A Comparative Study Of The Effects Of Different Input Modes On English Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Of Senior High School Students

Vocabulary has long been an important aspect of language teaching and learning,and the acquisition of a large vocabulary is the basis for learning English successfully.Many researchers have documented that incidental vocabulary learning is an effective method which learns vocabulary based on context.However,even though plenty of studies have verified the feasibility and effectiveness of incidental vocabulary learning when reading or listening,few studies have been conducted comparing the effects of these two input modes.Using the Input Hypothesis,Theory of Depth of Processing and Involvement Load Hypothesis as its theoretical framework,the present study aims to address the following three questions:(1)Which input mode,reading or listening,best improves the acquisition of word form under different frequency of occurrence of target words among senior high school students?(2)Which input mode,reading or listening,best improves the acquisition of word meaning under different frequency of occurrence of target words among senior high school students?(3)Which input mode,reading or listening,best improves the acquisition of grammatical functions under different frequency of occurrence of target words among senior high school students?The participants included 196 students of senior grade three from five parallel classes in Qing Yuan High School.Participants were assigned to one pilot group and four experimental groups.The pilot group was used to select the study’s target words.The four experimental groups were exposed to corresponding reading or listening materials that contained 8 target words.Immediate vocabulary posttests were conducted immediately after treatment,and delayed vocabulary posttests were conducted one week later.The results of the immediate vocabulary posttests revealed that reading was more effective than listening on the acquisition of form.There is no significant difference between reading and listening on the acquisition of meaning.However,listening was more effective than reading on the acquisition of grammatical functions.The results of delayed vocabulary posttests showed that after one week,loss of vocabulary knowledge was greater for readers than listeners.Moreover,increase in word occurrence frequency in the texts significantly benefited incidental vocabulary learning from reading,but not listening.