Abstract:

This study tests the Involvement Load Hypothesis (Hulstijn and Laufer, 2001), which suggests that incidental vocabulary acquisition depends on the involvement load required by a task (i.e. the amount of mental effort needed to complete a task) . They propose that the use of dictionaries during reading tasks result in better vocabulary acquisition and retention than marginal glosses as the former requires more effort on the part of learners. 57 Egyptian upper intermediate ESL learners participated in this study. Half of the students were given access to an online monolingual dictionary while completing a reading comprehension task whereas the other half were provided with marginal L2 glosses. Both groups were given 4 surprise immediate and 4 delayed vocabulary tests which measured receptive and productive knowledge of the semantic and syntactic aspects of the target words. The results showed a superiority of the online dictionary group in productive tests while no statistically significant difference was seen between the performances of the two groups in receptive tests.

Keywords:

Incidental L2 Vocabulary Acquisition, Involvement Load, L2 Vocabulary Learning.