The Effects Of Topic Familiarity And Input Methods On College Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Since the 1990 s, linguists began to pay attention to incidental vocabulary acquisition and have made some achievements. Most studies investigating incidental vocabulary acquisition are designed through reading or writing. few of them are designed to combine learners’ background knowledge with input methods. This paper focused on examining the effects of topic familiarity and input methods on college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and long-term retention by empirical study.This paper consists of 6 chapters. The first chapter was about the research background, purpose and meaning. The second chapter introduced some relevant studies with incidental vocabulary acquisition. The third chapter pointed out the theoretical framework: Noticing hypothesis and Inputting hypothesis.Research design was in chapter four, including the following three research questions: 1. What are the effects of topic familiarity on college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention? 2. What are the effects of input methods on college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention? 3. What are the effects of input methods on college students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention according to different topic familiarity? The participants, whose English proficiency was at the same level,were 241 non-English majors from Northwest Normal University. They were all junior students. To make sure 15 target words, 40 participants were chosen in random and ordered to participate two pre-tests. The rest 201 participants were grouped into 3 groups. There were 67 participants in each group. Firstly, they were required to finish the Topic Familiarity Questionnaire to investigate if they have previous knowledge about the two topics. Secondly, the 3 groups were required to inputting passages through reading, listening,reading-while-listening respectively. After comprehension, there were an immediate test and an delayed test.They were required to write down the Chinese equivalents or English definition of the 15 target words. It aims at examining how many target words participants can acquire and remember.The major findings were as follows: 1. As for the topic familiarity, it had a positive impact on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention either in the immediate test or in the delayed test; The Effect of topic familiarity on incidental vocabulary acquisition is significantly greater than that on retention.2. Input methods had positive effects on participants’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention; The effects of input method on participants’ incidental vocabulary acquisition are greater than that on retention.3. The effects of input methods were changed with topic familiarity. For more familiar passage, participants can acquire more words through listening in the immediate test but through reading in the delayed test; Forless familiar passage, it revealed that reading is the most effective methods; Participants can remember more words in the immediate test than that in the delayed test not only from more familiar passage but also less familiar passage; Whether topics are familiar or not, input methods have effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention. And these effects are different and some of them are not so significant.Although the design of this study should be further improved, this study can be regarded as a practice of the incidental vocabulary acquisition theory and it also give important implications for foreign language vocabulary teaching. In the future teaching, teachers should pay more attention to the selection of suitable materials, and try to use more effective input methods to promote students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.