A Study On The Relation Between Task-induced Involvement Load And Vocabulary Retention In Junior English Teaching

Channell(1998)states that vocabulary teaching should be viewed as a separate area in teaching a foreign language because vocabulary is vital for improving language proficiency.Vocabulary as a core component of language proficiency,therefore,is the basis of reading,writing,listening,and speaking ability.Learning words and how to use them is quite challenging and EFL learners cannot achieve their potential without an extensive vocabulary.One of their main problems with vocabulary learning is that it is here today,gone tomorrow.So it is urgent for teachers to help students increase their vocabulary and ensure better retention.The Involvement Load Hypothesis which is put forward by Laufer & Hulstijn(2001)conceptualizes depth of processing and elaborative learning in terms of three primary components---need,search,evaluation.This hypothesis suggests that the degree to which a vocabulary task helps L2 learners acquire new target words depends on how much the task promotes each of the three involvement load components.To put it simply,tasks with higher involvement load are deemed more effective for word learning and retention than those with lower involvement load.Therefore,it serves as an effective method which predicts to what degree a vocabulary task can help L2 learners prolong their vocabulary retention.However,few studies about vocabulary acquisition and retention have been done based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis so far.So it is no wonder that there is no specialized research on the relationship among the three components.The major theme of the present study is to investigate the respective effect of the three components on students' vocabulary retention as well as the effect on students of different levels,under the situation that the involvement indexes of the three components are maximized.In order to realize the research aims,a three-month long empirical experiment was carriedout.This experiment was conducted at two classes in Grade Eight of a public middle school in Jiashan,with one experimental class and one control class.The participants of the experimental class received a three-month vocabulary retention training.Various instruments were applied for this research---questionnaires,tests,classroom observations as well as interviews to build up a data base so as to figure out the improvement of students' vocabulary retention.After collecting all the data,the quantitative analysis was done by using SPSS 16.0.This study intends to address the following three questions in the research:1.To what extent do the three components of task-induced involvement load affect vocabulary retention?2.Which component of task-induced involvement load has the greatest effect on vocabulary retention?3.What's the relationship between task-induced involvement load and vocabulary retention of junior middle school students of different levels?The results show that:(1)the three components---need,search and evaluation can help students prolong their vocabulary retention respectively;(2)improving students' motivation to learn new vocabulary is more helpful to their breadth of vocabulary knowledge than to their depth of vocabulary knowledge;(3)training students to annotate new vocabulary in an effective way is more helpful to their breadth of vocabulary knowledge than to their depth of vocabulary knowledge;(4)training students to make sentences with the new words is more helpful to their depth of vocabulary knowledge than to their breadth of vocabulary knowledge;(5)the three components have different effects on the vocabulary retention of students of different levels.What has been found in this study not only sheds a new light on the research of vocabulary retention,but also provides some implications on English vocabulary teaching and learning:(1)teachers need to learn the vocabulary knowledge as well as vocabulary teaching and learning strategies in a systematic and comprehensive way;(2)different training and test methods should be used to develop short-term memory and long-term memory respectively;(3)the breadth of vocabulary knowledge and the depth of vocabulary knowledge should be treated properly;(4)different vocabulary tasks should be designed according to the English levels of students.