Effect Of Input-oriented Tasks With Different Involvement Load On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary proficiency affects overall language skills and communication will be hindered due to the shortage of vocabulary.Besides,the most significant obstacle for L2 language readers is vocabulary shortage rather than reading skills.Lewis(1993)even states briefly that the foremost task for language learners is to acquire sufficient vocabulary.Therefore,it's necessary to find effective and efficient ways to help learners master vocabulary.Of the two main ways to learn vocabulary,incidental vocabulary acquisition is a beneficial byproduct of activities,such as listening or reading,while intentional vocabulary learning always consumes much time and energy especially for high school students.Involvement Load Hypothesis(ILH)by Laufer and Hulstjin(2001)is a popular hypothesis in the field of incidental vocabulary acquisitiom.The study on the effect of reading tasks on IVA to verify Involvement Load Hypothesis is huge.However,the empirical study considering both task type and vocabulary type are comparatively few and calls for further research.As a result,this study aims to specifically explore the effect of input-oriented tasks on receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of IVA to verify Involvement Load Hypothesis.The theoretical significance of this study is to shed more light on the theory of IVA.Practically,this research provides empirical evidence on the assignment of input-oriented tasks to facilitate IVA and benefited teachers' teaching and students'learning.In this thesis ILH has been verified by using three types of input-oriented reading tasks with different involvement load(1,2 and 3).Besides,the correlation between incidental vocabulary acquisition of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge has been examined.The major findings based on the statistical analysis can be summarized as below.Tasks with higher involvement load result in better IVA of receptive vocabulary knowledge than tasks with lower involvement load in the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests.However,the results of IVA of productive vocabulary knowledge showed negative evidence on the establishment of ILH in the immediate and delayed vocabulary tests.In addition,there's no significant correlation between IVA of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge.Based on the major findings,the corresponding pedagogical implications are as below.Firstly,students should be encouraged to acquire receptive vocabulary knowledge by input-oriented reading tasks for it's a beneficial by-product of reading tasks.The higher the involvement load of the input-oriented task is,the better the receptive vocabulary will be acquired(Multiple choice>Trure or false).Secondly,students shouldn't employ input-oriented reading tasks to acquire productive vocabulary.They can turn to other ways such as intentional learning or output-oriented reading tasks to learn productive vocabulary,which needs further research.Thirdly,as the correlation between the acquisition of receptive and productive vocabulary is negative.It's not reasonable for students to master both productive vocabulary and receptive vocabulary in an input-oriented task.