Effects Of Multimedia Instruction On Incidental Vocabulary Learning And Cognitive Load For Junior Middle School Students

As an important learning method that has been widely studied,the experiment proves that incidental vocabulary learning can not only reduce the working memory load,but also enables students to understand the usage of words to a certain extent.In addition,multimedia instructional design based on cognitive load theory has a significant impact on incidental vocabulary learning.Based on cognitive load theory,quantitative and qualitative methods are adopted in this study to explore the effects of multimedia instruction on vocabulary acquisition and cognitive load.Taking two multimedia teaching modes based on cognitive load theory as the experimental group,the teaching design reduces extraneous cognitive load,manages internal cognitive load and increases germane cognitive load.The experimental groups are text integrated with pictures and text with animation,and the control group is text-only group is.Three research questions are put forward t:(1)What are the effects of multimedia teaching on junior middle school students’ English incidental vocabulary learning,compared with traditional teaching methods?(2)What are the effects of multimedia teaching on junior middle school students’ cognitive load in English incidental vocabulary learning,compared with traditional teaching methods?(3)Is there any correlation between cognitive load and incidental vocabulary learning performance?If yes,what’s the correlation?(4)What are the students’ self-perceived learning outcomes on multimedia teaching?In this study,150 students from three classes of Grade 3 in Jishou No.2 Junior Middle School were taken as the subjects,and a three-week teaching experiment was conducted.Divided into three groups for reading teaching,each group completed the same reading comprehension task and vocabulary tests,then took a delay post-test one week later.A total of 12 subjects from three groups were interviewed,with 4 participants in each group.SPSS 21.0 was used for data analysis.The results showed that three different teaching modes can enable students to acquire a certain amount of vocabulary incidentally.The effect of post-test vocabulary acquisition and retention in animation with text group is the best,while the cognitive load was the lowest,among two dimensions of effort and performance with significant differences between the three groups.No significant difference in vocabulary acquisition and retention between the picture with text group and the text-only group,but the former has a relatively high score and low cognitive load.The interview showed that students took a relatively positive attitude towards multimedia teaching and were willing to receive such kind of teaching mode in their future study.This study shows that multimedia instruction based on cognitive load theory can reduce students’ cognitive load and facilitate language learning.In future,teachers are supposed to take students’ cognitive load into consideration to optimize teaching design.