The Effect Of Different Post-reading Tasks On Senior High School Students' Incidental Vocabulary Learning

Vocabulary plays a vital part in foreign language learning:each language skill is closely connected with vocabulary.The research about vocabulary learning has always been the focus in the field of second language learning.Traditionally,teachers in senior high schools have adopted direct vocabulary instruction as the major means to teach new words,and most students prefer intentional vocabulary learning as the way to magnify their vocabulary knowledge.Nevertheless,the authentic situation reflects that either the vocabulary teaching or learning fails to provide a context for vocabulary learning that leads to the unsatisfactory effect.In recent years,incidental vocabulary learning has enjoyed great popularity in the second language vocabulary learning.Incidental vocabulary learning is the process of acquiring vocabulary knowledge by involving in activities such as listening,speaking reading and writing,in which the learners' attentions are mainly paid to the contents of activities.Studies concerning incidental vocabulary learning are of remarkable value for second language learners and of great significance in foreign language vocabulary teaching.Building on the Depth of Processing Theory and the Involvement Load Hypothesis,the present study has conducted an empirical study in senior high school to investigate the effect of post-reading tasks with different involvement loads on incidental vocabulary learning.This study,adopting the quantitative and qualitative research approaches,tends to answer the following questions:1.How do the post-reading tasks with different levels of involvement load affect the incidental vocabulary learning for senior high school students?2.What are the effects of the post-reading tasks with different levels of involvement load on the vocabulary retention?120 senior students attended the study,they were all chosen from two parallel classes in Grade Two from Baoji Fenghuo Middle School.In the experiment,three experimental groups were required to read the same passage and randomly assigned with different post-reading tasks respectively(reading comprehension,filling gaps,sentence translation).After that,they were given two vocabulary post-tests;an interview was done among nine subjects of different levels.By analyzing the collected data with SPSS 17.0,the results indicate that different post-reading tasks can achieve remarked effects on senior high school students' vocabulary learning and retention.Tasks with higher involvement loads outperform the lower ones.Although the effect of vocabulary long-term retention is affected by time duration,the sentence translation task has been proved as an effective task for vocabulary learning and retention.The present research has provided some suggestive implications for English teachers:they can identify and design effective learning tasks for students to learn vocabulary incidentally.Moreover,it can not been ignored that the long-term retention of vocabulary is influenced by the time.Teachers can select some appropriate reading materials for students to retrieve and review new words.