| Vocabulary is one of the basic elements of language system and language learning.Famous linguist Hammer once said,if the language structure is compared to the skeleton of the language,then the vocabulary provides the organ and flesh which is important for language.However,the survey has shown that vocabulary learning is one of the weakest aspects in English learning for high school students in China.Vocabulary has become the most important factor restricting English learning.For senior high school students,vocabulary is the basis for improving their overall English proficiency.Incidental vocabulary acquisition has become a popular subject of study in recent years.Related research of L2 shows that learners can expand and acquire their vocabulary incidentally by finishing different reading tasks.There are many theories about incidental vocabulary acquisition,the most notably of which is “Involvement Load Hypothesis” raised by Laufer and Hulstijn(2001).The theory holds that a task with the more involvement load,the better effects on acquisition and retention of vocabulary.At present,the main way for high school students to learn English is through reading.Then what kind of reading task has a better effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition of senior high school students is worth further study.Consequently,the writer designs two reading tasks on the basis of involvement load hypothesis.The purpose of this paper is to verify the effect of different reading tasks on incidental vocabulary acquisition of senior high school students,and try to answer the following two questions:(1)Can reading tasks with different involvement load affect senior high school students' incidental vocabulary acquisition?(2)How do reading tasks with different involvement load affect senior high school students' incidental vocabulary acquisition?The subjects are the students in two parallel classes from Grade two in Tianshui No.1 Senior High School.The total number of the students participating in the experiment is 114,and there are 57 students in each class.The paper has first identifiedthere is no great different between the two classes,and issued a questionnaire in the two classes to investigate the situation of students' vocabulary learning and reading(not fluent).Then,the students are asked to read the same passage and answer the attached questions within 15 minutes.The students in Class 3 finish multiple choices while the students in Class 5 finish sentences translation.Having finished the tasks,the reading passage is withdrawn and the immediate vocabulary test paper is distributed.Two weeks later,the delayed vocabulary test is carried out,and then the data is collected and analyzed by SPSS 19.0.The research instruments in this study contain the questionnaire(before the experiment),and two vocabulary tests(immediate test and delayed test).The results have been found as follows:(1)All the students have acquired a certain amount of target words,but different reading tasks bring about different effects on the incidental vocabulary acquisition.This shows that the reading tasks with different involvement load affecting the effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition.(2)Task 2(sentence-translation)leads to better results than Task 1(multiple-choice)in terms of incidental vocabulary acquisition since Task 2 requires to devote more involvement load and the words processing is deeper.This study fully supports the Hypothesis put forward by Laufer and Hulstijn(2001),that is,the more involvement load,the better effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition in the immediate test,and better effect of vocabulary retention in the delayed test.After the study,some pedagogical implications for English teachers to teach vocabulary are drawn out.That is,teachers should encourage students to read a wide range of comparable English books to expand their vocabulary.Teachers should design more reading tasks with higher involvement load to help students improve their learning efficiency of vocabulary during daily teaching. |
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