The Effects Of Different Types Of Narrow Reading Plus Vocabulary Enhancement Activities On Senior High School Students’ Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the foundation of a language.According to the New English Curriculum Standard for Senior High School(2017 edition,2020 revised),it requires that high school students should master about 3000 to 3500 English vocabulary.Previous researches have shown that reading can expand English as foreign language learner’s vocabulary.In recent years,the narrow reading proposed by Krashen(1981)has attracted more and more researchers’ attention.However,most previous studies have only compared narrow reading to extensive reading,or compared different types of narrow reading,and rarely investigated its impact on vocabulary acquisition itself.In view of these,this study combined narrow reading with vocabulary enhancement activities to investigate its influence on vocabulary acquisition.More specifically,the study aims to address the following three research questions:(1)Which approach is more helpful for short-term acquisition of vocabulary knowledge for students between topic-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities(TNV)and author-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities(ANV)?(2)Which approach is more helpful for long-term acquisition of vocabulary knowledge for students between topic-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities(TNV)and author-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities(ANV)?(3)What are students’ attitudes toward vocabulary acquisition and narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities after the experiment?In order to resolve those three questions,this study used the methods of testing and questionnaire survey,and adopted the statistical analysis method combining qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the research questions.A total of 96 students from two parallel classes of a senior high school(grade one)participated in this 9-week experiment in Lanzhou,Gansu province.The two classes carried out topic-limited and author-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities respectively.There were three rounds of reading,each round of two classes read three articles,and completed the vocabulary enhancement activities related to the target words.After completing the three rounds of reading tasks,the subjects participated in the immediate post-test.Two weeks later,the subjects accepted the delayed post-test and then finished the questionnaire about narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities.The collected experimental data were processed and analyzed by SPSS 24.0 software.The research found that the topic-limited narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities group was superior to the author-limited narrow reading group in receptive and productive word knowledge in both immediate and delayed post-test.Through careful investigation and analysis,it can be found that the repetition rate of vocabulary in topic-limited narrow reading is higher than that in author-limited narrow reading.And topic-limited narrow reading provides learners with meaningful context which conducive to vocabulary learning and can activate students’ background knowledge.In addition,the results of the questionnaire survey show that the subjects hold a positive attitude towards the vocabulary acquisition mode of narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities,and are willing to use it in the future English learning.The results of research showed that narrow reading plus vocabulary enhancement activities has a great help to high school students’ vocabulary acquisition.Learners can make full use of it to improve their vocabulary and reading ability in English learning.Teachers can also adopt this approach to reduce the burden of students’ and better promote their vocabulary acquisition.