An Empirical Study On The Effect Of Word Exposure Frequency On Senior High Student’s Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

While without grammar,very little can be conveyed,without vocabulary,nothing can be conveyed(David Wilkins).There seems no doubt about the significance of vocabulary in EFL learner’s English learning.According to New Curricular Standard,reading serves as one of the critical linguistic abilities in the English subject.Additionally,scholars such as Krashen,Mason and Cho pointed out that learners mainly grasp vocabulary through reading.Various theoretical researches have been conducted by scholars home and abroad since 1980 s before Nagy put forward the concept of incidental vocabulary learning over 30 years ago.However,empirical study concerning the word exposure frequency and incidental vocabulary learning is relatively rare.Therefore,it is of great significance to explore the effect of word exposure frequency on senior high student’s incidental vocabulary learning,which will promote the integration of vocabulary learning theory and provide a new research perspective for English vocabulary teaching in senior high school.Based on Krashen’s input hypothesis,Schmidt’s noticing hypothesis and Craik and Lockhart’s depth of processing theory,this study aims to examine the effect of word exposure frequency on senior high student’sincidental vocabulary acquisition through extensive reading by means of empirical study.Two research questions are proposed by the researcher in this thesis as follows:1)What is the effect of word exposure frequency on lexical gain in each aspect of word form,class and meaning in immediate post test ?2)How does word exposure frequency affect the long-term retention of word meaning?75 students from one experimental middle school in Hunan Province are selected as subjects,of which 15 subjects participate in the pilot study and 60 in the main experiment.10 pseudo-words that are coined in replace of the original words with the occurence of 1-9 times are picked as target words.Four immediate post tests are conducted which include: word form recognition,word class recall,word meaning recall and word meaning recognition.Then a questionnaire follows after the completion of the immediate post tests.A delayed post test on learner’s long term retention of word meaning will be administered one month after the immediate post tests.The research conducted pretest and post-test to collect data and analyze the data by SPSS 22.0.The research found that: 1)4.89 out of 10 target words were learned in all aspects of word knowledge(48.9%).Learners could acquire words incidentally through reading authentic novel in the aspect of form,class and word meaning.Word exposure frequency does play a positiverole in IVA though authentic novel reading.Better performance was seen on words encountered 6 times or more compared with those exposed fewer than 6 times in all four immediate post vocabulary tests.There seems no significant difference in general word gains between the frequency groups of 6-7 and 8-9 times.2)Learners could remember the meaning of 16% of the target words one month after the experiment.Meaning recall scores in the delayed post-test were significantly lower than those measured in immediate meaning recall test excluding the frequency group of 6-7 times,in which considerable loss of word knowledge on word meaning did not occur.Words exposed 6-7 times were best retained one month after the experiment in the delayed word meaning recall test.Mere repetition of words may not ensure the long-term retention of word meaning,other factors including the word essentiality and depth of processing also count.However,due to the restriction of place and time,limitations do exist in this study with regard to the experimental duration time and sample size.Only 60 subjects participate in this study and the study lasted for 12 weeks,thus,the research outcome should be taken with caution.Thus,further research should last longer and cover a larger sample size.