Effects Of Task-induced Involvement Load On Idiom Learning By Chinese High School Learners Of English: Testing The Involvement Load Hypothesis

As an indispensable part of language, idioms are considered to be indicative of second language proficiency of learners. Idioms, however, are one of the most difficult areas of language learning. And idiom learning always constrains the development of English for most English learners in China, especially for learners in low English proficiency. Nowadays, there are abundant researches on second language vocabulary acquisition, but researches from the perspective of SLA on idioms which are regarded as a special class of vocabulary are scare. Therefore, it is of a certain academic value to study idiom learning with the current theories of SLA.Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) propose the Involvement Load Hypothesis when studying the task effects on incidental vocabulary acquisition. They suggest that the more involvement load is produced, the deeper cognitive processing occurs and then the better memory retains. In order to test whether involvement load has an effect on idiom learning and whether different levels of involvement load induce different cognitive processing levels, a pretest-treatment-immediate posttest-delayed posttest design is adopted in the present study, which aims to find out an effective way to facilitate English idiom learning.The participants of the study are 93 Chinese high school learners of English with equivalent English proficiency in Grade two, who come from a senior high school in Taian, Shandong. They were divided into three groups: one was control group, and the other two were experimental groups. 15 target idioms were selected and two language learning tasks (language exposure and network-building) with different involvement loads were assigned for experimental groups to perform. And the two experimental groups as well as the control group conducted the pretest, immediate posttest and delayed posttest meanwhile. The average interval between each two tests is one week. After that, the results were analyzed quantitatively by SPSS 16.0.By comparing the results of the control group and the two experimental groups and the results between the two experimental groups, it was found that the involvement load did have effect on idiom learning, and a higher involvement load did result in better retention of idioms than a lower involvement load. In a word, if the involvement load which is induced is higher, the idioms will be memorized better. Therefore, this study verifies that the Involvement Load Hypothesis is applicable to English idiom learning, and the results are consistent with the assumptions proposed by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001). As for idiom learning, however, more precise criteria should be used to define and operationalize the factors of involvement load.The present study provides some pedagogical implications for English idiom learning and teaching in senior high schools. For a long time, idiom teaching has not attracted enough attention in classroom, which leads to incompetence of English idioms for most of the learners. According to the actual classroom teaching, tasks including different involvement loads should be designed for students so as to help them to build a semantic network and strengthen the understanding and application of idioms.