Effects Of Input Modes And Output Tasks On Junior High School Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the basis of English learning.“English Curriculum Standards for Compulsory Education(2022 Edition)” puts forward new requirements for junior high school students to develop vocabulary knowledge.Vocabulary teaching,as an important part of English teaching,plays a vital role in improving students’ core competence.However,in the actual teaching of vocabulary,there have always been practical problems such as monotonous and boring teaching methods and timeconsuming teaching with poor results.In order to improve the efficiency of learners’ vocabulary acquisition,in recent years,incidental vocabulary acquisition,a method of indirect vocabulary learning,has already attracted the attention of scholars at home and abroad.Researchers have carried out many experimental studies to investigate the effectiveness and feasibility of incidental vocabulary acquisition,and tried to explore the factors that affect the effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition.As for the influencing factors,researchers mainly focus on external factors,such as input mode and output task type,while the research on the influence of learners’ internal factors and the combination of internal and external factors is still insufficient.In addition,scholars mainly focus on adult or college English learners,and pay less attention to junior middle school students.Therefore,based on the Input Hypothesis,the output hypothesis and the Involvement Load Hypothesis,this study takes the seventh grade English learners as the research participants,and attempts to explore the impact of the input mode,output task involvement load and the leaners’ English proficiency on the immediate and delayed effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition and their interactive effects.This study adopts the research methods of teaching experiment and interview to answer the following research questions:(1)Can junior high school students acquire vocabulary incidentally under the reading and listening input modes? And if so,what are the differences and similarities between the immediate effects and retention effects of the learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition under the two input modes?(2)When completing the same output task,is there an interaction between the input mode and the students’ English proficiency on the immediate and retention effects of incidental vocabulary acquisition,and if so,what is the interactive effect?(3)Under the same input mode,does the task involvement affect the immediate and delayed effects of incidental vocabulary acquisition? If so,what is the effect?(4)Under the same input mode,is there an interaction between the task involvement and students’ English proficiency on the immediate and delayed effects of incidental vocabulary acquisition,and if so,what is the interactive effect?After two consecutive teaching experiments and follow-up interviews,the author collected a large number of quantitative and qualitative data.Findings of the study include:(1)Junior high school students can acquire vocabulary incidentally in both listening and reading teaching,and reading teaching is more conducive to promoting incidental vocabulary acquisition.(2)When completing the same output task,the English profiencyinfluences incidental vocabulary acquisition.The higher the student’s English profiency is,the better the immediate effect of acquisition.The lower the English profiency,the better the retention effect.(3)Generally,the higher the involvement index,the better the immediate effect of incidental vocabulary acquisition,and and the retention effect of the Banked Cloze task is the best.(4)English proficiency affects the effect of task involvement load on incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading teaching.For high-level students,the immediate effect of the Banked Cloze task is the best,and the retention effect of pure reading is the best.For the middle level students,the immediate effect of the Mutiple Choice task is the best,and the retention effect of the Banked Cloze task is the best.For students with low proficiency,the immediate effect of reading is the best,and the retention effect of the Banked Cloze task is the best.In response to the above findings,the author puts forward the following suggestions:(1)teachers should make better use of reading teaching to help students acquire vocabulary incidentally;(2)teachers should select appropriate input materials based on the principles of Input Hypothesis to achieve better incidental acquisition effects;(3)teachers should refine the design of reading tasks according to the students’ English proficiency;(4)teachers should guide students to combine incidental vocabulary acquisition with intentional vocabulary learning.