The Effects Of Post-reading Output Tasks With Different Involvement Load On Junior High School Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Various studies have shown that reading is one of the most important ways for second language learners to acquire vocabulary effectively.However,there is no consensus on what kind of post-reading tasks are most effective for vocabulary incidental acquisition,and most studies have chosen subjects who are college students with a certain level of English proficiency.There is limited research on the incidental acquisition of vocabulary among middle school students,especially in junior high school.In view of this,the specific research questions of the present study are as follows:(1)What are the effects of different post-reading output tasks with different involvement load on junior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention?(2)What are the effects of different post-reading output tasks with identical involvement load on junior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention?In this study,students in the second grade of junior high school were chosen as the participants in Huanxian,Gansu Province.Based on their scores of last final examination and vocabulary size test scores,the researcher selected 80 students with comprehensive scores in the same range as the subjects and randomly divided them in four groups,with20 students in each group.Each group was required to complete different post-reading output tasks within the specified time after reading,they are blank filling,sentences translation,content retelling and writing,followed by an immediate vocabulary acquisition test,and the involvement load of the four tasks is: 2,3,3,and 4 respectively.After a week,participants were required to take a delayed vocabulary acquisition test.The content of the two tests was the same,but the order of the target words was adjusted in random.All the raw data was statistically analyzed by SPSS 24.0,and drawn the following conclusions:(1)Different post-reading output tasks with different involvement load have different effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition among junior high school students in the immediate and delayed post-test.Different postreading output tasks have different effects on junior high school students in the immediate incidental vocabulary acquisition post-test,and the writing task has the best effect;Different post-reading tasks have no significant effect on junior high school students on incidental vocabulary retention,but in terms of the mean scores,writing is the most effective one.Overall,the higher the index of involvement load of the task,the better the immediate and delayed effects of learner’s incidental vocabulary acquisition.2)Different post-reading output tasks with the identical involvement load have significantly different effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition among junior high school students in the immediate and delayed post-test.With the identical task involvement load,sentences translation tasks have better effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention among junior high school students than content retelling tasks.Based on the above research,this study proposes several suggestions for promoting incidental vocabulary acquisition of junior high school students.Firstly,teachers should guide students to read extensively and focus on cultivating their good reading habits,which will greatly help them expand their second language vocabulary acquisition.Secondly,since students can acquire vocabulary incidentally from reading tasks,teachers should pay attention to the selection of reading materials and the design of postreading tasks in the teaching process,and try to design high involvement load output tasks to promote students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.For example,students can be required to rewrite the content of the text after reading,and present the text content in a narrative style through a short drama performance.Thirdly,in order to ensure the effectiveness of incidental vocabulary acquisition,teachers should help students review and consolidate vocabulary in various ways,such as activities like “English Words Competitions”,which includes words ladder,Super Brain and You draw,I guess.Finally,teachers should combine intentional and incidental vocabulary learning in actual teaching to achieve better vocabulary learning results.