Higher Task-induced Involvement Load Enhances Students' EFL Vocabulary Learning

Abstract

Foreign or second language researchers and teachers have been trying for hundreds of years to develop effective instructional tasks so that they can facilitate and enhance students' vocabulary learning. Accordingly, many claims have been made in this regard. For instance, the Involvement Load Hypothesis proposed by Hulstijn and Laufer suggests that higher task-induced involvement load leads to better vocabulary learning. This study was an attempt to test and substantiate this Hypothesis. Experiments were conducted with two classes of non-English major students who were assigned tasks with different involvement loads of reading comprehension passages. Scores of vocabulary tests were collected before and after the treatment. The reliability of the test was estimated 0.70 through KR-21 formula. Independent samples t-test was used to compare the possible differences between the means of the experimental and control groups based on the gain scores from the pretest and posttest. The final result of the independent samples t-test for the comparison of the mean increment between the two groups after treatment indicated that the experimental group who received the task with higher involvement load had a better performance than the control group who didn’t. Thus, the findings suggest that vocabulary learning in the fill in the blanks and sentence writing condition is significantly higher than the true or false and multiple-choice comprehension questions condition. Since the task with higher involvement load seems to have facilitated the process of vocabulary learning, the Hypothesis is supported and its application is suggested to reinforce the word retention in English as a Foreign Language (EFL) or English as a Second Language (ESL) contexts.