| Numerous theoretical descriptions and empirical studies have been carried out on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Fundamentally, on the basis of the input-output hypothesis and the involvement load hypothesis, L2 researchers have explored possible factors that affect L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition, such as task types, contextual factors, lexical factor, and text features. Despite much improvement in research on L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition, lots of research, by designing different tasks, and incorporating the effect of different moderator variables such as vocabulary size and language proficiency to investigate how input-output hypothesis and the involvement load hypothesis contribute to the second language vocabulary acquisition, but focuses on learners factors themselves in second language vocabulary research through reading are rare. Moreover, many studies only investigated the effect of one or two factors affecting L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition, and only a few researchers explored the interaction of reader-based factors on L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition. Given these limitations in the previous research, the current study is designed to make some contributions to L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition from the perspectives of the reader factors, based on reader-related schema theory, limited capacity hypothesis, and the focus & enrichment hypothesis, Specifically, it addresses the following questions:1. How do topic familiarity, passage sight vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and L2 reading proficiency predict L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition?2. Are there any differences among topic familiarity, passage sight vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and L2 reading proficiency in contributing to L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition?82 second-year non-English majors from two intact classes at Nanjing Tech University participated in the experiment. The whole experiment was made up of one questionnaire and sets of test papers. A questionnaire was to determine the subjects’ topic familiarity with the reading materials. Passage sight vocabulary was tested by the number of the already-known surrounding words in the reading context. The syntactic knowledge test was to evaluate the subjects’ grammatical and discourse knowledge, which includes altogether three parts, i.e., multiple-choice questions, cloze test, and error correction test. A reading comprehension test from CET-6 was to identify the participants’ reading proficiency level. An immediate posttest was intended to evaluate the subjects’ performances in L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition. A multiple linear regression analysis shows the following major results:Firstly, topic familiarity, passage sight vocabulary and L2 reading proficiency are significant predictors of L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition(p <.05, R2 =.234). Syntactic knowledge does not show itself as a significant predictor of L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition in the present study(p >.05).Secondly, passage sight vocabulary explains a little more of the variance of L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition than topic familiarity and L2 reading proficiency do. Passage sight vocabulary emerges as the strongest unique predictor in contributing to L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition(part correlation coefficient is.253). Besides, syntactic knowledge provides no explanatory power in predicting L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition(p >.05).The present study has significant theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, the results of the present study lend support to the comprehensible input hypothesis, “focus & enrichment” hypothesis, schema theory and limited capacity hypothesis in the instructed L2 environments. Besides, the combined results of the effects of the independent variables, i.e., topic familiarity, passage sight vocabulary, syntactic knowledge and reading proficiency also contribute to the involvement load hypothesis in that cognitive involvement in lexical inferencing and processing tasks is also affected by those reader-based variables. Pedagogically, this study also provides L2 teachers with some insights into how to enlarge and enrich L2 learners’ vocabulary knowledge. On one hand, language instructors should guide the learners to read extensively and massively in order to enhance and enlarge their vocabulary knowledge. On the other hand, L2 teachers should provide learners with the appropriate reading materials that meet the students’ reading level and instruct them to read some interesting and familiar text in order to motivate learners’ interest and enthusiasm as well as to expand and enrich their vocabulary size. Moreover, it is also important for teachers to instruct learners how to infer the unknown words through reading, such as, how to use context and extra-linguistic clues to figure out the meanings of the new words. |
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