A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Different Output Modes On English Vocabulary Acquisition After Listening

Vocabulary is the basis of language expression,and in recent years the research on incidental vocabulary acquisition in a second language has become a hot topic.However,a large number of studies have investigated factors influencing incidental vocabulary acquisition,while only a small number of studies have explored the effects of output modes in this field.The primary purpose of the present study is to examine the effects of different output modes on English vocabulary acquisition after listening,aiming to find answers to such three research questions as: 1)which type of output after listening has more effects on immediate vocabulary acquisition,oral output or written output;2)which type of output after listening as described above has more effects on vocabulary knowledge retention;and3)to what extent is the immediate acquisition and retention of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge affected by oral output and written output after listening.Based on the output hypothesis,this 4-week study involved 84 participants from Bohai university,and the experiment was designed with a pretest,an immediate posttest and a delayed posttest of vocabulary,with the posttests measuring vocabulary knowledge from two difficulty levels of receptivity and productivity along with such three vocabulary knowledge dimensions as form,meaning and grammatical function.The independent variables of this study were three groups,namely,the control group,the written output group and the oral output group,and the dependent variable was the vocabulary posttest score.A one-way ANOVA was used for data analysis.The results showed that the oral output group performed significantly better than the written output group in both the immediate and delayed vocabulary posttests.In terms of receptive vocabulary,there was no significant difference between the oral and written output groups in the posttests.Concerning productive vocabulary,only in the delayed posttest was the oral output group found to be significantly better than the written output group,which indicated that the long-term memory effect of productive vocabulary in the oral output group was significantly better than that in the written output group.The pedagogical implication for English teaching is that teachers should realize and emphasize the importance of output by creating for the students more output opportunities and meanwhile a relaxed language expression environment.