| Word-oriented tasks through reading, as one of the most effective ways to facilitate L2 vocabulary acquisition, have begun to receive increasing attention of language researchers. Most previous studies on L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition were based on the involvement load hypothesis and conducted to explore how task-induced involvement load and such factors as language proficiency, vocabulary size contribute to L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, very rare studies addressed the combined effect of involvement load, mode of annotations and the characteristics of the target words on L2 receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition. In order to generalize the involvement load hypothesis, this study involves other two factors--mode of annotations and semantic predictability to investigate how mode of annotations and semantic predictability moderate the effect of involvement load on both L2 receptive and productive vocabulary acquisition. To be specific, it addresses the following research questions:1. How do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability affect L2 learners’ vocabulary acquisition?1.1 Do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability each have a significant main effect on L2 learners’ vocabulary acquisition?1.2 Are there any significant interactions among task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability on L2 learners’ vocabulary acquisition?2. How do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability affect L2 learners’ receptive vocabulary acquisition?2.1 Do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability each have a significant main effect on L2 learners’ receptive vocabulary acquisition?2.2 Are there any significant interactions among task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability on L2 learners’ receptive vocabulary acquisition?3. How do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability affect L2 learners’ productive vocabulary acquisition?3.1 Do task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability each have a significant main effect on L2 learners’ productive vocabulary acquisition?3.2 Are there any significant interactions among task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability on L2 learners’productive vocabulary acquisition?This study adopts a 2 × 2 × 2 factorial design with two between-subjects factors (task type and mode of annotations) and one within-subjects factor (semantic predictability). All the three independent variables--task type (the blank filling task inducing low involvement load and the sentence writing task inducing high involvement load), mode of annotations (the English-English dictionary and the English-Chinese dictionary) and semantic predictability (the predictable words and the unpredictable words)--fell into two levels. As the dependent variable, L2 vocabulary acquisition consists of receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, measured by the modified Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS).64 freshmen of English major from Nanjing Tech University were randomly assigned to one of the four groups of equal size. Subjects in the first group were required to use the English-English dictionary to finish their blank filling task inducing the low involvement load. Subjects in the second group were required to use the English-Chinese dictionary to fulfill the same task as that in group one. Subjects in the third group were asked to use the English-English dictionary to complete their sentence writing task inducing the high involvement load, and subjects in the fourth group were requested to use the English-Chinese dictionary to finish the same task as that in group three. Both the blanking filling task and the sentence writing task consisted of two parts and had the same part one involving two reading passages, followed by a series of multiple choices. Then part two for the blank filling task was composed of 20 sentences, each of which had a blank that subjects were required to choose a right word from the words provided to fill in. And part two for the sentence writing task consisted of the same 20 target words, with each of which an original sentence should be made. The 20 target words in this study were equally divided into 10 predictable words and 10 unpredictable words. The time on each task was kept the same.A mixed MANOVA and two mixed ANOVA were employed and the major findings were shown as the followings:1. Task type has no significant effect on L2 vocabulary acquisition (p>.05), but mode of annotations has a significant effect on L2 vocabulary acquisition, and its effect size is medium (F= 3.25, p<.05, η2=.124). Semantic predictability has a significant effect on L2 vocabulary acquisition with a very large effect size (F= 10.28, p<.05, η2=.309). There is a marginal significant interaction between semantic predictability and task type on L2 vocabulary acquisition (F= 2.83,p=.069>.05, η2=.110). There is also a marginal significant interaction between task type and mode of annotations on L2 vocabulary acquisition in general (F=2.94, p=.063>.05, η2=.113). However, neither semantic predictability and mode of annotations (p>.05), nor task type, mode of annotations and semantic predictability (p>.05) interact to influence L2 vocabulary acquisition.2. There is a significant main effect of mode of annotations on both L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, each with a medium effect size of mode of annotations (receptive:F= 5.60, p<.05, η2=.107; productive:F= 6.60, p<.05, η2=.123). The significant main effect of semantic predictability is found on L2 receptive vocabulary knowledge with a large effect size (F= 14.28,η<.05, η2=.233) and on productive vocabualry knowledge with a medium effect size (F= 4.23, p<.05, η2=.083). There is a significant interaction effect between semantic predictability and task type on both L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge (receptive:F= 5.61, p<.05, η2=.107; productive:F= 5.18, p<.05, η2=.099). In terms of both L2 receptive and productive vocabulary knowledge, for either the predictable or unpredictable words, there is no significant difference between the blank filling task and the sentence writing task. Moreover, for the blank filling task, there is no significant difference between the predictable and unpredictable words, but for the sentence writing task, the advantage of the acquisition of predictable words over unpredictable words is statistically significant. Furthermore, the marginal interaction effect between task type and mode of annotations fails to reach a statistical significance either on L2 receptive (F=.57, p>.05, η2=.012) or productive vocabulary knowledge (F=2.10,p>.05, η2=.043).The current study has significant theoretical and pedagogical implications. Theoretically, the new findings in this study fail to be consistent with the involvement load hypothesis, but support the depth of processing theory and attention theory. Pedagogically, the results of this study also provide a good way for L2 teachers to find a more effective manner of vocabulary teaching. During the instruction of L2 vocabulary acquisition, L2 teachers need to put much emphasis on the relationship between new words and unknown words and guide the L2 learners to make full use of the English-Chinese dictionaries at their disposal. Furthermore, L2 teachers might try to adopt the easier and more efficient one from two word-focused tasks with equal effectiveness. |
PDF Full Text Request