Vocabulary Acquisition and Task Effectiveness in Involvement Load Hypothesis: A Case in Iran

Involvement load hypothesis as a cognitive construct states that tasks with higher involvements yield better results in vocabulary retention. This comparison group designed study examined the immediate and delayed effects of tasks with different involvements in involvement load hypothesis (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001). Applying a version of Nelson Proficiency Test as a homogenizing exclusion criterion, 33 low proficiency Iranian EFL learners were randomly assigned to three experimental groups: blank-filling, sentence making, and reading comprehension. The results of ANOVA and Kruskal-Wallis tests supported task-induced involvement in immediate posttest since the sentence making task (M=5.72) yielded better results in comparison with the other two blank-filling (M=5.45) and reading comprehension (M=3.18) tasks. Nevertheless, sentence making and blank-filling tasks of which the involvements were somehow similar did not yield significant superiority to each other. It is inferred that tasks with nearer involvements yield somehow similar results in vocabulary acquisition.