The Effects of Context Richness and Different Task-demands on Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition and Retention

Abstract

Incidental learning in reading is an effective way to expand vocabulary acquisition and there are many factors influencing the effect of it. This proposed paper will make an attempt to explore how and to what extent different kinds of tasks based on reading and different contextual richness affect the recognition and retention of vocabulary encountered in reading. 50 sophomore English majors at the same English proficiency level from a university in Xi’an will be selected and be asked to complete different reading processes, which aim to investigate the role of context richness and task demands respectively in incidental learning. The data will be collected from the scores from every task and be analyzed with one-way ANOVA and multi-way ANOVA through SPSS.