Effects Of Input Enhancement And Task-based Strategies On L2 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In English Reading Among Non-english Majors

It is acknowledged to language learners that mastering large amount of vocabulary is important.Vocabulary is the basis of learning a language,and the basic information load.But learning vocabulary is difficult,time-consuming and boring for language learners.So how to effectively acquire a large number of words has been a hot topic.Second language vocabulary learning mainly includes intentional learning and incidental learning.However,the vocabulary mastered by intentional learning is limited.Thus,how to effectively acquire vocabulary through incidental learning has drawn much attention among language teachers and learners.This study is to investigate the effects of input enhancement and task-based strategy in incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading.This research adopts the qualitative and quantitative research methods.Three groups of sophomores of the Art School in Xi'an International Studies University are involved in the present study.They are divided into three groups randomly.A vocabulary level test composing of receptive vocabulary items is carried out among the three groups before the experiment to ensure the subjects' vocabulary level are about the same.And in the experiment,three types of reading materials are given to the three groups respectively.The reading passage is selected from the textbook of the Art College English.The immediate test and the delayed test of the target words are to check the subjects' immediate and delayed mastery of the target words.The questionnaire can reflect some ideas and habits of incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading of the subjects.After that,the data are collected and analyzed by SPSS 22.0.Data analysis has revealed that both input enhancement and task-based strategy are effective for incidental vocabulary acquisition.Input enhancement can play a better part in the immediate IVA,while task-based strategy is better in the delayed IVA.So the retention of task-based strategy is better than input enhancement.To conclude,combining reading comprehension tasks with input enhancement in reading process can produce better vocabulary acquisition results than pure reading alone.It is then suggested that teachers can try to create more opportunities for learners to encounter the new words after the reading comprehension so as to consolidate the new words.