Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the present study investigated the differential effects of three post-listening output tasks(gap-filling, translation, and sentence-making) on immediate acquisition and retent...Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the present study investigated the differential effects of three post-listening output tasks(gap-filling, translation, and sentence-making) on immediate acquisition and retention of such vocabulary dimensions as productive knowledge of orthography,receptive recall of meaning and form, and productive knowledge of grammatical functions. Ninety second-year English majors were divided into three groups to finish listening plus one of the postlistening tasks. The results showed that the post-listening output tasks had positive effects on immediate acquisition of productive vocabulary knowledge, partially in agreement with the Involvement Load Hypothesis. However, the effects on vocabulary knowledge retention were found to be largely inconsistent with the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The finding thus challenges this hypothesis in that involvement load is not the only determining factor and suggests that the theoretical construct of involvement load should be constructed with more caution.展开更多
College EFL learners in Taiwan are often required to do online reading after school to get more exposure to English. Websites designed for EFL learners often provide some post-reading exercises to help them acquire wo...College EFL learners in Taiwan are often required to do online reading after school to get more exposure to English. Websites designed for EFL learners often provide some post-reading exercises to help them acquire words. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine a series of vocabulary tasks from one English learning website by revealing their induced involvement loads and the effects of the loads on learners＇ vocabulary acquisition. Sixty-four sophomore non-English majors were at intermediate English proficient level. They were randomly assigned to four groups representing four learning conditions doing from none to three post-reading activities, respectively. The results showed that similar increase on the retention of word meanings was observed between any two exercises. Furthermore, the significant difference was found between the first and the fourth learning conditions. This suggests that after doing three post-reading exercises, reaching five involvement loads, the EFL learners could make a difference on word gains.展开更多
This paper presents an empirical study of the acquisition of English ambiguous verb-locative prepositional phrase constructions （VLPPs） by adult Mandarin and Spanish speakers. This study assumes that the semantic pr...This paper presents an empirical study of the acquisition of English ambiguous verb-locative prepositional phrase constructions （VLPPs） by adult Mandarin and Spanish speakers. This study assumes that the semantic properties of the target VLPPs that relate to change-of-location in sentences such as The boat floated under the bridge arise from an uninterpretable syntactic feature selected by English but unselected by Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Results obtained from an animated cartoon selection task indicate that neither the Mandarin nor the Spanish speakers at any level of English proficiency possess native-like interpretative knowledge. Tense/ Aspect effects on the interpretation of the target constructions by Spanish speakers were also found. These results are interpreted as consistent with the Representational Deficit Hypothesis view （Hawkins, 2003, 2005） of adult second language acquisition.展开更多
文摘Based on the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the present study investigated the differential effects of three post-listening output tasks(gap-filling, translation, and sentence-making) on immediate acquisition and retention of such vocabulary dimensions as productive knowledge of orthography,receptive recall of meaning and form, and productive knowledge of grammatical functions. Ninety second-year English majors were divided into three groups to finish listening plus one of the postlistening tasks. The results showed that the post-listening output tasks had positive effects on immediate acquisition of productive vocabulary knowledge, partially in agreement with the Involvement Load Hypothesis. However, the effects on vocabulary knowledge retention were found to be largely inconsistent with the Involvement Load Hypothesis. The finding thus challenges this hypothesis in that involvement load is not the only determining factor and suggests that the theoretical construct of involvement load should be constructed with more caution.
文摘College EFL learners in Taiwan are often required to do online reading after school to get more exposure to English. Websites designed for EFL learners often provide some post-reading exercises to help them acquire words. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine a series of vocabulary tasks from one English learning website by revealing their induced involvement loads and the effects of the loads on learners＇ vocabulary acquisition. Sixty-four sophomore non-English majors were at intermediate English proficient level. They were randomly assigned to four groups representing four learning conditions doing from none to three post-reading activities, respectively. The results showed that similar increase on the retention of word meanings was observed between any two exercises. Furthermore, the significant difference was found between the first and the fourth learning conditions. This suggests that after doing three post-reading exercises, reaching five involvement loads, the EFL learners could make a difference on word gains.
文摘This paper presents an empirical study of the acquisition of English ambiguous verb-locative prepositional phrase constructions （VLPPs） by adult Mandarin and Spanish speakers. This study assumes that the semantic properties of the target VLPPs that relate to change-of-location in sentences such as The boat floated under the bridge arise from an uninterpretable syntactic feature selected by English but unselected by Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Results obtained from an animated cartoon selection task indicate that neither the Mandarin nor the Spanish speakers at any level of English proficiency possess native-like interpretative knowledge. Tense/ Aspect effects on the interpretation of the target constructions by Spanish speakers were also found. These results are interpreted as consistent with the Representational Deficit Hypothesis view （Hawkins, 2003, 2005） of adult second language acquisition.
