An Empirical Study On Senior High School Students’ English Vocabulary Learning Efficiency Based On Involvement Load Hypothesis

Laufer&Hulstijn, on the basis cognitive process theory, proposed task based "Involvement Load Hypothesis". Many experiments have been conducted to confirm the hypothesis. However, because of the deficiency of the hypothesis itself and differences in research designs of different studies, no consistent conclusions have been achieved so far. The present study aims to investigate the effects of the three components of Involvement Load Hypothesis, and the different vocabulary retention effects of task types.Based on the framework of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the study aims to find answers to the questions:1. How do the four tasks based on the involvement load hypothesis each affect the retention of the learners’vocabulary acquisition?2. What kind of effects do the three involvement load components bring different effects on the learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition in different tasks? The subjects are all Grade2senior high school students with the same English proficiency. They were given the four different reading tasks. Task Ⅰ:reading and answering questions Task Ⅱ:reading and answering questions Task Ⅲ: fill-in-blank reading comprehension Task Ⅳ:reading with and sentence making task. Then collect the data in the experiment, and use the software SPSS19.0and One-way ANOVA to analyze the collected data.The conclusions are as follows:1. Incidental vocabulary learning does occur in the experiment.2. The subjects with the fill-in-blanks and sentence making questions performed best of all the groups.3. of all the three components, the effects brought by the need is smaller than those brought by the search and evaluation. The findings of the present research may practically and theoretical provide some instructions to improve vocabulary learning. It will be an effective way for the students to enlarge their vocabulary by reading. By disigning some reading tasks and some proper instructions, the teachers can help the students improve their vocabulary acquisition efficiently.