Study On The Effects Of Different Reading Task Involvement Loads On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of Senior High School Students

The question that how language is acquired has perplexed a lot of linguistics.Hereby,Second Language Acquisition(SLA)has come into being in the 1970s.Since Nagy,Herman&Anderson(1985)firstly put forward Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition(IVA),i.e.learning of new words being regarded as the by-product of some meaning-focused activity not explicitly tending to lexical learning,it has shown its advantages for feasibility and multi-function,because other skills(listening,speaking,writing and reading)can also be enhanced when learners apply it to their vocabulary development.Later,a lot of studies have been conducted to probe into the effects of different activities/tasks on IVA,particularly after Involvement Load Hypothesis(ILH)was proposed by Laufer&Hulstijn(2001).Based on Depth of Processing theory(Craik&Lockhart,1972),ILH held that activities with more task-induced involvement load(IL)would result in better vocabulary acquisition.Laufer&Hulstijn(2001,2003)have also successfully proved its feasibility.However,in past 2 decades,this hypothesis has received both positive and negative verification from international and domestic counterparts.Therefore,how successful the hypothesis is must be a worthwhile linguistic issue.On the strength of Craik and Lockhart's Depth of Processing theory(1972),Krashen's Input Hypothesis(1983)and Swain's Output Hypothesis(1995),present research aimed to testify the validity of ILH through investigating the effect of reading tasks with different involvement load on IVA among Chinese senior high school students.To achieve the research aim,three research questions were specified as follows:(1)How do reading tasks with different IL affect vocabulary gain?(2)How do reading tasks with different IL affect vocabulary retention?(3)Do output task and input task result in the same effect on vocabulary acquisitionwhen they share the same IL?In this research,60 subjects of the same language proficiency from Grade One were divided into 3 groups.Three types of reading tasks were randomly allocated--reading +comprehension questions(Group A),reading+ selecting words to fill-in blanks(Group B),reading + making original sentences(Group C).Among them,involvement load index presented as follows:Group A<Group B = Group C.Two passages with ten target words comprised the reading material.The whole experiment has gone through three weeks.In the first week,a pretest was set to examine subjects' vocabulary level and ability of reading comprehension so as to guarantee IL being the only independent variable among three groups.In the second week,main experiment was conducted,in which subjects needed to complete the given reading tasks.After that,an immediate vocabulary test was held without any notification to test their vocabulary gain.In the third week,a not-informed-of delayed vocabulary test was arranged again to detect subjects' vocabulary retention.Afterwards,collected data were analyzed by SPSS 16.0.Results implied that ILH was partially tenable,because Group B and Group C sharing the same involvement load haven't resulted in the same effect on IVA,although Group A has presented significant difference with other two groups.Additionally,combining the comparison among groups and the comparison within group,it could be concluded that output tasks(Group C)enjoy a superior effect on IVA than input tasks(Group B)do.Present research produced vital significance in SLA field.Theoretically,the study has provided much empirical evidence to IVA and ILH.According to the results,the components of involvement load should be more precisely defined.Besides,task type(input or output task)should be taken into consideration.Practically,students and teachers in senior high schools can be more skilful and confident in vocabulary development via IVA.Additionally,rather than tasks of higher IL are always superior to that of lower IL,language learners should be announced that tasks with various involvement loads can be employed to facilitate different degrees of vocabulary acquisition.The former can be designed to gain more difficult and more important lexis like academic terms and words in entrance examination for Chinese students,while the latter can be applied to obtain simpler and less important words and expressions.Finally,the research indicated that glossary of novel words and learner's ability of guessing words meaning were influential factors on IVA.