The Effect Of Typographic Enhancement On English Majors’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Their Reading

Inspired by Sharwood Smith’s concept of "input enhancement", this experimental study was designed to examine the different effects of different instructional conditions on the Chinese university freshmen’ vocabulary acquisition. The ultimate goal is to investigate whether typographic enhancement has any effect on the learners’incidental vocabulary acquisition through their reading. Specifically, this study addresses the following research questions:1) Do typographic enhancement reading strategies promote Chinese EFL learners’incidental vocabulary acquisition? If yes, in what way? 2) Do typographic enhancement reading strategies work better than explicit English vocabulary instruction in terms of on the learners’vocabulary acquisition? If yes, to what degree do they work better? 3) Which typographic enhancement reading strategy works the best for the learners’incidental vocabulary acquisition?The subjects were 50 freshmen of English majors. The treatments are two instructional conditions:explicit vocabulary instruction and typographic enhancement treatment. The subjects were thus divided into Experimental Group (EG), receiving typographic enhancement training, and Controlled Group (CG), receiving explicit vocabulary instruction. The independent samples T-test of the pre-quiz results indicated that there was no significance between the two groups in linguistic proficiency. The instruments included survey questions and quizzes conducted before and after the experiment. The first survey carried out before the experiment was to find out whether the subjects had read the selected reading material beforehand. The post-quiz was to find out to what degree the two groups differed in incidental vocabulary acquisition under two different instructional conditions. The software of SPSS was used to analyze the differences in the two instructional situations. The data analysis yielded the following findings:Firstly, the results of the paired samples t-test conducted on the pre-test and post-test for EG students reveal that there is a significant difference between the results of the two tests, suggesting that EG students did better on the vocabulary tests after they received the typographic enhancement treatment, and therefore, the typographic enhancement can somehow promote Chinese EFL learners’incidental vocabulary acquisition. In other words, in extensive reading task, the target words were highlighted via modifying the typographic format, such as bolding, italicizing, and underlining, in order to attract learners’attention to the target words, and thereby evoke the attraction of their visual focus on these words.Secondly, the paired samples t-test results form the pre-test and post-test for CG students also indicate that there is a significant difference between the results of the two tests. The follow-up independent samples t-test was conducted based on the scored of the post-test, and the results show that there is a significant difference between EG and CG, and EG performed better than EG. Such an interesting result suggests that explicit English vocabulary instruction is more effective in vocabulary acquisition compared typographic enhancement reading strategies.Thirdly, the voting results of the survey carried out in EG students after the post-test show that the bolding format modification works more effectively compared with italicizing, and underlining enhancement strategies.The findings of this study may have some pedagogical implications. In future classroom English instruction, the traditional explicit English vocabulary instruction should not be abandoned, and teachers may combine the explicit English vocabulary instruction with typographic enhancement reading strategies, together to draw learners’more attention to the target words. The target words may be acquired incidentally through typographic enhancement reading strategies but their effectiveness should not be magnified.