Research On The Effects Of Repeated Reading On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Senior High School English Learning

Nowadays,most students are always learning English vocabularies by teachers' instructions,a series of conscious word practice or simple word list recitation on class,which are not boring but also with low effects.Therefore,it is still an urgent issue for researchers and teachers to explore efficient ways for students to acquire new vocabularies through reading.Nagy,Herman and Anderson(1985)first proposed incidental vocabulary acquisition when they explored how children's first language vocabularies can be acquired,which could solve some problems in the process of vocabulary learning.Nagy and his colleagues further defined the theory which is widely accepted today not in first but second language acquisition.Incidental vocabulary acquisition is a gradual process in which gains are made in small increments with repeated encounters to acquire full knowledge of a word based on this theory.In the situation of present English vocabulary teaching,in order to improve the effects of students' vocabulary acquisition,repetition theory was applied to the vocabulary acquisition in senior high school.This study will be presented to answer the following questions:Firstly,what are the incidental acquisition differences of nouns,verbs and adjectives in word form from repeated exposures in senior high school English reading?Secondly,what are the incidental acquisition differences of nouns,verbs and adjectives in word meaning from repeated exposures in senior high school English reading?The participants were 83 students of Grade 1 in No.35 Senior High School,Shenyang.There were two parallel classes in this experiment: Class 4(42)was selected as the pilot group for choosing the target words and the experimental class was Class 5(41).After the pretest,students in EC were asked to complete a reading task with repetition of target words and then accepted posttests.The data of the present research would be analyzed.It is clear to learn from the study that the repetition of reading truly has a great impact on students' incidental vocabulary acquisition in Senior High School.Compared with the traditional way of reciting new words intentionally,reading in repetition of target words has more advantages.It should be further noted that noun can be best acquired in word form and word meaning compared with verb and adjective,then the acquisition effect of adjective is slightly higher than verb which doesn't yield significant difference.The delayed posttest revealed that the acquisition of all three word classes have declines,butstill are retained partly.The present study is beneficial to students' incidental vocabulary acquisition in word form and word meaning.Meanwhile,it also has a positive impact on teachers in selecting reading materials for students.