The Effects Of Junior Middle School Students' Cognitive Styles Upon Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

There are two ways to learn vocabulary in the field of second language acquisition: one is deliberate vocabulary learning,and the other is incidental vocabulary acquisition.Compared with deliberate vocabulary learning,incidental vocabulary acquisition refers to learners' acquiring vocabulary incidentally in the process of completing a learning task,not specifically learning vocabulary.As a "by-product" of language learning,incidental vocabulary acquisition not only improves learners' language skills but also promotes learners' vocabulary acquisition.Hence this teaching method with less effort is widely used in English teaching.Besides,reading is an effective carrier for incidental vocabulary acquisition,and post-reading output is an indispensable part of reading activities.Consequently,teachers set different post-reading output tasks in English reading class,which can promote students' incidental vocabulary acquisition effectively.At the same time,Oral output and written output,the two forms of output tasks,have a positive effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition to varying degrees.In addition,students are the main body of teaching,and the impact of their individual differences on teaching effectiveness must be considered.Most important of all,Junior middle school students have formed specific field-independent/field-dependent cognitive styles.Among them,field-independent and field-dependent learners have individual differences in the choice of learning tasks and learning effects due to their different information processing methods.Under this background,exploring the effects of junior middle school students' cognitive styles on incidental vocabulary acquisitionbased on the output task after English reading is instructive in guiding differentiated vocabulary teaching.Based on the output hypothesis,cognitive style theory,and involvement load hypothesis,the author combines the internal influence factor(cognitive style)and external influence factor(output task)to quantify the effect of junior middle school students' incidental vocabulary acquisition.The purpose is to explore the effects of junior middle school students' cognitive styles on incidental vocabulary acquisition based on the output task after English reading.The three research questions are as follows:(1)Does field-independent/field-dependent cognitive style affect learners' incidental vocabulary acquisition after reading? If so,to what extent?(2)Which learners of cognitive styles have better performance on incidental vocabulary acquisition in oral and written output tasks after reading,field-independent learners or field-dependent learners?(3)Which output task do field-independent learners and field-dependent learners prefer respectively?Students from the two parallel classes of the Class 2,Junior 2 and Class 3,Junior2 of Gong Lu Middle School Affiliated to Shanghai Second Polytechnic University are taken as the research subjects.Firstly,62 eighth-grade students from two parallel classes in this middle school were divided into field-dependent learners and field-independent learners by the Group Embedded Figures Test(used to distinguish cognitive styles).Secondly,the written output tasks were set in the reading lesson of the Class 2,Junior 2;and the oral output tasks were designed in the reading lesson of the Class 3,Junior 2.Thirdly,the author used the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale to test the vocabulary knowledge of the students in the two classes.Finally,SPSS 22.0software was used to analyze the results of the vocabulary test quantitatively.In the process of the experiment,the author strictly controlled the selection of reading materials and target words in order to ensure the accuracy and validity of the experimental data.The author made sure that the reading materials were slightly higher than the current level of the learners,and the ratio target words was controlledbetween 3% and 5%,so as to create suitable conditions for the occurrence of incidental vocabulary acquisition.The experimental results are as follows: firstly,field-independent/field-dependent cognitive styles affect the effects of learner's incidental vocabulary acquisition,and there is a moderate positive correlation between field-independent/field-dependent cognitive style and incidental vocabulary acquisition.Secondly,in written output tasks,field-independent learners have better performance on incidental vocabulary acquisition than field-dependent learners,but there is no significant difference between the two;in oral output tasks,field-independent learners are better than field-dependent learners on incidental vocabulary acquisition,and there are significant differences between the two.Thirdly,the field-independent learners prefer oral output,and their performances of incidental vocabulary acquisition in oral output tasks and written output tasks are significantly different;the field-dependent learners prefer written output,and their performances of incidental vocabulary acquisition in oral output tasks and written output tasks are significantly different.This study has the following implications for English teaching: First,English teachers should permeate the concept of incidental vocabulary acquisition into vocabulary teaching for them.Secondly,teachers should clarify students' cognitive style and implement differentiated teaching.Finally,English teachers should provide different types of output tasks for learners of different cognitive styles to promote incidental vocabulary acquisition.