A Comparative Study On The Effects Of Different Tasks On Vocabulary Acquisition Based On The Involvement Load Hypothesis

As the most basic material of a language,vocabulary is the foundation of English and runs through the whole process of English learning.Based on the theory of “Involvement Load Hypothesis”,this study designed four kinds of incidental learning tasks with different amount of involvement load as the experimental groups and a task of intentional learning vocabulary as the control group.From the perspectives of the amount of involvement load,the type of the task and the style of vocabulary learning,this paper compares the different effects of these five tasks on vocabulary acquisition.In the early stage of the experiment,with the help of relevant literature and the teaching experience in Shihezi No.M middle school,this study found that junior high school students lacked the awareness of using strategies in vocabulary learning,and the teachers had problems in vocabulary teaching.Therefore,according to Involvement Load Hypothesis,Input hypothesis,Output hypothesis and Incidental Vocabulary Learning theories,this study conducted task-based vocabulary teaching experiments on 125 junior high school students in Shihezi No.M middle school to explore the differences in the effects of different tasks on vocabulary acquisition.According to the results of the first monthly test,the subjects were divided into one control group and four experimental groups(experimental group 1,experimental group 2,experimental group 3 and experimental group 4).This study mainly uses the experimental method along with the test paper,SPSS20.0 and other tools,to find out the difference of the experimental intervention variables,which are the tasks of “choosing the right meaning”,“filling in the blank”,“making sentences”,“linking words into a text” and “memorizing the words” on the short-term and long-term acquisition effect of the target vocabulary.This study mainly discusses the following three questions: First,from the perspective of the involvement load,what are the differences in the effects on the vocabulary acquisition? Second,from the perspective of task type,what are the differences in the effects on the vocabulary acquisition? Third,from the perspective of learning style,what is the difference between the control group task and the experimental group task in the effects of vocabulary acquisition?The study found that five different vocabulary learning tasks all had a positive impact on improving the effect of vocabulary acquisition,but there were differences between these impacts.As far as the involvement load is concerned,tasks with higher involvement load have more significant effect on the short-term and long-term acquisition of vocabulary than tasks with lower involvement load.As far as the task type is concerned,when the amount of the involvement load is the same,the output tasks have more significant effect on the short-term and long-term acquisition of vocabulary than the input tasks.As far as the learning style is concerned,tasks with “incidental learning” style have more significant effect on the long-term acquisition of vocabulary than the task with “intentional learning” style,although the difference between the two styles of vocabulary learning on the short-term acquisition effect is not significant.To sum up,English teachers in the junior high school can design vocabulary learning tasks with higherinvolvement load,use output tasks to practice vocabulary,and encourage students to accumulate vocabulary through incidental learning.