement Load Hypothesis(ILH) for L2 vocabulary learning in 2001, which states that “retention of unfamiliar words is,generally, conditional upon the degree of involvement in processing these words. The greater the involvement load, the better the retention”(Laufer & Hultijin, 2001:545).In other words, tasks with a higher involvement load result in better vocabulary retention than tasks with a lower involvement load.The present study consists of two experiments. Experiment 1 is to investigate the effect of task-induced involvement load on L2 vocabulary acquisition and retention.Experiment 2 intends to examine whether two tasks with identical involvement level of involvement load make the similar effect on the initial vocabulary acquisition and retention as expected. Whether these expected effects are influenced by participants’ vocabulary sizes is one of the main focuses in present study.The participants in first experiment are 60 juniors who major in English from a university. They are randomly assigned into one of three groups with different levels of involvement load(reading comprehension questions, reading comprehension questions + filling gaping, writing sentences using target words). 40 juniors who major in English taking part in Experiment 2 are randomly assigned into two different task types: writing sentences using target words(output task), reading comprehension plus matching the appropriate meaning with the target words(input task). Two posttests(immediate and delayed) were designed to investigate the short and long-term retention of the target words at an interval of one week.The major findings are summarized as follows:1) The results of Experiment 1 fully support the Involvement Load Hypothesis.The tasks with higher involvement loads result in better initial vocabulary acquisition and better retention than the tasks with lower involvement loads.2) The finding of Experiment 2 shows that output task with the same involvement load leads to a significantly better gain than input task in delayed posttest.which demonstrates the ILH should get modified somehow.3) There is no interaction effect between vocabulary size and involvement loadsor task types on initial vocabulary acquisition and retention. That suggests the effects various involvement loads and task types make are not influenced by learners’ vocabulary size.ILH is empirically supported by the results of the study. However, Laufer and Hulstijin’s claim that the effect of task-induced involvement is independent of input and output nature of a task does not hold water. The present study also provides a new way of vocabulary learning for teachers and students. Teachers and students can choose the tasks with higher involvement loads to enhance initial vocabulary acquisition and retention.