Incidental Vocabualry Learning In Second Language: The Effects Of Different Types Of Text-Based Exercises

Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) distinguished two types of incidental vocabulary learning: one is used in the experimental literature and with the strictly methodological meaning; the other has been given a more general, educational meaning. But both of the two types refer to the process in which learners focus on comprehending meaning of reading and listening contexts rather than on the explicit goal of learning new words, and acquire vocabulary only as a "by-product". The concept of incidental learning was greatly influenced by the top-down, naturalistic, and communicative approaches of the 1970s and 1980s. The top-down model regarded reading as a complex information-processing skill and paid a lot of attention to guessing the meaning of unknown words through the contextual clues.Although incidental learning was not the target of the main cognitive activity of reading or listening, most scholars seem to agree that, except for the first few thousand most common words, vocabulary learning predominantly occurs through extensive reading or listening. However, incidental learning of vocabulary is not always sufficient and efficient and potential problems still exist. It should be improved with text modifications or context-based exercises etc.Researchers now pay more attention to the investigation in the actual mechanism of the incidental learning. According to much psycholinguistic research, lexical acquisition seems to depend on the attention to input and on the amount and kinds of cognitive processing that go into it. The paper then introduces several cognitive constructs about vocabulary learning, particularly the Task-induced Involvement Hypothesis proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn in 2001.Last, the paper reports an empirical study, a design of reading comprehension with different types of text-based tasks to see which will have a better effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition, applying the Task-induced Involvement Hypothesis. The experiment shows that tasks with high involvement in L2 incidental vocabulary learning are more effective in learner's gains of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge than tasks with low involvement. But the difference only occurs in immediate test, not in delayed test. The implication of the experiment for the pedagogy of word learning is also discussed.