A Study On The Effects Of Audiovisual Input And Audio Input On Senior High School Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Nowadays,vocabulary can be acquired incidentally in the process of listening,speaking,reading,writing and translation.How the vocabulary of a second language is acquired incidentally through different input modes by L2 learners is a focus of study.The purpose of this study is to explore the effects of audiovisual input and audio input on incidental vocabulary acquisition.To achieve this purpose,the following two research questions are put forward:(1)Do audiovisual input and audio input result in senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition? If yes,how?(2)How do audiovisual input and audio input lead to the differences in incidental acquisition of target words’ form and meaning?To answer these two research questions,a pedagogical experiment was conducted.Instruments in the study include vocabulary levels test,audiovisual input and audio input,form recognition test,meaning recognition test,and meaning recall test.Vocabulary levels test is employed to measure the participants’ vocabulary level.Audiovisual input and audio input serve as the treatments of the experiment.Form recognition test,meaning recognition test,and meaning recall test are to measure learners’ gains of vocabulary knowledge.As for participants in the study,they are 104first-year senior high school students from two parallel classes at a senior high school in Zhengzhou,Henan Province in central China.They are divided into two groups,audiovisual group and audio group.Participants in the audiovisual group are exposed to the selected audiovisual input,followed by three tests concerning the form and meaning of target words and those in the audio group listen to the audio of the video and then complete the three tests pertaining to vocabulary form and meaning.The results indicated that audiovisual input and audio input resulted in senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.And audiovisual input had a significant impact on senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition while audio input affected slightly senior high school students’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.Moreover,audiovisual input and audio input contributed significantly to form recognition,followed by meaning recognition and meaning recall.What’s more,the audiovisual group outperformed the audio group in form recognition test,meaning recognition test,and meaning recall test.Limitations,methodological implications,and pedagogical implications are illustrated elaborately.