The Experimental Study Of Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In English Reading In Senior High School

Vocabulary is an indispensable cornerstone in second language learning.In English learning,most high school students have great difficulty with vocabulary.The limited class time cannot effectively meet students’ demand for enlarged vocabulary.According to a large number of studies in recent years,some other ways can help students to acquire vocabulary apart from the established ones,a most prominent one of which is incidental vocabulary acquisition by means of reading.For high school students,reading materials are readily available;for teachers,reading text is easy to perform.Therefore,this research will help high school teachers to find out an effective incidental vocabulary acquisition for their students,which is also the significance of this research.Theoretically based on the “Involvement Load Hypothesis”,this dissertation assumes that the higher the level of task-induced cognitive processing(the larger the input index),the better the effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition.In this study,four reading tasks were involved,respectively being copying sample sentences,translating sample sentences,choosing words to fill in the blanks,and making up sentences,among which the input index is placed in ascending order as transcription < translation < filling in the blanks with selected words = making up a sentence.In this dissertation,four reading tasks are compared to verify the “input hypothesis” and carry out further research.This dissertation makes a tentative answer to the following questions:1.Based on different reading tasks,what is the effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition on high school students?2.With the same amount of input,are there any significant changes in students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition capability?3.By observing the delayed test,which reading task has the best retention effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition?40 junior high school students are divided into four groups for different reading tasks,and they will take instant and delayed tests of vocabulary acquisition.SPSS20.0statistical software are employed for data analysis,together with questionnaires and interviews.The research shows that:1.Different reading tasks enable students to acquire part of vocabulary.The largerthe input,the better the effect of immediate incidental vocabulary acquisition.2.With the same input,the immediate incidental vocabulary acquisition effect changed less significantly compared with the delayed.In terms of the incidental effects of delayed vocabulary,the “search” index plays a more significant role rather than the“evaluation” index.3.There are significant differences between the incidental acquisition and delayed acquisition in terms of the four tasks,and it works best in the blank filling task.It can be concluded that the "input load hypothesis" is not completely correct.The results of the real-time test verify the "input load hypothesis",but in the delay effect,there is a significant difference between the word-filling and sentence-making tasks with the same input amount.However,only one delay test was conducted and the period was short,due to the small number of samples in this study,so there were certain limitations.Combined with this research,the author puts forward my own Suggestions on vocabulary teaching in senior high school and some prospects for the follow-up research.