Blended Learning New Challenges and Innovative Practices

Abstract

The Involvement Load Hypothesis, proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn in 2001, has been widely adopted and applied to estimate effectiveness of word-focused tasks in promoting word learning. With the development and shift of learning contexts, models and technologies in the past sixteen years, the involvement load hypothesis has been researched from various aspects. This review investigates the applications and theoretical developments of the hypothesis, focusing on two main areas: examination of the three components of the hypothesis, and comparison or integration of the hypothesis with other hypothesis or theories, for example, the technique feature analysis. Future developments in related fields are also discussed.