Earticle

The purpose of this study is to test whether phonological decoding process contributes to vocabulary learning in the frame of task involvement load. Three task materials with different amount of loads were created. Thirty eight Korean EFL university students participated in the task experiments (13 for reading comprehension task, 14 for reading comprehension plus decoding process, and 11 for reading comprehension plus gap-filling task). The participants’ performance was tested three times (pre-test, immediate post-test, and delayed post-test). It was found that there were no significant differences among the three groups in the immediate test, and that the reading plus phonological decoding group was significantly more advanced than the reading comprehension group and the reading plus gap-filling group in the delayed test. The results indicated that phonological decoding process was conducive to successful retention of vocabulary knowledge, a lot better than the reading comprehension task and the gap-filling task. It is suggested that phonological decoding needs to be regarded as one of the components of involvement loads that English instructors create various task materials entailing students’ phonological process.

This study examines the claim that vocabulary learning and retention are dependent on a task's involvement load (i.e., need, search, evaluation), as proposed by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001a). The study aims at comparing the effects of task types and task involvement load on vocabulary retention for Korean EFL university students. More specifically, this study was designed to test whether differential levels of task involvement loads lead to equally effective results to vocabulary retention when the total involvement index being equal. Three types of productive word-focused tasks (gap-filling using a dictionary, writing original sentences, and gap-filling through word transformation) were used to examine the interplay of involvement index and task types. The result indicated that there were significant main effects of task types, test types, and proficiency levels. The results also indicated that there were significant interaction effects of task types on the retention tests, proficiency levels on the retention tests, and task types×proficiency levels on the retentions. The pedagogical implications and further research directions are discussed.

With an effort to verify the involvement load hypothesis, this study investigates the effects of three different vocabulary learning tasks - reading, filling in blanks, and sentence writing - on learners' short and long term memory when they are provided with the theoretically identical level of involvement tasks. It is also to examine whether there are any differences of learning effects between input and output vocabulary learning tasks. The experiments were conducted with 86 Korean middle school students grouped by three different task types. Pre-/post-tests and delayed tests were administered and analyzed. It was found that three vocabulary tasks with theoretically identical levels of involvement do not have the same learning effects: the involvement load hypothesis was not completely proved in the case of Korean students' vocabulary learning. The findings implied that (i) the difference of vocabulary learning tasks should be considered even though they have the same involvement load; (ii) given that EFL students learn new words in a limited amount of time in class, the reading task using a dictionary is found to be very helpful; and (iii) it is important to study target vocabulary repeatedly during class and to expose the vocabulary with different tasks to enhance students' retention of the newly learned vocabulary.

This study investigates the claim that task-induced involvement load has an effect on vocabulary learning and examines the effect of task types and word concreteness on intentional vocabulary learning in the Korean EFL context. This study aims at testing whether productive word-focused tasks lead to equally effective vocabulary learning when the total involvement load index is equal but the distribution of index levels of each component (need, search, and evaluation) is different. The three productive word-focused task types are gap-fillig, sentence writing, and gap-filling through word transformation. In addition, in order to investigate the effect of word concreteness on vocabulary learning, two groups of target words were selected based on the level of word concreteness. In sum, the results of this study generally supported involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijin, 2001) and test types and proficiency levels proved to be important variables that affect vocabulary learning. Moreover, the findings also indicated that word concreteness was not a major factor in vocabulary learning. The pedagogical implications and further suggestions are discussed.

This study investigated the effect of different types of tasks on vocabulary learning based on the task involvement load hypothesis. A total of 70 university students participated in the research. Four tasks were used in this study: Task 1 involved reading comprehension, Task 2 gap-filling, Task 3 sentence writing, and Task 4 gap-filling with the aid of a dictionary. Immediate and delayed posttests were administered to measure the participants’ short-term learning and long-term retention of the target vocabulary in both reception and production. For the first analysis, an ANOVA was performed to compare performance on Tasks 1 to 3. The results revealed a significant difference among the three tasks in the immediate posttest, and the writing task yielded the highest scores. Thus, the involvement load hypothesis was partially supported. The second analysis used a t-test to compare performance in Tasks 3 and 4. The results showed a significant difference only in the delayed receptive posttest. These two tasks had the same effect on initial learning, but different effects on the retention of vocabulary learning.

This study investigated the effect of search and evaluation on vocabulary learning based on the involvement load hypothesis. Search and evaluation are cognitive components of task-induced involvement. This research examined how Korean university students at different English proficiency levels sought for and processed target words when engaging in productive word-focused tasks. Three types of tasks were used: gap-filling, gap-filling through word transformation, and writing original sentences. While these tasks have the same total involvement load, they differed in their specific levels of search and evaluation. To explore whether the differential distribution of search and evaluation could lead to varying search patterns and cognitive processing of target words, a think-aloud method, in-depth interviews, and observations were employed. All qualitative data were transcribed, analyzed, and coded using NVivo 14. Results indicated that the higher the index of search and evaluation, the more frequently searches and evaluations occurred. However, types of vocabulary knowledge searched in a dictionary, methods and purposes of using dictionaries, and the degree of cognitive involvement with target words varied according to proficiency level.