The Effects Of Different Reading And Writing Tasks On Incidental Acquisition Of English Vocabulary By High School Student

Incidental vocabulary acquisition can be defined as a process in which language learners learn new vocabularies(including the form,meaning and usage of vocabulary)unconsciously in some language activities that do not aim at memorizing certain words.The study tries to explore the impact of three reading and writing tasks(i.e.,continued writing,summary writing and same-topic writing)on senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition by combining reading and writing tasks with vocabulary learning.It aims to provide practical reference for senior high school English teachers in vocabulary teaching.This research lasts for four weeks.The participants are 153 freshemen from three classes of a senior high school in Shandong Province.Class A is assigned with continued writing task,class B with summary writing task,and class C with sametopic writing task.The students in each group are divided into three levels according to their grades.There are two experiments in this research,each experiment includes an immediate post-tests,a delayed post-tests and an interview.The experimental data are analyzed with SPSS 26.0 software.The results show that:(1)three reading and writing tasks(i.e.continued writing,summary writing and same-topic writing)can promote the immediate effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition,but it is not conducive to maintaining the delayed effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition.(2)The same reading and writing task has different effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition of students at different levels.The continued writing task is helpful to promote the incidental vocabulary acquisition of high-level and intermediate-level subjects,but it does not have a positive impact on low-level subjects;Summary writing can only improve the effect of the immediate incidental vocabulary acquisition of high-level subjects,but cannot effectively promote the delayed effect;same-topic writing can promote the immediate incidental vocabulary acquisition of high-level and intermediate-level subjects,but it can only have a positive impact on the delayed effect of high-level subjects.(3)Different reading and writing tasks have different effects for students at the same level.High-level subjects can effectively acquire vocabulary by every reading and writing task(including immediate and delayed effect);intermediate level subjects can promote the immediate effect by continued writing and same-topic writing,but only continued writing can improve the effectiveness of delayed incidental vocabulary acquisition;Low level subjects cannot acquire vocabulary effectively through reading and writing tasks.Although this study has achieved its expected purpose,there are still some deficiencies or limitations because of the author’s limited academic and practical ability,such as the short experimental period and the limited number of vocabulary.In the future,researchers can prolong the experimental period,increase the number of experiments and target words to obtain more scientific and reasonable experimental results.It is hoped that the results of this study can promote further exploration of vocabulary teaching to explore more efficient vocabulary teaching and learning methods and provide some implications and reference for English vocabulary teaching practice.