The Effect Of The Text Difficulty On Second Language Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

This study aims to gain further insight into the process of incidental vocabulary acquisition and make an empirical contribution to a comprehensive understanding on the nature of learning vocabulary incidentally through reading. Furthermore, it hopes to provide some hints for learners on what to do or should do to aid the process of acquiring second language vocabulary through reading.Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis and Input Hypothesis, this study examines the relationship between second language (L2) passage comprehension and acquisition of new lexical items from the passages. The effect of text difficulty on the above relationships is particularly examined.Participants were a sample of 90 L2 learners that randomly divided into three groups. Each group read easy, semi-difficult and difficult texts containing nonsense words. After reading Vocabulary Knowledge Scale measures were administered and they performed a free-written recall either in English or in their first language. Twenty-one days after reading, the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale measures were repeated. All the data gain from the experiment were to be run by the powerful statistical software-SPSS 12.0Analyses reveal a generally consistent role of passage comprehension in lexical gain and retention, increases in reading comprehension, as demonstrated by the recall of T-units, were accompanied by increases in gain and retention of the target nonsense words that appeared in the both easy and difficult passages.But differential patterns of relationships due to effects of text difficulty are observed. Compared with the semi-difficult text group, the easy text group acquired more word meanings and forms through reading, but the difference is not so significant even though they were more successful in inferring meanings from context.And for the difficult text group, readers will experience additional constraints on their capacity to process the given texts, which was subsequently demonstrated by their less successful acquisition in comparison to the readers who read easier text.The present study demonstrates that the level of text difficulty should be expected to play a significant role in vocabulary development through reading. The proper difficulty of text will contribute to the efficiency of attentional allocation during reading, enabling the participants'analyses and textual interpretations, and, in turn, superior memory performance.