An Empirical Study On The Effects Of Reading Tasks With Varying Involvement Load On Junior High School Students' Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

As an essential element of language,vocabulary plays a crucial role in the second language acquisition.It exists in the whole process of language learning.Many researchers consider vocabulary size as a symbol of one's foreign language proficiency.In recent years,incidental vocabulary acquisition receives high level of attention from many researchers while the direct vocabulary teaching has been found to have low efficiency in the second language acquisition.Learners can only spend very limited time on intentional vocabulary learning.Meanwhile,reading has been seen as an effective method to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition.Since the proposal of Involvement Load Hypothesis,an increasing number of researchers have focused their attention on the impact of task-induced involvement load on incidental vocabulary acquisition.Therefore how to improve the efficiency of incidental vocabulary acquisition through designing different tasks has become a crucial issue discussed by many researchers.The present study was conducted with 80 students of Grade Eight from Matou Junior High School in Hongtong County,Shanxi Province.It mainly answered the following four questions:(1)Will tasks with higher task-induced involvement load have a better effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition than those tasks with low task-induced involvement load?(2)Will the same task with different involvement load bring the same effect on students' incidental vocabulary acquisition?(3)Will tasks with the same task-induced involvement load but different distribution of three elements(need,search,and evaluation)bring the same effect on junior high school students' incidental vocabulary acquisition?(4)Which task can bring about a better retention of junior high school students' vocabulary acquisition?The present study aims to find out the relationships between tasks with different task-induced involvement load and junior high school students' incidental vocabularyacquisition and retention specifically in order to provide some practical implications for teachers and second language learners.The present study mainly involved four kinds of tasks with different involvement load and the 80 subjects were divided into four groups,according to their scores of the final examination of last term,to finish different reading tasks.The immediate test was carried out immediately after the reading tasks and the subjects needed to show their truthful acquisition of the target words.One week later,the delayed test was conducted in the same way as well as the same contents with the immediate test in order to test the subjects' retention of the target words.Through the present study,it can be found that,firstly,the tasks with higher task-induced involvement load have a better effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.Secondly,the same task with different task-induced involvement load brings different results in vocabulary acquisition.Thirdly,with the same involvement load,“evaluation”,among the three elements of Involvement Load Hypothesis,plays a more important role than the other two elements.Lastly,a task that asks for deeply processing of the new information of the word,such as composition-writing task in the current study,has a better effect on learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.Based on the findings of the present study,some implications of how to improve learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition can be drawn.Firstly,learners should be encouraged to read more and they should cultivate reading as a beneficial habit.Secondly,teachers should provide learners with more proper reading materials and different kinds of tasks to train varied skills of vocabulary learning.Moreover,in order to consolidate the vocabulary that learners have learned,teachers should provide students with various practice,such as vocabulary tests and story-telling.Lastly,teachers should combine the intentional learning with incidental learning in the practical teaching so as to reach a better result of learners' vocabulary acquisition.