Effects Of Reading Plus Writing Tasks On Incidental English Vocabulary Learning Of Vocational College Students

Incidental learning plays a significant role in vocabulary learning.Learners incidentally acquire vocabulary via listening task,speaking task,reading task and writing task.Researchers have provided evidence that a single task,for instance,listening task,speaking task,reading task and writing task could promote incidental vocabulary learning,while few studies have explored the influence of complex tasks on incidental vocabulary learning.According to the Involvement Load Hypothesis(Laufer and Hulstijin,2001),the higher the involvement load,the better the vocabulary retention.The current study investigates the effects of complex tasks(reading plus writing tasks)on vocational students' incidental vocabulary learning.This study consists of three tasks:reading only task,reading plus summary-writing task,and reading plus story-writing task.Reading plus story-writing task has the highest involvement load,followed by reading plus summary-writing task,and reading only task has the lowest involvement load.The study focuses on the following questions:(1)What are the effects of reading plus summary-writing task and reading plus story-writing task on vocational students' vocabulary learning,compared with reading only task?(2)What are the effects of reading plus summary-writing task and reading plus story-writing task on vocational students' vocabulary retention,compared with reading only task?This study took 89 freshmen of non-English majors from NF College as subjects.They were randomly divided into three groups,received writing instruction and did three tasks respectively at the same time.After the completion of tasks,the immediate post-test was conducted without prior notice.A week later,a delayed test was carried out.To see how students handle the target words in the course of completing the task and to understand the various reasons for the results of the vocabulary test,15 subjects(5 subjects in each group)were chosen randomly to take interviews.The data were analyzed under the assistance of SPSS software.The results are presented in the following:(1)On vocabulary learning,reading plus writing tasks had greater facilitative power than reading only task in helping learners incidentally acquire vocabulary.In addition,reading plus story-writing task with higher involvement load achieved better vocabulary learning than reading plus summary-writing task which is at lower involvement load.Lastly,three meaning-oriented tasks(RO,RSU,and RST)promoted more vocabularymeaning learning than vocabulary form learning.(2)On vocabulary retention,two reading plus writing tasks with higher involvement load did exert more powerful effects on vocabulary retention than the RO.What's more,the RST outperformed the RSU in both CPT and MCT,but two output tasks had not significantly different effect on the vocabulary form recall and meaning recognition.The results support the Involvement Load Hypothesis in a limited range.The higher the involvement load,the better the vocabulary retention.But there were no significant differences between two reading plus writing tasks with different involvement load in vocabulary learning and vocabulary retention.This suggests that the task-induced involvement load hypothesis needs to be further modified and improved in the description of incidental vocabulary acquired through complex tasks(reading plus writing tasks).This thesis provides empirical results for the Involvement Load Hypothesis and gives suggestions for teachers in designing tasks and teaching vocabulary.