A Comparative Study Of Pupils’ Incidental English Vocabulary Acquisition Under Different Input Modes

With the fast development of China and it’s close interaction with other countries,English language learning has become increasingly popular in China over the last two decades.The critical period hypothesis(Lenneberg,1967)has a profound influence on English teaching and learning in China nowadays,although it is been doubted by many scholars(Hakuta et al,2001;Liu,2003).Learners are encouraged to learn English as early as possible.Pupils start to learn English from grade one.Bilingual kindergartens and international kindergartens have become more and more popular.Vocabulary acquisition is the foundation of English teaching and learning.Much attention has been paid on the teaching and learning of vocabulary,however,primary school pupils continue to show poor proficiency as a result of time-consuming practices used.Many scholars and practitioners have been looking for efficient ways to accelerate vocabulary acquisition.On the practices used,vocabulary learning can be divided into direct vocabulary learning and indirect vocabulary acquisition(Nation,1990).Direct vocabulary learning refers to intentional vocabulary learning,which is a learning process that focuses on the memorizing of words through exercises and activities such as remembering word form.Incidental vocabulary acquisition is a by-product of a communicative activity focused on meaning(Huckin & Coady,1999),which has proved to be effective in both first language and foreign language learning.Although a great amount of research has been done to investigate the feasibility of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading or listening,very few studies have compared the effectiveness of the two input modes.Moreover,among the existing comparison studies,none have examined the use of songs as input material for EFL Chinese pupils that have low levels of English language proficiency.The present study is based on Krashen’s input hypothesis.It aims to explore the following research questions:(1)Are there any significant differences between song-listening and lyric-reading in their effects on the incidental acquisition of vocabulary in terms of word form?(2)Are there any significant differences between song-listening and lyric-reading in their effects on the incidental acquisition of vocabulary in terms of word meaning?(3)Are there any significant differences between song-listening and lyric-reading in their effects on vocabulary retention? If there are differences,what are the specific differences in terms of form and meaning?Ninety-one grade three pupils were divided into two groups,for investigating the effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition.Six songs and their corresponding lyrics were selected to be the input material to ensure comparability in both the reading and listening groups.Due to the participants’ low proficiency,this study only explores word form acquisition and word meaning acquisition.The vocabulary acquisition test was implemented immediately after the input material had been supplied.The vocabulary retention test was conducted two weeks later.In order to provide qualitative feedback from the participants,an interview was conducted to collect detailed information from the participants immediately after the immediate posttest.The results showed that the lyric-reading group significantly outscored the other group in word form acquisition following the test.However,no significant difference was detected in either group following the delayed test.The results of the interview showed most of the participants were fond of listening to English songs or reading lyrics of songs.Some pupils in the listening group experienced the “din in the head” phenomenon.The result of this study verifies Krashen’s input hypothesis and incidental vocabulary acquisition hypothesis.According to the results of immediate vocabulary acquisition,both groups acquired vocabulary incidentally,the lyric-reading group performed significantly better than the song-listening group in the aspect of word form,which was reported in the former research.The results of the delayed retention test reveal the positive effect of song-listening in vocabulary retention.