Incidental Acquisition Of English Prepositions Of Junior School Students Through Reading Plus Post-Reading Activities

Since the incidental acquisition was first introduced to China in the 1990 s,the effect of incidental acquisition has been a hot topic in China for more than 20 years.However,most of the previous research on incidental acquisition focused on the meaning and form of vocabulary learning,and only a few scholars began to study incidental acquisition of grammar and the grammatical function of vocabulary.The present study seeks to test whether incidental acquisition of English specific grammar feature— —English preposition can occur in Chinese students under the incidental exposure condition.This paper also probes into which is more effective in promoting the acquisition on the usage of English prepositions through English reading only training and English reading plus post-reading activities training under the same background.There are two research questions in this study.First,can incidental exposure facilitate junior students' acquisition of English prepositions? Second,do English reading only and English reading plus post-reading activities have a significant differential effect on EFL learners' incidental acquisition of English preposition? If Yes,how do different treatments make the difference? According to the research design,the experiment lasted six weeks.The study involved 60 first-graders from a junior high school in Shanghai,China.The subjects were divided into three groups which include a control group,experimental group A and experimental group B,and each class had twenty students.The control group only took the regular instruction at school.In addition to the regular class instruction,both experimental groups were instructed with reading material enriched with prepositions to read in each week.Those in experimental group A were targeted to receive English reading only instruction,while experimental group B received English reading plus post-reading activities instruction.Before experiment,subjects of three groups were asked to do a pretest,which included a judgment on the use of prepositions,filling in blanks and correcting errors.At the end of the experiment,the subjects were given the same testquestion in different order.Finally,the students of the experimental groups were interviewed.The results showed that students of experimental group A and experimental group B were able to acquire the usages of English prepositions under the incidental exposure condition,which also meant English reading plus post-reading activities training and English reading only training could facilitate junior students' acquisition of English prepositions.Moreover,English reading with activities made participants outperform the English reading only.It also showed that in order to maximize the effect of incidental acquisition,effective post-reading activities could be adopted to promote students' incidental acquisition of English prepositions.This study provides useful inspiration for students to learn grammar and English preposition.