Task effectiveness and word learning in a second language: the involvement load hypothesis on trial

“Focus on form refers to the position held by many instructed SLA researchers that overt attention to linguistic elements is beneficial, if not necessary, for learners to acquire native-like competence (e.g. Doughty & Williams, 1998; Ellis, 2001; Long, 1991; Norris & Ortega, 2000).”

“Focus on form refers to the position held by many instructed SLA researchers that overt attention to linguistic elements is beneficial, if not necessary, for learners to acquire native-like competence (e.g. Doughty & Williams, 1998; Ellis, 2001; Long, 1991; Norris & Ortega, 2000).”

“…on trial Gregory D. Keating San Diego State University, USA This study tests the claim that word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task’s involvement load (i.e. the amount of need, search, and evaluation it imposes), as proposed by Laufer and Hulstijn (2001).”

“The S-N-K is less conservative than the Tukey test and was chosen by Hulstijn and Laufer (2001) in their analyses.”

“Some evidence suggests that the benefits associated with more effective tasks are negated or not realized when completion time is taken into account or when completion times are held constant across tasks in the research design (e.g. Ellis, 1995; Folse, 2006; Webb, 2005).”

“Keating (2008) and Pichette, Serres, and LaFontaine (2012) had similar results: A writing task, assigned a higher involvement index than reading tasks, yielded higher word recall scores, but that effect faded with time.”

“Several studies have tested Laufer and Hulstijn's involvement load hypothesis (e.g., Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Martínez-Fernández, 2008; Rott, 2005).”

“Various productive tasks were usually more effective than comprehension tasks (Ellis & He, 1999; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Laufer, 2003; Webb, 2005; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008) Evidence has been accumulating to show that FonFs tasks that require learners to practise words in non-communicative contexts are quite useful an…”

“Keating (2008), for example, found that sentence writing – the most effective activity – resulted in around half of the words being learned.”

“Since the original proposal, some empirical studies have directly (Hulstijn and Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008) or indirectly (Folse, 2006; Rott, 2007) addressed the predictions made by the involvement load hypothesis, and have produced mixed results.”

“Following Paribakht and Wesche (1993), Hulstijn and Laufer (2001), and Keating (2008), a meaning was graded zero if it is completely incorrect (e.g. writing an answer of ‘comprehensive’ for the meaning of ‘apprehensive’), a half score if it is a semantically acceptable equivalent of the target word…”

“When participants lacked any prior experience studying a target language (e.g., Nakata, 2016), or their proficiency levels were explicitly reported as “begin-ners” by researchers, the participants were coded as basic (e.g., Keating, 2008).”

“…studies on the effect of multiple encounters, see Nation & Wang, 1999; Pigada & Schmitt, 2006; Waring & Takaki, 2003; Webb, 2007, and for examples of the effect of vocabulary activities, see Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Peters, 2007; Pichette, De Serres, & Lafontaine, 2012.)”

“A number of recent studies have examined the efficacy of ILH and have found some evidence for its predictive power (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Nassaji & Hu, 2012; Peters, Hulstijn, Sercu, & Lutjeharms, 2009; Rott, 2007).”

“are a PhD thesis by Kullman (2003) and a book by Gray (2010b).”

“However, Keating (2008) notes that the superiority of writing in his study did not hold when test scores were adjusted to reflect time on task.”

“…indicated that the rate of vocabulary learnt during reading is low and suggested that instructional interventions including learners’ production assist vocabulary acquisition (e.g. de la Fuente, 2002; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Laufer, 2003, 2006; Min, 2008; Paribakht & Wesche, 1997).”

“Expanding on this line of ILH studies (e.g. Huang et al., 2012; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Zou, 2017), Task 4 (reading + writing plus the use of a dictionary), which contained a strong evaluation and search requirement, yielded the best performance in terms of learning receptive and…”

“Other research (Beal, 2007; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Tu, 2004) has explored the effects of output tasks on second or foreign incidental vocabulary acquisition while reading.”

“…Bird, 2012; Bowles, 2003; Calderón, 2013; Hsieh, Moreno, & Leow, 2016; Leow, 1997, 2001b; Rosa & Leow, 2004; Rosa & O’Neill, 1999; Sachs & Suh, 2007; see also studies on Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) Involvement Load Hypothesis, e.g. Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Rott, 2005).”

“The Involvement Load Hypothesis is not yet extensively supported empirically (see Keating, 2008).”

“…concurrently, despite previous studies having identified vocabulary knowledge as a strong predictor of writing quality (Albrechtsen, Haastrup and Henriksen 2008; Lee 2003; Nation 2001) and shown how writing practice in turn can enhance vocabulary (Hulstijn and Laufer 2001; Keating 2008; Kim 2008).”

“English as a Second Language (ESL) learners and linguists have attempted to develop various learning theories and frameworks (Gu 2003; Hu and Nassaji 2016; Hulstijn and Laufer 2001; Keating 2008; Prince 1996; Schmitt 2008) to identify effective learning methods to promote word retention.”

“However, several studies also revealed that the predictions of the ILH were not always accurate (e.g., Bao, 2015; Folse, 2006; Keating, 2008; Rott, 2012; Zou, 2017).”

“…adults learning English; Soleimani and Rahmanian (2015) and Keyvanfar and Badraghi (2011) studied intermediate and low-intermediate EFL learners, respectively; Keating (2008) worked with adult elementary learners of Spanish, while Javanbakht (2011) utilized elementary EFL learners.”

“Most studies found support for it in 144 PER SNODER the sense that tasks with a higher involvement load generated greater learning gains than tasks with a lower one (e.g., Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008).”

“More specifically, Keating (2008) indicated that vocabulary learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task’s involvement load (i.”

“Keating (2008) supports claims by Laufer (2005) that by using a focus-on-form component of vocabulary instruction, word learning and retention are increased.”

“…generally supported the hypothesis because the results of studies have indicated that cloze-exercises promote better vocabulary learning than reading tasks but are not as e ff ective as writing tasks (e.g. Huang et al., 2012; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Mármol & Sánchez-Lafuente, 2013).”

“Past research evidence has confirmed the main principles of the Involvement Load Hypothesis (e.g. Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008) and the significance of the degree of involvement as a main predictor of learning gains (e.g. Huang, Willson, & Eslami, 2012).”

“This finding is inconsistent with previous studies focusing on productive acquisition of new words (Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Yang, Shintani, Li, & Zhang, 2017; Zou, 2017), which observed that productive tasks, including sentence writing and composition writing, led to better learning outcomes than…”

“The use of tasks in teaching vocabulary has also been strongly recommended as highly useful VTSs (Brown, 2013; Keating, 2008).”

“…the salience of the form–meaning link throughout the treatment, which, as many studies reveal, should be kept in learner attention and sustained throughout a particular treatment (Barcroft, 2006; De la Fuente, 2006; Hulstijn, 1997; Hulstijn, Hollander & Greidanus, 1996; Keating, 2008; Webb, 2007).”

“Literature Review: Depth of Processing Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) motivational-cognitive construct of taskinduced involvement is based on the framework of depth of processing, originally proposed by Craik and Lockhart (1972) as an alternative to multistory model (Atkinson and Shiffrin, 1968).”

“Another group of research work that has encouraged the present study is related to studies that have considered the role of input enhancement on teaching vocabulary ( Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008) and phrasal verbs (Sjoholm, 1995).”

“Nonetheless, although being informed of a post-test does not necessarily lead to higher retention rates (Peters, 2007; Keating, 2008), it would be interesting to conduct a similar study in which participants are encouraged to commit form-meaning links to memory in order to see whether the story is also effective in he…”

“Several studies, mostly with adults of different levels of proficiency, have found support for the hypothesis (e.g. Hu & Nassaji, 2016; Keating, 2008; Li, 2014; Nassaji & Hu, 2012; Qin & Teng, 2017; Silva & Otwinowska, 2018; Teng, 2015).”

“The same has been true of some sentence or text gap-filling tasks; however, gap-filling writing has not been consistently superior to reading comprehension, especially when both receptive and productive lexical acquisition and retention have been examined (e.g. Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Laufer, 2003).”

“In fact many students fall short of the 98% text coverage—amounting to knowledge of 8,000-9,000 word families (Nation, 2006)—that is a prerequisite for successful comprehension (Keating, 2008).”

“This observation has spawned a wide array of L2 vocabulary studies that aim to find an effective way of promoting L2 vocabulary development (Folse, 2006; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Jiang & Tu, 2016; Keating, 2008; Laufer, 2003; Lu, 2013; Rassaei, 2017; Webb, 2005; Zhou & Wang, 2021; Zou, 2017).”

“Keating (2008), for example, investigated the effects of three tasks with different involvement loads on vocabulary retention of 79 Spanish learners.”

“In essence, the extent to which a new word is remembered depends on the level of cognitive involvement, particularly the mental efforts invested when encountering contextual clues (Keating, 2008; Taheri and Golandouz, 2021).”

“In general, such results corroborate previous findings in the ILH literature that learning conditions associated with more greater involvement loads could lead to greater vocabulary gains (e.g. Hulstijn and Laufer 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001).”

“However, in order for textbook exercises to be effective learning tools, they must cognitively engage students (e.g. Keating, 2008; Potts & Shanks, 2014), while also promoting L2 comprehension, learning, and retention.”

“Several attempts have been made to investigate how to teach vocabulary through vocabulary tasks in short periods of language teaching programs (Beal, 2007; Keating, 2008).”

“These results are in line with the results of previous studies that showed that tasks with higher involvement loads had an advantage over tasks with lower involvement loads (Keating 2008; Kim 2011; Laufer and Hulstijn 2001; Yang et al. 2017).”

“Moreover, generation provides learners with opportunities for retrieval and rehearsal, thereby developing their vocabulary knowledge (Keating, 2008; Laufer, 2006).”

“However, in Keating ’ s (2008) experiment, sentence writing was not signi fi cantly better than the gap-fi ll task.”

“Some empirical studies have lent support to the predictions of the hypothesis by showing that tasks with higher levels of involvement load result in higher vocabulary gains (Hulstijn & Laufer 2001; Keating 2008; Kim 2008).”

“Studies (Huang et al., 2012; Keating, 2008) also suggest that word learning is better in the learners who read a combination of expository and narrative text than those who read either an expository or narrative text, but when time on task was taken into account, the benefits connected to different involvement loads f…”

“Keating (2008) added “Tasks that induce greater involvements (i.e., tasks with higher degrees of need, search, and evaluation) generally lead to greater gains in short-term and, in some cases, long-term word retention” (p. 368).”

“Recently, with the development of task-based approaches to teaching different components of language, pedagogical tasks were identified as another principal source of incidental vocabulary learning (Keating, 2008; Moonen, De Graaff, Westhoff, & Admiraal, 2005; Wesche & Paribakht, 2000).”

“…can be seen a significant decline was resulted between the immediate and delayed posttests in administering Task B. Contrary to the © 2015 ACADEMY PUBLICATION vocabulary acquisition (e.g., Hulstijn and Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Watanabe, 1997, Herman et al., 1987; as cited in Hui-Fang Tu, 2003).”

“Webb (2005), Folse (2006) and Keating (2008) experimented with various types of tasks and concluded that the effectiveness in tasks with different load involvement is reduced or disappears when the time to resolve them is the same.”

“The vocabulary tests used in this study were also developed by the researcher based on the measurements available in the relevant literature (e.g., Fuente, 2006; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Webb, 2002).”

“Keating (2008) investigated whether the low-proficiency learners may also benefit from the more involving tasks, and whether the learners may gain the same word knowledge on passive and active tests.”

“This idea is contrary to (Keating , 2008) who does not believe so much in the benefiiality of involvement load hypothesis for longer retention.”

“…either by controlling time on task to compare the effects of different ILs induced by different tasks on vocabulary acquisition (Folse, 2006; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Webb, 2005) or by controlling the IL to compare the effects of different time on the task (Taheri & Rezaie Golandouz, 2021).”

“…empirical findings and research testing the involvement load hypothesis (see Barcroft, 2004; Fraser, 1999; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Joe, 1998; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Laufer, 2000, 2003; Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001; Laufer & Rozovski-Roitblat, 2011; Martinez-Fernandez, 2008; Pulido, 2009;…”

“The ILH stimulated a body of research on designing and comparing L2 vocabulary tasks which tried to test the hypothesis and provide empirical evidence for its validity (Eckerth & Tavakoli, 2012; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Keating, 2008; Kim, 2008; Lee & Pulido, 2017; Zou, 2017).”

“Various studies have shown decreased performance in reading comprehension with increased load (Kiger 1989; Keating 2008).”

“Many studies have utilized this notion and studied the effects each component has on ord learning, for example, on exposure frequency and elaboration [22], amount of involvement variation [36], learners’ proficiency [39], task type and word occurrence [44], and vocabulary learning [38, 56].”

“With 79 undergraduate beginning learners of Spanish as L2, Keating (2008) replicated Hulstijn and Laufer’s (2001) study to explore whether their predictions can be validated both in active and passive word knowledge for low-proficiency learners.”

“The findings in terms of the effects of output tasks on vocabulary acquisition are consistent with a number of previous studies (e.g., Keating, 2008; Laufer, 2003; Webb, 2005).”