The Effect Of Output Tasks With Different Involvement Load On Vocabulary Acquisition And Retention For Junior High School Students

The present study explores the effect of the output tasks with different involvement load on vocabulary acquisition and retention of Chinese junior high school students.The two research questions of this study are:1.Which output task with different involvement load,namely sentence blank filling and sentence translation,is more effective on vocabulary acquisition and retention for Junior high school students ?2.Do the two output tasks with different involvement load have different effects on vocabulary acquisition and retention for high-achieving and low-achieving Junior high school students ?Thirty-eight Grade 8 junior high school students from Huachen Brilliant Foreign Language School in Dongguang participated in the experiment.The two output tasks with different involvement load used in this study were sentence blank filling and sentence translation.This study was composed of the vocabulary pretest,immediate post-tests and delayed post-tests.All participants took a vocabulary pretest in the first week to make sure the target words were new to them.Then from the immediate post-test on Thursday of the second week to delayed post-test on Tuesday of the fourth week,the participants took two immediate post-tests and two delayed post-tests based on two types of output tasks with different involvement load.And interviews were conducted after all the post-tests had finished.Parubakht and Weshche's(1993)Vocabulary Knowledge Scale(VKS)test was used to examine the learner's previous knowledge about the targets words and the gains after the treatment.This test does not provide any clues to any vocabulary,therefore,it can objectively reflect the participants' knowledge of vocabulary.The data of immediate post-tests and delayed post-tests were analyzed by SPSS statistical software.The major findings were list as follows:First,for all participants,the mean score of the sentence translation was slightly higher than that of the sentence blank filling in the immediate post-test.But the T test result indicates no significant difference.This means there is no different effect on vocabulary acquisition for all participants between the two output tasks with different involvement load.However,for all participants,in the delayed post-tests,the mean score of the sentence blank filling was higher than that of the sentence translation and the T-test result showed that the two output tasks have significant different effect on vocabulary retention for all participants.That is to say,for all the participants,the sentence blank filling is more effective for vocabulary retention than the sentence translation.Secondly,results show that the two output tasks with different involvement load have different effect on vocabulary acquisition and retention for students at two different proficiency levels.High-achieving students achieved higher mean scores than low-achieving students in both the immediate post-test and delayed post-tests of the two output tasks,and a two-way ANOVA displayed that the difference was significant.This means the two output tasks with different involvement load are more effective for high-achieving students than for low-achieving students,which also supports Kang's(2015)argument that students' proficiency levels have an effect on vocabulary learning and retention.In addition,for high-achieving students,their mean score of the sentence translation is higher than that of the sentence blank filling in the immediate post-test,and the T-test result shows that the difference was significant.Hence,it indicates that the sentence translation with high involvement load is more effective on vocabulary acquisition than sentence blank filling with low involvement load.This result is consistent with the Involvement Load Hypothesis that the task with high involvement load is more effective on vocabulary acquisition than the task with low involvement load.However,in the delayed post-test,the mean score of the sentence blank filling is slightly higher than that of the sentence translation,but the difference is not significant.Then,the author also uses paired sample T test to analyze the relationship between the immediate and the delayed post-test of sentence blank filling and sentence translation.The result indicates that sentence blank filling is more effective on vocabulary retention for high-achieving students.The result is the same as that for all students.This result does not support the Involvement Load Hypothesis: Task that induces higher involvement load lead to greater gains on vocabulary retention.For the low-achieving participants,the mean score of sentence blank filling is slightly higher than sentence translation both in the immediate post-test and the delayed post-test,but these differences were of no significance.This indicates that there is no different effect on vocabulary acquisition and retention for low-achieving students between the two output tasks.This doesn't support the Involvement Load Hypothesis.Finally,the author summarizes the experimental result and significance and puts forward some suggestions for future research and teaching improvement.