A Study Of The Effects Of Retrieval Practice On Senior High School Students' Incidental Vocabulary Learning During Reading

Vocabulary learning is a requisite part of the second language learning.For English learners,it is undoubted that a vast amount of vocabulary helps promote their English level.However,due to the inadequate particular language environment,the biggest problem in English vocabulary learning for Chinese senior high school students is lack of efficient vocabulary learning methods.In recent years,abundant studies of linguistic researchers have found that learning new words unintentionally in the course of reading promotes learners' vocabulary learning.In addition,researchers at home and abroad agree that retrieval practice is a powerful mnemonic enhancer.This study aims to examine the effects of retrieval practice on senior high school students' incidental vocabulary learning during reading by combining the incidental vocabulary learning with retrieval practice.Based on that,this study mainly attempts to address the following two questions:(1)Does retrieval practice influence students' vocabulary learning during reading?If so,what are the short-term effects of retrieval practice upon incidental vocabulary learning?(2)What are the long-term effects of retrieval practice upon students'incidental vocabulary learning?In order to fulfill the experiment,an immediate vocabulary test,a delayed post-test and an interview are adopted in this study.The teaching experiment involved in the study takes 80 senior high school students from Shenzhen as its subjects,who are respectively grouped as an experimental group with retrieval practices and a control group without retrieval practices.Each group has 40 students respectively.All the students are provided with a reading passage including five target words.In the control group,the target words appear five times with its corresponding explanation while in the experimental group,the target English words appear only for the first and second times,and from the third time to the fifth time,only the L1 translation appears as a cue along with a blank space for participants to recall the target words.All the data is collected and analyzed by SPSS 17.0.As the study shows,in the immediate test,learners from the experimental group perform better than the control group in terms of word-meaning learning and word-form learning;while in the delayed post-test,the experimental group recalls more forms and meanings so that they get higher scores compared with the control group.That means that retrieval practice does promote word acquisition from reading passages regarding both form and meaning in a short time and enhance students'retention of newly learnt words in a long-term manner.In addition,students' responses to the interview suggest that retrieval practice stimulates their mental activities,increases their attention to the unknown words in reading passages,and strengthens their competence of incidental vocabulary learning.To conclude,as the results of the tests and students' responses to the interview in this study show,retrieval practice with incidental vocabulary learning in the course of reading is an effective way for senior high school students to enhance their vocabulary learning in both short-term and long-term manners.