The Effects Of Different Genre Types On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In English Listening Comprehension

Vocabulary is an indispensable part of English learning.For students to successfully master a second language(hereinafter referred to as L2),they must first have a strong command of the vocabulary.One of the main strategies used by L2 learners to expand their vocabulary is incidental vocabulary acquisition(hereinafter referred to as IVA).Besides,listening is the key method for learners to acquire vocabulary incidentally.However,a variety of variables have a significant impact on learners’ IVA in listening comprehension,among which genre types play a momentous role.In light of this,the study chooses listening materials from two distinct genres(the narration and the exposition)based on the Schema Theory,the Genre Theory and the Involvement Load Hypothesis,and tries to answer the following three research questions by combining quantitative and qualitative research methods: 1)Are there any effects of different genres on L2 IVA in English listening comprehension? If there remain some effects,what are the specific effects? 2)How do different genres affect L2 IVA in English listening comprehension? 3)Why do different genres affect L2 IVA in English listening comprehension?The conclusions are listed below.1)Different genres can have immediate and delayed effects on IVA in L2 listening comprehension.As far as the two genres are concerned,the undergraduates gain the best effect on the acquisition and maintenance of the part of speech,followed by the vocabulary form and the final is the meaning.The experimental data demonstrate that different genres have no significant influence on the acquisition and maintenance of the vocabulary form and the part of speech,but have significant influence on the vocabulary meaning.Particularly,in the narration,the undergraduates not only acquire the conceptual meaning of the target words,but also pay attention to the emotional meaning;In the exposition,the undergraduates mainly acquire the conceptual meaning.It can be seen that the the narration rather than the exposition is more beneficial for undergraduates to acquire and maintain the meaning of vocabulary in English listening comprehension.Additionally,whether in the narration or the exposition,the immediate effects of IVA are preferable to the delayed effects.2)According to the interview data,by the ways of extracting the content and structural information of articles of the same genre and actively predicting the listening materials,the undergraduates achieve the acquisition and maintenance of the vocabulary meanings in the narration and the exposition.For the purposes of acquiring and maintaining the vocabulary form,the undergraduates primarily rely on the phonetic listening and comprehension methods as well as identifying the affix of a new vocabulary and its positions in sentences for the acquisition and maintenance of the part of speech.In other words,genre types play a crucial role in the acquisition and maintenance of vocabulary meaning.3)The narration’s and the exposition’s effects on the acquisition and maintenance of vocabulary meaning are both distinct and the same.The reasons for different effects are as follows.Undergraduates are more familiar with the narration’s content and structural features than they are with the exposition,which makes it easier for them to anticipate the content of listening material and increase the input amount.By anticipating the field,the tenor,and the pattern of the text as well as the necessary and possible components before listening,undergraduates can identify the genre type of the listening text and engage the cognitive schema of the narration in their minds.With the aid of schema,context knowledge as well as superior input amount,undergraduates can complete their acquisition of vocabulary meaning.However,because they are unfamiliar with the exposition’s content and structural features,undergraduates tend to make assumptions about the text’s content rather than its structure,which has a negative effect on how well they acquire and maintain vocabulary meaning.Moreover,the causes of the same effects are as follows.Firstly,a lack of timely review and a low frequency of vocabulary occurrence lead to forgetting,which results in a downward trend in the maintenance of vocabulary meaning;Secondly,an unbalanced development of vocabulary knowledge and a low playing frequency of listening materials prevent undergraduates from acquiring all of the vocabulary meaning knowledge at one time.Furthermore,the undergraduates’ mental schema influence how the vocabulary form is acquired and maintained.And the neologism strategy and the grammar strategy are the two listening strategies that have the biggest effects on the acquisition and maintenance of part of speech.From the above findings,this paper has some enlightenment on vocabulary acquiring and listening class,and can serve as a resource for future studies in teacher education.