Vocabulary acquisition and young learners. Different tasks, similar involvement loads

Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) suggest that the motivational-cognitive construct of involvement may explain and predict different levels of effectiveness for vocabulary-learning tasks. Drawing on their original work and on later research on the involvement load hypothesis (ILH), this study set out to compare the effectiveness of carefully-designed tasks for incidental vocabulary acquisition in children. Thirty-eight EFL elementary-level 10-year-olds from a public school in Warsaw, Poland, participated in the experiment. Divided into three groups, the participants performed three different sequences of tasks, each sequence inducing similar levels of involvement load. In order to measure receptive lexical learning and retention of meaning and spelling, the children were tested with an orthography test, an L2-L1 translation test, and a multiple-choice test immediately after the treatment, and one week later. In support of the ILH, the MANOVA results showed no significant differences between the treatments (irrespective of them being input- or output-based) in any of the test measurements, either in the immediate or in the delayed posttest. We discuss the results in light of the ILH, and outline some limitations and possible implications for pedagogy.