EFL Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention : Effects of Different Collaborative Output Tasks on Field Independent/Dependent Learners

Abstract

A plethora of studies concerning second language acquisition have argued that collaborative output task, as a reading enhancement activity, is facilitative to promoting second language incidental vocabulary acquisition. However, how learner’s cognitive style indexed by field dependent (FD) or field independent (FI) mediates L2 incidental vocabulary learning and retention through collaborative output tasks in Chinese EFL context remains under-explored. Inviting a total of 120 Chinese university students as participants, this study investigated the effects of different collaborative output tasks on FI and FD Learners’ incidental vocabulary acquisition. The results showed that 1) collaborative written output task was more contributive to receptive lexical acquisition and retention for FD learners whereas FI learners were less susceptible to output collaborative task type; 2) regardless of learner’s cognitive style, collaborative written output task was superior over the oral output mode in productive lexical gains, but not in retaining lexical learning; 3) FI learners have advantages in L2 vocabulary learning, compared with their FD counterparts.