| Input Enhancement has been a hot topic in the field of second language acquisition for many years.Many researchers at home and abroad have carried out their studies on Input Enhancement from different aspects.However,most of them put their focuses on strategies of promoting the perceptual salience of input materials and learners' attention to the target language.Few scholars have explored the effects of input enhancement on English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition in junior middle school from the perspective of sequential input enhancement.English high-frequency vocabulary,which covers a large portion in spoken and written texts,is quite important for learners' English development in junior middle school.Therefore,it is of great necessity to have a further investigation about the effects of sequential input enhancement on English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition,which will enrich the English vocabulary teaching methods and promote English vocabulary learning in junior middle school.This thesis intends to investigate the effects of sequential input enhancement on junior middle school students' English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition in immediate and delayed tests.Besides,a further comparison of the different effects of the same sequential input enhancement between immediate and delayed tests is made as well in the present research for a better way of promoting English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition in junior middle school.Through the analysis of relative studies,three theories are chosen as the theoretical foundations of this thesis,namely,the "Input Enhancement Theory","Noticing Hypothesis" and "Type of Processing Resources Allocation".Ten target words are selected according to Vocabulary Knowledge Scale and High-frequency Vocabulary Checker software.There are ninety participants from three parallel classes in their first semester of Grade Seven in Buji junior middle school in Shenzhen city,Guangdong Province.They are distributed into three groups in accordance with the classes they come from:group one receives form-first input enhancement;group two receives meaning-first input enhancement;and group three receives simultaneous input enhancement.The pre-test shows that there is no significant difference among three groups.Three groups receive different input enhancement sequences.The reading materials three groups use involve the target words which are enhanced in the form of boldface.After that,an immediate test as well as a delayed test in a week on English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition is conducted.The test consists of three parts:word spelling,meaning and collocation.SPSS19.0 is adopted to analyze the data collected and the conclusions are presented below.Firstly,in immediate test,sequential input enhancement has been proved to be an effective way of promoting learners' acquisition of English high-frequency vocabulary in three aspects,namely word spelling,meaning and collocation.The superiority of form-first input enhancement in the aspect of word spelling is obvious while the meaning-first input enhancement has more positive effects on meaning.Form-first and meaning-first input enhancement are both proved to be more effective than simultaneous input enhancement at facilitating the acquisition of English high-frequency vocabulary.Secondly,in delayed test,sequential input enhancement still has effects on learners' English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition,but there is no significant difference among three sequences both in whole and part.Thirdly,the effects of the same sequential input enhancement on English high-frequency vocabulary acquisition are significantly different in immediate and delayed tests.Learners perform worse in delayed test than in immediate test due to the lack of revision and consolidation.These findings suggest that English teachers are supposed to choose optimum order of enhanced input for different learning contexts and teaching objectives.However,because of the limited time and personal experience,this research still has some limitations that need to be improved and consummated.At the end of this thesis,some suggestions are also given for future researchers to have a deeper exploration. |
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