英语论文网

l word learning becomes more and more difficult. Under such a circumstance, IVA  plays a particularly essential role in second language acquisition. Therefore, a deep investigation into IVA is of the vital importance to leaners’ vocabulary learning. A large number of experts have  studied IVA  from various perspectives, such as the frequency of words’ occurrence, student’s language proficiency, glosses’ types, different reading exercises and  so  on.  More importantly,  IVA  has  attracted a  growth  of researchers’ attention in recent years. More and more researchers tried to investigate IVA  from some new  perspectives  in  order  to  help  learners  acquire  words  more  efficiently  and conveniently.  Based  on  previous  studies,  this  study  aims  to  explore the  effects  of richness of context, L2 textual glosses and the combination of the two variables on IVA so as to help learners acquire words in a more effective way and improve their English vocabulary proficiency. 

Chapter Two Literature Review

2.1 Core Concepts and Theories

2.1.1 Incidental  and Intentional  Vocabulary  Learning

Vocabulary  is  regarded  as  the  most  basic  component  in  English  or  foreign language  learning.  The  mastery of vocabulary  attaches great importance to learners’ language proficiency. In general, it is not tough for students to acquire new words at the initial learning stage. While, in later learning period, they are more likely to learn new words incidentally through reading instead of memorizing them intentionally (Krashen, 1994). Some researchers  also  support that most words  are capable  of being  learned incidentally through reading.  When readers encounter words that they  are unfamiliar with, they would  like to get the meaning of those new words in the process of reading (Ellis, 1994). 

At the beginning, incidental learning hypothesis was raised by Nagy and  Herman (1985) in the study of acquisition of mother tongue. “Incidental  learning” originally means that participants are told to do some other tasks instead of the task they will be tested  afterwards  (Laufer  &  Hustijin,  2001). According  to  Joe  (1998),  incidental learning  means  that  learners keep  eyes on  other activities rather  than  remembering certain words.  Consequently, they not only  finish the tasks but  also learn some new words in an incidental way. And the acquisition of certain unknown words is considered as  a  by-product  of  cognitive  processes. In  brief, IVA  is  defined  as  learning  words without an intention to remember words or as a by-product of other activities, such as reading, listening and etc. 

2.2 Relevant Theories

2.2.1 Word  Knowledge  Frameworks

In  the past decades, researchers came up with  a variety of criteria to define what the  word  knowledge  framework  is.  Cronbach  (1942)  本论文由英语论文网提供整理，提供论文代写，英语论文代写，代写论文，代写英语论文，代写留学生论文，代写英文论文，留学生论文代写相关核心关键词搜索。