An Experimental Study: The Effects Of Task-induced Involvement On The L2 Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Although incidental learning has been found to enhance lexical acquisition, the process by which incidental vocabulary acquisition occurs is slow, and there is no way to predict which words will be learned, when, nor to what degree. The task-induced Involvement Load Hypothesis constructed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) has gone some way towards handling these problems. This experimental study sets out to test and enrich the hypothesis by examining the impact of three tasks on vocabulary retention. It is expected to find out whether words with higher involvement load will be better retained than words with lower involvement load and whether the weight of search component is as important as that of evaluation component. By the way, the acquisition of different word classes in incidental learning through reading is also explored. Participants in the study, 69 non-English major students in Grade One from Jiangxi Normal University, are divided into three groups. They are required to read the same passage and do the same reading comprehension questions. Additionally, each group is subsequently assigned to one of the three reading tasks which contained different involvement components: a word-inferring task, a word-interpreting task and a blank-filling task. With a recently developed instrument, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (Paribakht & Wesche, 1997), retention of ten target words is assessed by an immediate test and a delayed test. SPSS is applied to obtain and analyze data of the two tests. Interviews are also conducted to survey task effectiveness. The results have shown that 1) the hypothesis gets fully support in the immediate test, but partially evidence in the delayed test, and time has a great impact on vocabulary retention; 2) the weight of search component is equal with that of evaluation component; 3) discourse connective gets greater gains than other word classes in incidental vocabulary acquisition. These results suggest that whereas the hypothesis provides a new direction of second language vocabulary acquisition, it needs deepening and broadening.