Using Involvement Load Hypothesis to Examine the Effectiveness of Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention in Taiwanese College EFL learners

• Main Authors: Ying-Chuan Lee, 李瀅涓
• Other Authors: Yu-Cheng Sieh
• Format: Others
• Language: en_US
• Published: 2013
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/75020250397334401374

碩士 === 淡江大學 === 英文學系碩士班 === 101 === The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of two treatments, reading only (RO) and reading plus vocabulary enhancement activity (RV), on EFL college freshmen’s vocabulary acquisition and retention. A total of 114 subjects from four intact Freshman English classes of a private university in northern Taiwan participated in this study. All the participants were local Taiwanese students who have been learning English in the Taiwanese school setting for at least nine years. Students in the RO treatment were given a reading plus a supplemental reading while those in the RV treatment had to read and complete vocabulary enhancement activities. The two treatments were alternatively administered to each class during the study. Four readings were instructed in four one-hour sessions by the two treatments. Each class received each treatment twice during the study. Ten words which the participants had almost no knowledge of were targeted in each reading, so forty words in total were included. Two posttests were delivered to test word acquisition in each reading. One was the vocabulary acquisition test administered immediately after the intervention and the other was the delayed posttest administered two weeks after the instruction. The subjects were measured on both the immediate and delayed posttests by a modified Chinese version of Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS). The result of the immediate posttests showed learners had highly significant word gains from the RV in all four readings. Yet without reviewing the words within the two-week interval the attainment waned. Only one reading showed the RV led to significantly better retention in the delayed posttests. When word acquisition of genders was compared, the female subjects outperformed significantly in the immediate posttests of both treatments. Consistently, the females assigned to the RV treatment retained significantly more words than the males in the delayed posttests. However, no significant difference between genders was found in the delayed RO treatment. When the effectiveness of the treatments was examined on classes of different proficiency levels, the result was that the scores in the RO and RV did not differ significantly in the highest and the lowest level classes. In contrast, the two classes which were in the middle level of the participating classes showed the RV led to significantly more word gains in both the immediate and delayed posttests. Due to the findings, the current study concluded that the RV was more effective in increasing word development of EFL learners.