A Study Of Junior Two Students’ English Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition From The Perspective Of Reading-text-based Interest

Vocabulary acquisition is a critical foundation for second language learning.And reading is a primary source of second language input and is one of the important means of vocabulary acquisition,particularly incidental vocabulary acquisition.Previous studies on incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading have basically focused on text factors(Rott,1999;Paribakht & Wesche,1999;Gardner,2004)and learner factors(Nation,2001;Pulido,2007;Lee,2017).However,interest as one of very important motivational factors,is also closely related to second language learning and vocabulary acquisition.Interest is usually divided into personal interest and situational interest,and text-based interest is one subcategory of situational interest.Based on Krashen’s Affective Filter Hypothesis,this study explores whether there is a relationship between reading-text-based interest interest and English incidental vocabulary acquisition.Specifically,this study aims to answer the following two research questions:(1)What is the correlation between reading-textbased interest and junior two students’ quantity of English incidental vocabulary acquisition? What are the characteristics of such relationship?(2)What is the correlation between reading-text-based interest and junior two students’ quality of English incidental vocabulary acquisition? What are the characteristics of such relationship?The participants of this study are 146 students in parallel classes of Grade 8 in a junior high school in Kunming.38 students among them are involved in the selection of the reading texts,choosing the most interesting text and the least interesting text from 6 given texts.And the remaining 108 students are asked to read the two selected texts,then complete reading comprehension questions and finish the reading-textbased interest scale after reading each text.One day after the completion of the above tasks,the number of incidentally acquired words is recorded through The Quantity of Acquired Words Test,and the quality of incidentally acquired words is measured by Vocabulary Knowledge Test.In this study,SPSS 23.0 is used to analyze the data.Based on the data analysis and discussion,the following conclusions are drawn:First,in regard to reading-text-based interest,the effect of sources of interest and perceived interest on the quantity of English incidental vocabulary acquisition is different.Different factors of sources of interest have different influences on the quantity of students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition in the two texts.The influence of perceived interest is significant and positive in terms of students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.Moreover,while reading texts with different perceived interest,students’ language proficiency also affects the quantity of their English incidental vocabulary acquisition.The influence of perceived interest on the highachievers is more significant than that of the low-achievers.Secondly,in regard to reading-text-based interest,the effects of sources of interest and perceived interest on the quality of English incidental vocabulary acquisition also show some differences.Again,different factors of sources of interest have different influences on the quality of students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition in the two texts.There is significant and positive influence of perceived interest on the quality of students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.The higher students’ degree of perceived interest,the better quality of students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.In addition,the target vocabulary acquired with high quality all appear in the sentence containing the interesting information of the text.While reading texts with different perceived interest,students’ language proficiency also influence the quality of their English incidental vocabulary acquisition,showing same significant influence among the high-achieves and the low-achievers.In addition,based on this study,the author puts forward some implications for teaching.For example,English teachers should choose appropriate reading materials with different interest and provide personalized reading materials for students to enhance their perceived interest,so as to improve the quantity and quality of their English incidental vocabulary acquisition.