Chapter1 Introduction
1.1 Background
Vocabulary is a key component of any language study and application, English has no exception.Vocabulary plays an essential role and always exists in every sentence of communication in various formatslike reading, writing, listening and speaking whether you just started learning English or use English veryadroitly. Together with Grammar and Pronunciation, it constitutes Learning Language. The famous Britishlinguistician Wilkins (Thornbury 2003: 13) wrote: “Without grammar little can be conveyed, withoutvocabulary nothing can be conveyed”. Therefore, it is clear that vocabulary has a fundamental role inlanguage learning. Vocabulary is so critical to English teaching that students would have no point of whatothers are saying and no way of expressing their thoughts without it. As Schmitt (2010) noted, “learnerscarry around dictionaries and not grammar books” (p. 4). Educational researchers have discovered that thevocabulary capabilities of students in junior high could determine their reading skills in senior high school.Limited vocabularies would directly impact basic understanding of related materials. This also explains thatpoor readers most likely read less since reading is much awkward and frustrating. In return, less readingwould not help enhance existing vocabularies, which normally provides more comprehension. Thisconsistent cycle proves that the vocabulary gap between good and poor readers increase as students gothrough senior high school. In fact, both students and teachers in senior high are all aware of theimportance of vocabulary learning. Not surprisingly, students are more or less anxious when surrounded bya lot of new words. Therefore, students as well as teachers always show keen interests in finding out thebest way to learn new words.
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1.2 Purpose and significance
The purpose of this study focuses on how senior high students acquire vocabulary incidentally throughreading comprehension with different types of reading tasks, which to test the Involvement LoadHypothesis. It aims to study whether the input-oriented task and the output-oriented task with similarinvolvement load produces same effects on word retention. Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesisproposed by Laufer & Hulstijn (2001), the incidental vocabulary acquisition would be affected by differentvocabulary tasks with different involvement load index. Huckin and Coady (1999, p.182) pointed out that“although incidental learning was not the target of the main cognitive activity; Most scholars seem to agreethat, except for the first few thousand most common words, vocabulary learning predominantly occursthrough extensive reading, with the learner guessing at the meaning of unknown words”. Different readingtasks will be compared in this study so as to investigate the effectiveness on the incidental vocabularyacquisition by involvement load.The significance of this study emphasizes on its attempt to contribute to the discrepant issue of taskefficiency with respect to incidental vocabulary acquisition. Pedagogically, it is hoped that the results fromthe investigation may shed some light on the effectiveness of the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Laufer&Hulstijn, 2001) in predicting task efficiency. As a result, it would assist the development of tasks that bestnurture the vocabulary learning in an incidental setting.
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Chapter 2 Literature Review
2.1 Incidental and Intentional Vocabulary Acquisition
In the context of second language acquisition, the word acquisition consists of two methods:intentional and incidental vocabulary acquisition. The former is purposely memorizing a list of words withtranslations one by one straightforwardly without any contexts provided. It is a fast learning approach aswell as a fast losing one since the usage of the words is unknown. On the contrary, the latter is incidentallyencountering new words with syntactical information which would help using those words in the context.Furthermore, those words appear repeatedly in different perspectives to enhance the learning. In the lattercase, some other techniques such as communication or writing are accentuated. The definition of Incidentalvocabulary learning is given by Laufer & Hulstijn: “learning of vocabulary as the by-product of activityduring vocabulary learning” (Laufer, B. & Hulstijn, J. H. 2001). The study of children mother tongueacquisitions, which points out that children learn their language through repeated listening and speaking, isa hypothesis of incidental vocabulary learning for the second language learners. Hundreds of studies havebeen conducted to verify this hypothesis in operational activities. During the experiment of the incidentalvocabulary learning, learners are asked to perform a task to forward some information which will be usedto test as target words later on. In the first case, learners have no knowledge of the future test while learnersare notified in the second case. Therefore, investigating effects of information exposed to subjects withoutnotifications becomes one method of incidental vocabulary learning. Huckin and Coady（1999: 182）pointed,
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2.2 Empirical research on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition abroad
Nagy & Herman (1985) first introduced the concept of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition forchildren’s first language acquisition. For experimental results of vocabulary, Graik & Lockhart (1972)presented the Theory of Depth of Processing to incidental vocabulary acquisition. Recent studies prove thatL2 vocabulary is mainly acquired incidentally except for the first few thousand common words (Huckin &Coady, 1999).Work about IVA is started by the Nagy's (1985) experiment (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001;Hulstijn, 1996; Joe, 1998; Joe, 2001; Newton, 1995; Pulido, 2003). In order to verify that reading is aneffective means to incidentally acquire vocabulary, scholars (James & Coady, 1999; Duppy & Krashen,1993) conducted a couple of experiments. Watanabe (1997) did a survey on correcting text which helps alot of Japanese students to learn English vocabulary. He concluded that textbooks margin of explanationand multiple-choice questions are helpful for vocabulary learning, and results show that correcting text hasa positive impact on incidental vocabulary acquisition.
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Chapter3 Theoretical Framework.....11
3.1 Input and Output Hypotheses.........11
3.2 Theory of Depth of Processing ..... 12
3.3 Schmidt’s Noticing Hypothesis..... 13
3.4 Involvement Load Hypothesis ...... 14
3.5 Summary.... 15
Chapter 4 Research Design ........ 17
4.1 Research questions.......... 17
4.2 Subjects...... 17
4.3 Reading material used in the study ...... 17
4.4 Procedures......... 19
4.5 A scoring scheme ..... 20
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion..... 21
5.1 Varying effects of ILH components on vocabulary acquisition ..... 21
5.2 Effects of different Involvement Load on vocabulary acquisition........ 28
5.3 Effects of different task types on vocabulary acquisition ....... 30
5.4 Summary.... 35
Chapter 5 Results and Discussion
5.1 Varying effects of ILH components on vocabulary acquisition
Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) point out three components of ILH, involving need, search and evaluation,which play a crucial role in incidental vocabulary acquisition. Before probing into the research questions, itis of great necessity to check the value of the three components first. In order to do so, author describes andcompares participants’ scores of the first four tasks both in immediate tests and post tests. The role of search can be shown by comparison between participants’ performance of Task 3 and Task4. Table 5.1 shows that the mean scores of Task 3 and Task 4 are 52.10 and 57.86 respectively in immediatetest. In post test the mean scores of Task 3 and Task 4 are 32.40 and 32.43. Apparently, there is an increaseof the mean score from Task 3 to Task 4. However, the gap between them is not wide enough both inimmediate test and post test. That is to say，whereas disparity exists between the two tasks, the differencedo not make significant sense to the research. Task 3 is characterized by moderate need, no search andmoderate evaluation, and Task 4 consists of moderate need, search and moderate evaluation. Obviously, theeffect of search just shows the subtle difference between these two tasks. Therefore, we can conclude thatthe component search does not facilitate L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition efficiently in this study.
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Conclusion
The present study, basing on the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) put forward by Laufer andHulstijin (2001), aims to examine the facilitative effects of the three involvement components on ChineseEFL learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition. Positive effects are observed by the tests results. The lastchapter, which is composed of three parts, is committed to the principal findings and suggestions for futurestudies. The first part presents the principal findings of the present study. Then pedagogical implications areillustrated in the second part. Finally, in light of the previous discussion, the limitations and somesuggestions are proposed for further research. With regard to the component evaluation, it shows great facilitative power in both immediate test andpost test. As for the third component—search—it demonstrates the least influence on learners’ incidentalvocabulary acquisition, the reason for which needs further exploration. Laufer and Hulstijn do not makeany classification of search in ILH, which brings difficulty to the present study and it is predicted that theways of knowing a word’s meaning could affect the search function. What needs to be pointed out is thatalthough the other two components (need and evaluation) shows positive effect, the degree of it varies withlearners’ language proficiency level.
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References (omitted)