An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Reading Tasks With Varying Involvement Loads On Senior High School Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Nowadays, the importance of vocabulary learning during the process of foreign language learning has been acknowledged by more and more scholars. Vocabulary, as the foundation of language learning, exists in the whole process of English learning. The vocabulary size is the basis of the cultivation of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Thus how to improve the incidental vocabulary efficiently has become a concern widely discussed by many scholars.Based on Involvement Load Hypothesis(Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001), the author has designed three different reading tasks(reading comprehension task, sentence translation task, summary writing task) to examine the effect of reading tasks with varying involvement loads on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Three related questions were investigated during the research:1. What is the relationship between reading tasks with various involvement loads and incidental vocabulary acquisition?2. What kind of reading task has a better effect on on incidental vocabulary acquisition?3. What kind of task is the most effective one towards the retention of target words?Three parallel classes of Senior Two in a Ganzhou Middle School have participated in the experiment and they were assigned to three different reading tasks randomly. Before the main study, participants took part in a pre-test first about the English proficiency level and vocabulary size. Their grades of the mid-term examination and the 3000 words vocabulary level test were analyzed through One-way ANOVA Analysis. The results showed that there was no significant difference among selected participants. During the main test, three classes were assigned with three different reading tasks randomly. When they finished the reading tasks, the immediate vocabulary test of eight target words was distributed to the participants. One week later, they received the delayed test with the same target words but in a different order.After the data collection, SPSS 21.0 has been used to analyze the data and the author has gotten the following conclusions:1. Reading tasks with different involvement loads have different effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition, but the acquisition rate of vocabulary decreased a lot due to the effect of forgetting.2. The task with higher involvement load has better effect on the incidental vocabulary acquisition than task with lower one to some degree.3. Among these tasks, summary writing task is the most effective way in words retention and there is no significant difference between reading comprehension and translation task.The research partially supported and enriched the involvement load hypothesis. The instructive suggestions for middle school vocabulary teaching are from two aspects.1. As for the vocabulary teaching, the incidental vocabulary acquisition can be used as a useful complement of the daily vocabulary teaching method. Teachers can design different reading tasks in different situations. During the design of reading tasks, teachers should choose summary writing task with a high level of involvement load to help students acquire vocabulary more efficiently.2. Teachers should encourage students to do some activities such as, reading more foreign magazines and watching English movies to enrich the vocabulary size instead of only depending on the traditional ways to acquire vocabulary.