| Reading is an important way to gain knowledge of the language and vocabulary is thefoundation.Although reading has been paid much attention in English teaching, in fact, teachersare mainly likely to use deliberate vocabulary method on the language point of a word. Thismethod separates the overall link from vocabulary and reading and therefore difficult to promotevocabulary size and reading level as well. In recent years, with the development of cognitivelinguistics and communicative approach, researches on second language vocabulary teachingabroad are more and more popular. Incidental vocabulary acquisition catches more attentionbecause it tries to tackle individual’s psychological construct and information processing inmind.The paper is to explore the effects of topic familiarity on students’ incidental vocabularyacquisition in reading. The paper uses translation, multiple choices, blank-filling andsentence-making to check candidates’ vocabulary acquisition and retention. It aims to combinedeliberate teaching with incidental vocabulary acquisition to promote students’ vocabulary sizeand reading ability.96high school students red a familiar and unfamiliar passage at the same time. Fiveminutes later, students finished the translation, multiple choice, blank-filling andsentence-making tasks of the target words to examine the subjects of vocabulary acquisition. Oneweek later, they were asked to do the same task to check the vocabulary retention.The results areas follows: Firstly, topic familiarity can really affect the incidental vocabulary acquisition intranslation, multiple choice, blank-filling and sentence-making tasks, and the effects are quitesignificant.Secondly, learners can gain more words in more familiar passage than the lessfamiliar passage. The study suggests that teachers should have a positive sense of acquisition.More familiar materials for students in reading instruction are needed and the vocabulary growthand comprehensive reading skills can be upgraded. |
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