Effects Of Glosses And Reading Tasks On Incidental Acquisition Of English Collocations By High School Students

This study was undertaken to investigate the effects of different glosses and reading tasks on the incidental acquisition of English collocations by high school students. The theories on which this study was based were input hypothesis, noticing hypothesis, and involvement load hypothesis. The research questions proposed in this study were as follows:1. Do glosses affect the incidental acquisition of English collocations by high school students when the reading task is identical? If yes, what are the immediate and retention effects?2. Do reading tasks affect the incidental acquisition of English collocations by high school students when the gloss is identical? If yes, what are the immediate and retention effects?3. Do glosses and reading tasks have interactive effects on the incidental acquisition of English collocations by high school students?The subjects of this study were 180 senior high school students from a high school in Yangzhou. They were chosen with three criteria. Firstly, they all come from Jiangsu province and share similar background of English education. Secondly, students whose scores were lower than 87 and higher than 107 in mid-term English examination were excluded to avoid extremely low or high scores. Thirdly, students whose scores were extremely low in Nation’s Vocabulary Test (2000-word level) were excluded to ensure that students could acquire English collocations successfully. In order to make sure that there was no significant difference between their English proficiency, the group division was made in a rotating order based on their English scores in the mid-term examination in this semester. They were divided into 6 groups with 30 participants in each group.Three glosses and two reading tasks may give rise to six combinations. The six combinations were assigned to 6 groups randomly. Group one received the reading text with Chinese glosses plus blank-filling task; group two received the reading text with Chinese glosses plus sentence-making task; group three received the reading text with English glosses plus blank-filling task; group four received the reading text with English glosses plus sentence-making task:group five received the reading text with Chinese-English glosses plus blank-filling task; group six received the reading text with Chinese-English glosses plus sentence-making task. Then, a pilot study, a reading comprehension experiment with different glosses and reading tasks, an immediate collocation post-test and a delayed collocation post-test were conducted. The Independent Samples T-test, One-way ANOVA. Paired Samples T-test and Two-way ANOVA were employed to analyze the data collected.The major findings of this study were as follows:1. Glosses do affect the incidental acquisition of English collocations. In terms of the immediate effects, Chinese-English glosses and Chinese glosses were more effective than English glosses. Furthermore, the differences between Chinese-English and English glosses, between Chinese and English glosses are significant. The effect of Chinese-English glosses is better than the Chinese glosses, but there is no significant difference between them. In terms of the retention effects, the Chinese-English glosses have the best effect, Chinese glosses are second, and English glosses have the worst effect.2. Reading tasks do affect the incidental acquisition of English collocations. In terms of the immediate effects, the sentence-making task is relatively more effective than blank-filling task, but the difference between them is not significant. However, in the delayed post-test, the differences between these two reading tasks under Chinese and Chinese-English glosses are significant. In terms of the retention effect, the sentence-making task is still better than the blank-filling task.3. There is no interaction between glosses and reading tasks on incidental acquisition of English collocations in both the immediate and the delayed post-tests.Based on the research findings above, implications for high school students, high school English teachers, reading material designers were proposed. Firstly, high school students should realize that English collocations can be acquired incidentally through reading. Therefore, they should spend more time reading and choose reading materials with bilingual glosses or Chinese glosses. Moreover, the English teachers should raise their students’awareness of the importance of reading and design some reading tasks with high involvement load. Finally, the English reading material designers should attach more emphasis to the publication of reading materials with bilingual glosses and appropriate reading tasks.