The Effect Of Lexical Modification On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

The present study, aiming to provide an empirical testing, is composed of two experiments based on Input Hypothesis put forward by Krashen and Foreigner Talk theory by Ferguson to verify some of the previous experimental findings with regard to the effect of lexical modification, namely, lexical simplification and elaboration, on reading comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition and to find out the major dimensions of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.On the basis of a pilot study, 93 participants were divided into 3 groups to read 3 passages with 3 versions of modification, that is, baseline version, simplified version and elaborated version respectively. Right after the treatment, a comprehension test and two vocabulary tests, i.e., a word form-recognition test and a word meaning-recognition test, were used to measure L2 comprehension and incidental vocabulary acquisition. A delayed test was given one month later to find out the retention rate of the learned vocabulary.The experiment results reveal that elaborating target lexical items can facilitate acquisition of those elaborated words, whereas lexical simplification hinders acquisition of the target words and incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading involves a complex network of interacting processes and influencing factors. One occurrence of each target word with lexical elaboration may be insufficient for the acquisition to occur.