The Effect of Three Types of Task Engagement Activities on Incidental Acquisition of Second Language Vocabulary

Cognition, motivation and affect are the three dimensions of mental functioning, each having a share in determining learning processes including second language acquisition. Despite the extensive effort to explore cognitive processes involved in task performance within taskbased language teaching research, the effect of taskrelated emotional and motivational states on learning achievements is a fairly unexplored area. The study reported here investigated the comparative effects of cognitive, emotional and motivational engagement with a readingwhilelistening task on incidental acquisition of L2 vocabulary. The three types of task engagement strategies were applied as pretask activities to task procedure. Multivariate analysis of covariance and followupanalyses revealed an enhancing effect for all three types of task engagement activities on immediate posttests. However, the enhancement was not observed for measurements on delayed posttests as a result of the remarkable decay in retention and ease of activation scores. Moreover, the effects of the three types of pretask involvements were not differential. The findings have implications for integrating emotional, motivational and cognitive elements to formfocused tasks aimed at facilitating second language acquisition.