Involvement Load Hypothesis

ELT Concept #11 – Involvement Load Hypothesis

Azrifah Binte Zakaria

What is it?

According to the Involvement Load Hypothesis, the more involvement load during the learning of a word, the higher the chance that the learner would retain that word. This involvement load comprises three components – need, search and evaluation.

Need refers to how much the word is needed in order to complete the task at hand. If a learner needs that word in order to complete a task, the more likely they would later remember it. In contrast, a word incidental to a task would unlikely be remembered later.

Search is the cognitive involvement in the process of figuring out the meaning of a new word. Glosses, for example, are less effortful than looking up a word in a dictionary, according to Keating (2008 in Loewen pp. 101).

Evaluation is the process of figuring out if a new word is suitable for a context, by comparing the word with others. Thus, the involvement load is increased when students are faced with a task that necessitates them to think about and then to use a new word in a suitable context.

Why is it important?

The general principle of teaching new words would be to get students to be as mentally involved as possible in the process. While this may seem self-evident, it is actually not obvious, particularly to teachers used to a different way of teaching, such as the rote learning of word lists.

The Involvement Load Hypothesis is important because it outlines the different aspects of engagement a learner has with a new word. In identifying the individual aspects, it helps teachers as they can then refine the task they are planning to maximize retention of the new words they intend for their students to learn.

My Reflection

Although I have always tried to increase my students’ vocabulary size, I do not see subsequent use of the words I introduce to my students in their essays or conversations. Learning about the Involvement Load Hypothesis makes it clear why my attempts have failed. I often introduce new words when explaining to students what the week’s essay topic is. They would often use the new words in that particular essay but, in the long term, show no evidence of retention. While my method has fulfilled one of the aspects – need – of the involvement load, I have ignored the other two aspects.

Rather than introducing new words related to the topic of the essay they were writing in a list form with the related definitions, as I used to, I could introduce these words in context, like in a short extract of text, and have students guess the meanings of the words.

This would make students more engaged in the search process. Students then can play a game of collaborative storytelling, where they each come up with sentences using these new words, to form a class narrative.

Through evaluation in the game, students would be more engaged in learning new words, instead of passively reading the list that I have provided. In the game, students would be encouraged to use the words, even if other classmates have used them, as this would increase retrieval practice.

ELT Concept #10 – Cooperative Learning

Cooperative Learning

For more ELT Concepts, click here.

ELT Concepts #1-5 – Teachers’ Perspectives

Reference

Loewen, S. (2015). Introduction to instructed second language acquisition. New York: Routledge.