Effects of Task-Induced Involvement Load and Working Memory on Korean High School Students’ Second Language Vocabulary Learning

Lee, Ok-hee; Lee, Sang-Ki

doi:10.30961/lr.2021.57.1.143

Lang. Res. 57(1):143-165

pISSN: 0254-4474, eISSN: 2586-7113

DOI: https://doi.org/10.30961/lr.2021.57.1.143

Article

과업의 관여 부담 수준과 작업 기억이 고등학교 영어 학습자의 제2언어 어휘 학습에 미치는 영향

이옥희¹, 이상기¹^,^†

Effects of Task-Induced Involvement Load and Working Memory on Korean High School Students’ Second Language Vocabulary Learning

Ok-hee Lee¹, Sang-Ki Lee¹^,^†

Author Information & Copyright ▼

¹한국교원대학교

¹Korea National University of Education

^†Corresponding Author: 이상기 교수 영어교육과 한국교원대학교 28173 충북 청주시 흥덕구 강내면 태성탑연로 250 E-mail: sangkissi@gmail.com

ⓒ Copyright 2021 Language Education Institute, Seoul National University. This is an Open-Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Non-Commercial License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/) which permits unrestricted non-commercial use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.

Received: 20 01, 2021 ; Revised: Apr 08, 2021 ; Accepted: Apr 19, 2021

Published Online: Apr 30, 2021

ABSTRACT

This study investigated the effects of task-induced involvement load and working memory on Korean high school English learners' vocabulary acquisition and long-term retention. Sixty-six students were divided into three groups and experienced three different tasks that differed in terms of their involvement load: 1) gap-filling, 2) unscrambling sentences, and 3) writing original sentences. Each group took a post-vocabulary test comprising two subtests―form recognition and meaning recognition―immediately after the treatment and one week later. Results showed that the students who performed the task of writing original sentences, which was assumed to have the highest involvement load, gained the highest scores in the immediate meaning recognition test. Further, working memory of the students had a weak but statistically significant correlation with the short-term learning of both form and meaning and the long-term retention of meaning. More detailed findings are presented along with suggestions for pedagogy and future research.

Keywords: involvement load hypothesis; working memory; vocabulary learning

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