Effects Of Output Task Type And Contextual Richness On Junior High School Students’ Incidental Acquisition Of English Vocabulary

Incidental vocabulary acquisition has been one of the research focuses,and the effects of output task type and contextual richness on second language acquisition have also received much attention.However,very few scholars have combined output task type and contextual richness to study their effects on EFL learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.Based on the involvement load hypothesis and schema theory,this study explores the following two questions.(1)Are there significant main and interactive effects of output task type and contextual richness on EFL learners’ passive recall of target words?(2)Are there significant main and interactive effects of output task type and contextual richness on EFL learners’ active recall of target words?A 2 × 2 mixed factor structure design consisting of 2 between-group variables was used in this study.A total of 100 ninth-grade students from a middle school in Guangzhou participated in the experiment.They were randomly assigned to four groups to read a short text with different contextual richness levels,complete either a translation or sentence-making task within 25 minutes,and then finished the passive and active recall tests within 5 minutes.To collect more data and make the experiment results more convincing,the experiment was conducted twice following the same experimental procedures but with different materials.This study employed an ANOVA,and the results are as follows:(1)Both output task type and contextual richness had significant main effects on the passive recall of the target words;however,there was no significant interactive effects between output task type and contextual richness on the passive recall of the target words.(2)Both output task type and contextual richness had significant main effects on active recall of the target words;however,there was no significant interaction effects between output task type and contextual richness on active recall of the target words.This study has some implications for improving EFL learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition.Firstly,the results indicated that target words in informative contexts are easier to acquire,so teachers should pay attention to the contextual richness of target words when selecting reading materials.Secondly,the different effects of various output tasks on EFL learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition support the involvement load hypothesis,so teachers should design appropriate output tasks with higher involvement load to promote students’ vocabulary acquisition.