1 Introduction
1.1 Background Information of the Study
There are three important factors for learning English. They are pronunciation, grammarand vocabulary. Vocabulary is unquestionable the most important part for linguisticcompetence. It is the foundation to develop a language. There will be impossible for people tolearn language without learning vocabulary. Vocabulary is also a crucial part for teachingEnglish. English linguist D.A Wilkins summarized the importance of vocabulary in his book:“Knowledge of a language demands mastery of its vocabulary as much as of itsgrammar...Without grammar, very little can be conveyed; without vocabulary, nothing can beconveyed (Wilkins, 1974).” “Vocabulary knowledge enables language use, language useenables the increase of vocabulary knowledge, and knowledge of the world enables theincrease of vocabulary knowledge and language use and so on. The statements of these twolinguists all emphasize the importance of vocabulary.As we know, vocabulary is very important. For most college students expanding theirvocabulary is an effective way to raise their English level. But the types of Englishvocabulary are very complex. Under the demands of CET-4 for college, college studentsshould at least master 4500 words. In order to read the materials in newspapers and someEnglish websites, maybe more words are required. Many of the words have plenty of usages.And some of them are very flexible. All these give students more pressure to learn vocabulary.Since vocabulary is indispensible for college English study, teaching vocabularies hasbeen significant. It’s not enough to teach vocabularies in English college class since there aremany limitations. Also, the effect of teaching in class is not ideal. Researchers and teachinghave been exploring high quality teaching resources for teaching vocabularies. Englishnewspaper reading is considered an effective resource for teaching English vocabularies.
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1.2 Current Problems in Traditional Classroom Vocabulary Teaching
Teaching vocabulary in college is an indispensible part, it is as important as reading andwriting. If teachers can give scientific methods, students may learn effectively. Students’interest may be aroused, and vocabulary learning is more effective and reading ability isenhanced. That’s why teachers pay much attention to vocabulary teaching and give moreinstructions to students. Although teachers and student are aware of the importance ofvocabulary and they have taken methods to vocabulary learning and teaching, the traditionalclassroom vocabulary teaching still has many problems.One of the problems of traditional classroom teaching is that tradition method of teachingalways teaches words isolated. Teachers let students remember words separately. The wordsare separated from context and it makes students think simply. Although students canremember a great many words at one time, students will forget them easily and can not usethem well. It doesn’t mean to remember as many words as possible to learn a second language(L2). Students are required to use the words within their daily life. One word may havedifferent meanings and usages, without context, learning vocabulary are meaningless.Another problem of traditional vocabulary teaching is it ignores some words of firstlanguage (L1) can not be translated directly to second language. Traditional teaching gives themeanings of words translated by Chinese. English interpretation for a word is different fromChinese translation in some degree. Direct translation sometimes narrows students’ thinkingand memory of English words.
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2 Literature Review
2.1 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition
Krashen divided the study of language into “learning” and “acquisition” in his theory. Inhis theory “Principle & Practice in Second Language Acquisition”, he pointed out“acquisition” means “unconscious, informal, naturally process of learning language”.“Learning” means “consciously, formal, and definitely rules of learning language”.Acquisition and learning are two ways for adults to learn a second language. Adults still havethe ability of naturally learning language. Acquisition is still the chief way for adults to learna second language.At present, there is no unified definition about incidental vocabulary acquisition. It isfirstly proposed by Nagy and Herman (1987) in the research of mother language vocabularyacquisition. Many researchers prove that it is also suitable to second language acquisition.The proposers of the theory thought the acquisition of vocabulary can’t totally realize throughintentional vocabulary acquisition, in contrast, most vocabularies are learned incidentally. Ifstudents do a great many widely and meaning oriented readings, and accept lots ofcomprehensive input, they can learn most of the words they need without intentionalvocabulary teaching. In reading, students pay more attention to discourse meaning, guess themeaning of new words. Students acquire vocabulary incidentally in the meaningful context.Extensive reading is more effective than traditional systematic vocabulary instruction. Withthe development of psychological reading model, guessing the meaning of words fromcontext is considered effective. Students should be encouraged to guess meaning from thecontext.
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2.2 Relevant Hypotheses and Theories on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition
It is “almost universally accepted in SLA” that input plays a fundamental role indevelopment of a linguistic system by L2 learners (VanPatten,2004,p.35)Since Nagy andHerman put up incidental vocabulary acquisition, many researchers have been studying therelationship between incidental vocabulary acquisition and reading in second language.Krashen contributes a lot in the process of testing incidental vocabulary acquisitionhypothesis. Early in 1980s, Krashen proposed five hypotheses: the acquisition-learning hypothesis, the monitor hypothesis, the input hypothesis and the affective filter hypothesisand the nature order hypothesis. The input hypothesis is the core of second languageacquisition and it shows Krashen’s understanding of how second language learners accept andabsorb language. Krashen pointed out that second language learners acquire language throughunderstanding information. He thought there is a language acquisition device in the brain. Iflanguage input only contains the knowledge learners already have, there will be no acquisition.The role of input is to activate acquisition through “comprehensive input”. It meansacquisition can only occurs when the language input is a bit beyond learners’ current languagecompetence level and on condition that second language learners focus on meaning andmessage not forms. If learners’ current level of language competence is “i”, input “i+1” is thecomprehensive input. According to Krashen(1981), language input should contain only “i+1”,“i+0” or “i+2” is either beyond learners’ competence or lack challenge to learners. The extrainput can be understood by learners because they understand language not only by languagethey already have, but also by context, background information. So the most effective way forvocabulary acquisition is through comprehensive input in forms of reading.
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3 Research Design.... 19
3.1 Purpose of the Research .... 19
3.2 Research Questions ...... 19
3.3 Methods of the Research.... 19
3.3.1 Subjects ......... 20
3.3.2 Instruments ......... 20
3.3.3 Procedures..... 21
3.4 Data Collection and Analysis ........ 26
4 Results and Discussion..... 27
4.1 Results of the Experiment........ 27
4.2 Discussion of Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition......... 27
5 Conclusion....... 39
5.1 Major Findings of the Study ......... 39
5.2 Implications of the Study......... 41
5.3 Limitations of the Research and Suggestions for Further Studies ........ 41
4 Results and Discussion
The present research was conducted to find out whether teaching strategies can improvestudents’ incidental vocabulary acquisition through newspaper reading. In this chapter, thedata will be analyzed from the pre test, post test. Also, the results from questionnaire andinterview were shown. The results and findings from the questionnaire and interview will bediscussed later in the chapter. The research has made a contrast of the test scores of thepre-test and the post-test to analyze students’ knowledge of the news meaning of thevocabularies before and after experimental teaching. The data for the experiment are usingSPSS for statistical analysis. The mean, standard deviation and other statistical calculationsare shown. The researcher also employed T-Test in SPSS to show students’ performance.Also, qualitative results from the questionnaire and the interview are analyzed as follows.
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Conclusion
The study attempts to investigate whether English newspapers can be used to promotestudents’ incidental vocabulary acquisition. It aims to explore what the correlation betweenvocabularies on English newspapers and the vocabularies on college English books is andwhat effect it has on incidental vocabulary acquisition. Also, it explores the effect oftask-induced involvement has on incidental vocabulary acquisition and how learningstrategies help promote incidental vocabulary acquisition. The quantitative studies via aquestionnaire and an interview as well as two tests are employed. The findings from the studyare interpreted as follows:First, as a whole, students achieve incidental vocabulary acquisition through readingnewspapers. Since English newspapers can widen students’ background knowledge andenlarge students’ vocabulary size; they meet the needs of college English students for learningvocabularies. With the characteristics of current information, motivation, interest fostering,authenticity and acceptability, English newspapers are even more practical reading materialsfor college students. The results of the questionnaire and interview show that China Daily issuitable for reading and by all means the proper learning resources for better incidentalvocabulary acquisition. Students don’t master the vocabularies on college English books well.
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Reference (omitted)