An Empirical Study Of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition For Chinese Bilingual School Students

It is generally acknowledged that vocabulary is the foundation of English learningas well as the teaching important and difficult points. English teachers often findthemselves in a dilemma that they hope to instruct students more words but have noenough time to do so in classroom hours.“Involvement Load Hypothesis” is proclaimedby Laufer and Hulstijn at first, and they insist that reading tasks could promote incidentalvocabulary acquisition effectively, and the tasks with higher involvement loads are moreeffective on vocabulary learning and retention. Although a lot of empirical studies basedon “Involvement Load Hypothesis” have been conducted at home and abroad, there stillhas no final conclusion on it. What’s more, the subjects in most of the previous studiesare English majors or non-English majors. Therefore, this thesis intends to explore theeffects of different reading tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition by taking bilingualjunior school students as subjects and realize the different vocabulary learning strategiesthey adopted during completing the different reading tasks.In the present study,186third-year students from five natural classes in LuoyangNo.2Foreign Language School are selected as subjects. And there is no significantdifference among the five natural classes. Four classes are chosen as the target groups,and the remaining class is selected in the pilot study. Eight words are determined as thetarget words, and the author has designed four kinds of reading tasks within differentinvolvement loads according to the target words. The four target groups are given thefour different reading tasks at random respectively, and they are allowed to use dictionaryor reference books to complete the tasks within30minutes. And then, all the readingmaterial and exercises are collected by the teachers or the author. Subsequently, theimmediate test related to the target words and the questionnaire with regard to thevocabulary learning strategies are taken at once after they have finished the reading tasks. An interview is carried out among nine students at three different levels who havecompleted Task4based on the results of the immediate test. And the delayed test iscarried out two weeks later. The results of both the immediate and delayed tests, as wellas the questionnaire are analyzed by using SPSS17.0, and the details are as the follows:1) In the immediate test, Task3(mean=17.00) and Task4(mean=16.21) inducerelatively higher involvement loads are more effective than Task1(mean=12.59) andTask2(mean=13.26) with comparatively lower involvement loads on the short-termmemory. The effects of Task3on the short-term memory are slightly better than Task4with the highest involvement loads.2) In the delayed test, Task3(mean=15.58) and Task4(mean=15.38) with relativelyhigher involvement loads are superior to Task1(mean=12.38) and Task2(mean=12.79)with relatively lower involvement loads on the long-term memory; the effects of Task3are better than Task4with the highest involvement loads on the long-term memory.3) From the analysis of the Paired-Samples T Test, Task1(Sig.=.509) and Task2(Sig.=.473) with relatively lower involvement loads have no significant differencebetween the immediate and delayed tests, and Task3(Sig.=.003) and Task4(Sig.=.007)with higher involvement loads have significant differences between the immediate anddelayed tests.4) The results of the questionnaire demonstrate that the usage rate of the guessingstrategy, consulting strategy, memory strategy and applied strategy involved in this studyincreases in turns for the four groups of subjects in doing the four different reading taskswith the amount of involvement loads increased from1to4.Based on the above, conclusions can be drawn that1) Reading tasks with relativelyhigher involvement loads are more effective than the tasks with relatively lowerinvolvement loads on incidental vocabulary acquisition to some extent.2) Laufer andHustijn’s “Involvement Load Hypothesis” isn’t entirely applicable to Chinese bilingualjunior school students, who acquire vocabulary through different reading tasks. Theeffects of vocabulary memory lie not in the involvement loads amount of the tasks, but inthe level of cognitive process on vocabulary, the age characteristics, individual differenceand English proficiency level of the students.3) The effects of the vocabulary retentiondo not rely on the amount of involvement loads, but on the timely revision andconsolidation consciously. It must be noted that it will be better if we combine incidental vocabulary acquisition with intentional vocabulary acquisition.4) Tasks with differentinvolvement loads could influence the vocabulary learning strategies the studentsadopted. English teachers could make full use of these valuable rules to design propertasks to interfere and promote the students’ vocabulary gains and retentions.