Effects Of Input Task And Output Task On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition For EFL Learners

Laufer and Hulstijn(2001)put forward the Task-induced Involvement Load Hypothesis to quantify incidental vocabulary acquisition in the process of second language reading.Its main points are that higher degrees of involvement load in a word induced by a task result in better effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition regardless of whether it is an input or an output task;the same degrees of involvement load in a word induced by a task result in the same effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition.However,in Hulstijn and Laufer's study,they did not discuss whether the task type influences vocabulary acquisition at the theoretical level,nor did they conduct related research.They made a prediction that task type may not necessarily have effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and any output task may not lead to better results than any input task.At present,the studies verifying this hypothesis do not fully confirm it,nor do they reach a consistent conclusion,which needs to be verified by future studies.Because of the reasons mentioned above,the current study explores the following two questions in reading context based on Input Hypothesis,Output Hypothesis,Deep Processing Hypothesis,and Task-induced Involvement Load Hypothesis in reading context.Question 1:Is there the same effect of input task and output task with the same involvement load in reading context on incidental vocabulary acquisition?Question 2:What is the effect of input task and output task on long-term memory(words retention)?In order to answer these questions,this study was conducted on 42 students from Southwest Petroleum University of freshmen majoring in English.Based on Nation's(2000)Vocabulary Knowledge Test,Wesche and Paribakht's Vocabulary Knowledge Scale,the empirical study was carried out which consists of pilot study,pretest,main study,immediate posttest,delayed posttest.Then,the scores of the subjects were collected by Wesche and Paribakhts's scoring categories and analyzed using One-way ANAOVA Analysis,Independent Sample Test and Paired Sample T Test of SPSS 21.0,the following conclusions are drawn:(1)In reading tasks,when the task-induced involvement load is the same,the effects of vocabulary acquisition of input task and output task are different,demonstrating the same involvement load does not necessarily lead to the same vocabulary acquisition,and output task is more effective than input task.(2)When the task-induced involvement load is the same,output task is superior to input task on word retention.The results of the study are inconsistent with Involvement Load Hypothesis.Therefore,further experiments need to be conducted to test this hypothesis.This study has theoretical and practical significance.First of all,it points out the direction for the improvement of Involvement Load Hypothesis in theory.Secondly,it provides a method for optimizing language teaching:the writing staff of textbooks and teachers can design and adopt more output tasks to promote vocabulary acquisition.