A Study On The Effect Of Narrow Reading On English Vocabulary Acquisition And Retention At Junior High School

Since vocabulary plays an essential role in English learning,it is imperative for researchers to find out more effective methods to help students build vocabulary.Krashen put forward the concept of narrow reading,which refers to reading passages on the same topic,by the same author or in the same genre.Since then,many researches on narrow reading have found that it is an effective way to grow vocabulary.However,there remains few empirical researches on the effect of narrow reading on vocabulary learning.The present study aims to investigate the effect of narrow reading on the acquisition and retention of vocabulary at junior high school,thus hoping to enrich the empirical studies on narrow reading while at the same time providing a new and effective approach for both English learners to acquire more words and English teachers to teach vocabulary more efficiently.The theoretical foundation of the study includes the input hypothesis,the affective-filter hypothesis and the schema theory.This study is guided by two research questions:(1)What effect does narrow reading have on the acquisition of both receptive and productive vocabulary of junior high school students?(2)What effect does narrow reading have on the retention of both receptive and productive vocabulary of junior high school students?The subjects were 99 students in grade 8 enrolled in a junior high school in Shenzhen,Guangdong province.They were from two parallel classes and each class was randomly assigned to two different groups:a narrow reading group of 49 students and a control group of 50 students.During the treatment,the narrow reading group read four passages on the same topic of Halloween,while the control group read four passages on different topics.10 target words were chosen from the main text that both groups were required to read in the first week,and they were glossed in Chinese only in the main text.An immediate post-test and a delayed post-test were conducted to measure the acquisition and the retention of both receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge of the 10 target words.The data was collected and analyzed by the researcher using the SPSS 19.0.What's more,a face-to-face interview was conducted to find out students' opinions on narrow reading.After analyzing the data and organizing the interview reports,it has been found that narrow reading can promote the acquisition of both receptive and productive vocabulary of junior high school students.It not only helps students recognize the meaning of the words but also let them know how to use them properly.In addition,narrow reading also promote the retention of both receptive and productive vocabulary of junior high school students,which means that although both groups forget some words as time passing by,the narrow reading group still retain more words than the control group.What's more,those interviewed think narrow reading as a useful way to grow vocabulary and they feel more confident and motivated in learning English through narrow reading.This study has implications for both English learners and English teachers.For English learners,they can be aware of the narrow reading approach as an effective and interesting way of learning vocabulary.For English teachers,they can apply narrow reading approach as a supplementary method of explicit vocabulary teaching in classroom.