An Empirical Study Of Lexical Processing Strategies In Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the basis of the language system,and vocabulary learning is a key factor in mastering a language.Due to the crucial role of vocabulary,vocabulary has become a fundamental part in the field of language learning.Incidental vocabulary acquisition is an effective way to recall vocabulary in second language acquisition.It usually refers to language learners can learn new words from other learning tasks without memory task of lexical meaning.In recent years,some scholars pay close attention to the incidental vocabulary acquisition of second language,and these related researches enrich the comprehension of incidental vocabulary acquisition.Most researchers focus on the aspects of incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading and various factors that affect the incidental vocabulary acquisition.However,the influence of lexical processing strategies on incidental vocabulary acquisition is rarely discussed.Therefore,30 non-English majors from a university in Hunan Province were selected as the research participants,and vocabulary incidental acquisition was studied by discussing the lexical processing strategies used in their reading comprehension cognitive activities.There are two main questions that will be discussed and studied in detail in subsequent experiments:(1)What are the lexical processing strategies adopted by students in the experiment?What are the frequency and proportion of each lexical processing strategy?(2)What are the effects of different lexical processing strategies on retention of the unknown lexical items(or on incidental vocabulary acquisition)?The lexical processing strategies used by non-English majors in reading comprehension were explored and their frequency and proportion were summarized in the research based on Paribakht and Wesche's five-level Vocabulary Knowledge Scale(VKS)and Microsoft Excel.Besides,the effect on vocabulary retention of different lexical processing strategies,that is,the effect on the incidental vocabulary acquisition,was further analyzed.Firstly the participants were required to mark out unknown words in the reading text.A few days later,participants were required to describe their lexical processing strategies by adopting the method of Think-Aloud Protocol in reading comprehension cognitive process.This process was recorded and transcribed into words to summarize the lexical processing strategies,its frequency and proportion.Finally,the retention of the previously unknown word was tested based on Vocabulary Knowledge Scale one week later.The research data were gathered and analyzed by calculating its percentage and drawing a line chart in Microsoft Excel.The findings are as follows:(1)Ignoring,consulting dictionary,inferring and combination of inferring and consulting dictionary are adopted by students in reading comprehension cognitive process.Ignoring strategy has the highest frequency and proportion while inferring strategy has the lowest frequency and proportion among these lexical processing strategies.(2)The effect of different lexical processing strategies on vocabulary retention is different.The inferring strategy(confirming the vocabulary meaning by consulting the dictionary after inferring is also included)which is the least item has better impact on vocabulary retention,that's to say,it has the higher incidental vocabulary acquisition.In addition,intra-lingual inferring strategies have better incidental vocabulary acquisition than inter-lingual inferring strategy.Two research questions have been solved and the research verifies that pertinent conclusions from foreign scholars are also applicable to Chinese students' vocabulary incidental acquisitions.Based on the above research results,the researcher further explores the enlightenment,as well as the existing deficiencies and suggestions for follow-up research.