A Study On The Effects Of Involvement Load Hypothesis On EFL Learners’ Incidental Acquisition Of Lexical Chunks

Involvement Load Hypothesis(Laufer & Hulstijn,2001)weighs the involvement load of different learning tasks according to three factors,namely,“need”,“search” and “evaluation”,so as to quantify the effects of different learning tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition.According to the theory,the higher involvement load a task has,the better effects it will have on vocabulary acquisition and retention.Among previous empirical studies,most of them focused on the effects of Involvement Load Hypothesis on incidental acquisition of individual words rather than lexical chunks.Although few studies did explore the effects of Involvement Load Hypothesis on incidental acquisition of lexical chunks,most of them were conducted in reading context,and fewer involved the effects of Involvement Load Hypothesis on incidental acquisition of lexical chunks in listening context.Therefore,based on Involvement Load Hypothesis,the present study,taking non-English major freshmen from four intact English classes in Northeast Forestry University as research participants,will test the effects of Involvement Load Hypothesis on incidental acquisition of lexical chunks through an experiment,which will be expounded in details through discussing the following three research questions: 1)How do listening tasks with different involvement load influence EFL learners’ initial acquisition and delayed retention of lexical chunks? 2)How do listening tasks with same involvement load influence EFL learners’ initial acquisition and delayed retention of lexical chunks? 3)How do listening tasks with different involvement load influence EFL learners’ long-term retention of lexical chunks?In the experiment,there are four tasks designed,namely,1)listening comprehension(true or false),the total involvement index is 1;2)listening comprehension + gap filling,the total involvement index is 2;3)Listening comprehension + composition writing,the total involvement index is 3;4)listening comprehension + sentence writing,the total involvement index is 3.Besides,target lexical chunks’ glosses relevant to the tasks are all presented in each of the four tasks.After being randomly assigned to four groups,the participants from four intact English classes were asked to finish one of the four listening tasks respectively.And after finishing the tasks,they were required to take an immediate posttest unexpectedly.Then one week later,without being informed in advance,they were asked to take a delayed posttest.At last,the valid data collected from the experiment were analyzed by SPSS 20.0.The results show that: 1)listening tasks with different involvement load have different effects on EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of lexical chunks.Both the results of the immediate posttest and those of the delayed posttest show that the mean score is the highest in composition writing task,lower in gap filling task and the lowest in true or false task,and the differences among the three tasks are significant;2)listening tasks with same involvement load do not always have same effects on EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of lexical chunks.In the immediate posttest,the mean score in composition writing task is significantly higher than that in sentence writing task.But the difference is not significant in the delayed posttest;3)listening tasks with different involvement load have different effects on EFL learners’ longterm retention of lexical chunks.The long-term retention rate is higher in true or false task with lower involvement load,while it is lower in the other three tasks with relatively higher involvement load,namely,gap filling task,sentence writing task and composition writing task,and there are no significant differences among the latter three groups.Briefly speaking,the present study partially validates Involvement Load Hypothesis,which shows that listening tasks with different involvement load can promote EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of lexical chunks to a certain extent.Thus,in listening course,teachers can design appropriate intervention tasks with different involvement load so as to facilitate EFL learners’ incidental acquisition of lexical chunks.Besides,teachers should also urge EFL learners to review what they have acquired and learned in order to consolidate their memory of the lexical chunks acquired incidentally while completing listening tasks.