The Impact Of Topic Interest And English Proficiency On Junior High School Students’Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition And Retention

Vocabulary,as the most basic language unit,is the foundation of language learning.In recent years,more and more studies have proved that reading can be an effective way to promote L2 vocabulary acquisition.Based on the affective-filtering hypothesis and the involvement load hypothesis,this study explores the effects of topic interest and English proficiency on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.The significance of this study is to expand the research on the influencing factors of incidental vocabulary acquisition,to help teachers make full use of reading materials to expand students’vocabulary size,and to help English language learners build up the awareness of acquiring vocabulary from reading and enhance their learning confidence and interest.There are two research questions in this study:1)What effect does topic interest have on English vocabulary acquisition and retention through reading?2)What effect does English reading proficiency have on English vocabulary acquisition and retention through reading?In this study,48 second-year junior high school students were selected as subjects,and they were divided into three groups in terms of English proficiency according to their performance in the periodic examination.Before the study,a questionnaire survey was conducted among the students so as to determine the high-interest topic and the low-interest counterpart.Then,10 target-words were selected out of each selected passage and students were given a vocabulary pretest to make sure they were not familiar with the target words before reading the two passages.In the study,the students completed two reading comprehension texts in total.One was of a high-interest topic while the other of a low-interest topic.The immediate post-test included three tasks:word-form recognition,translation and word-meaning selection.Three weeks later,a delayed post-test was conducted,and the content of the test was consistent with that of the immediate test.The results yielded are as follows:On the one hand,the topic of interest did not serve as a factor to affect the incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.No significant differences have been found to confirm the effect of topic interest has on L2 incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention through reading.In this experiment,students acquired and retained a number of vocabulary from both the high-interest passage and the low-interest one.But,it is still needed to point out that the gains of incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading have decayed over time for both topics.Topic interest,accounting for part of the intrinsic motivation,is related to incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention to some extent,but it is possibly not a determining factor.On the other hand,students’ English proficiency had a significant effect on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.Students with higher English proficiency were able to acquire and retain more words through reading than those with middle English proficiency,and the lower English proficiency students acquired and retained the least vocabulary among the three groups.The reason for this is that learners with higher English proficiency or better English grades were more accustomed to guessing words from contexts and using word guessing strategies than the lower English proficiency learners.And this finding also confirms the important role of cognitive factors in vocabulary acquisition,which support the viewpoint of"cognition components" in the involvement load hypothesis(Laufer&Hulstijn,2001).Furthermore,the present study found that students,regardless of their English proficiency,had forgotten part of the words they acquired from reading.And the degree of vocabulary decline did not seem to relate to students’English proficiency.This study has some pedagogical implications.On the one hand,teachers should take reading as an effective way to help students acquire vocabulary,and regard incidental acquisition as a necessary supplement to vocabulary instruction.On the other hand,teachers should choose suitable reading materials and learning tasks for students at different levels,so that it will be helpful to build up their reading confidence and reading interest.