Effects Of Reading Tasks On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition By Vocational College Students

The purpose of the current study is to test the Involvement Load Hypothesis by exploring the effects of four different types of learning tasks with different involvement load on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention by the English learners in vocational college.The whole experiment was designed based on Involvement Load Hypothesis. More than one hundred students of the Second Grade at Hebei College of Industry and Technology were invited to take part in the experiment. They were divided into four groups and each group was asked to perform four different tasks with different involvement load. The experiment lasted for a period of 3 weeks and it was made up of three tests. A pretest was carried out firstly to examine whether the participants were familiar with the target words; an immediate test was performed one week after the treatment to check the participants'vocabulary acquisition; and a delayed test was performed a week after the immediate test to examine the effects of vocabulary retention. The results were analyzed quantitatively by the software SPSS13.0.The present study partially supported the predictions proposed in the current study. Involvement Load Hypothesis did prove that tasks had effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention, but it could not ensure that tasks with higher involvement load led to better vocabulary acquisition and retention than tasks with lower involvement load. The results got in the current study are presented as follows:1). Learners in Vocational College can incidentally acquire and retain the target words to various degrees by doing some tasks. All the tasks with different involvement load lead to significant gains in vocabulary acquisition and retention, The task with zero involvement load is no exception. It also gives an implication that the Need component proposed in Involvement Load Hypothesis can not be defined only based on the task requirements, and what has been proposed in the hypothesis should be given more careful reconsideration.2). According to the Involvement Load Hypothesis, tasks with higher involvement load would acquire and retain more words than the tasks with lower involvement. But the current study has found that the participants'individual performance on the task itself may also have some effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.3). The results of vocabulary gained from each task by the four groups are in the same order in the two tests. It meant that the learning task with which the participants got the best result in the immediate test could remain its superiority in the delayed test.4). Higher involvement load does contribute to less word loss than lower involvement load. The participants, no matter which task they had done, suffered a significant loss of the word knowledge in the delayed post test a week later, but the difference between the mean scores of the two tests under each task was becoming smaller and smaller as the involvement load index existing in the tasks becoming higher and higher.The study also provides some pedagogical implications for vocabulary learning and teaching in vocational college of China. Students from vocational college of China could acquire and retain some words in this way. So the learners in the vocational college should pay more attention to learn English incidentally no matter when they are in class or in daily life. Meanwhile, the second language teachers should attach more importance to designing tasks with various involvement load based on the reinforcement they wanted to supply.