The Effect of Different Components of Involvement Load of Tasks on Vocabulary Learning

This study attempted to investigate the comparative effects of the three components, namely need, search and evaluation, proposed by involvement load hypothesis on the learning and retention of English words. Because further to the suggestions presented in the literature not all of these three components have the same effect. For this purpose, 109 male and female pre-intermediate Iranian participated in this study. The Oxford Placement Test (OPT) was administered to determine the learners’ language proficiency level. Then, they were divided into three experimental groups, each provided with a different task which differed in terms of one involvement load component; however, all tasks had the same index of involvement load 4 (i.e., the amount of need, search and evaluation it imposes). The researcher assessed need, search and evaluation through reading comprehension, reading plus fill-in target words and sentence writing respectively. Initial and retention of 10 unknown target words were tested immediately after completing the tasks and two weeks later. The result of the study revealed that although all participants gained more knowledge about the target vocabulary after the treatment, it was found out that the participants outperformed in the evaluation group. In addition, the result also showed that participants in the need and search groups did not significantly differ in terms of their retention scores.

Keywords:

involvement load hypothesis , need , search , evaluation , vocabulary learning