This study builds on Laufer and Hulstijn’s (2001) motivational-cognitive construct of task-induced Involvement in learning vocabulary and addresses itself to its strong claim that the depth of processing is the overriding factor in learning words. The paper first re-examines the effect of processing Load and then of task type on the initial learning and retention of words. To do so, 60 EFL learners from two branches of an English institute were selected. The participants were then randomly assigned to three groups: The first group completed an input-oriented task with an Involvement index of three; the second group also completed the same type of task but with an Involvement index of two, and the third group completed an output-oriented task with the same Involvement Load as that of the first group. The comparison of the performance of the groups in the immediate and delayed posttests reveals that contrary to the prediction of the Involvement Load Hypothesis, Task 2 with an Involvement index of two was superior to Task 1, which had a higher index. Besides, the participants who had completed the output oriented task (Task 3) outperformed those that did the input-oriented task (Task 1), despite their index equivalency. The study suggests that the operationalization of the levels of processing, especially evaluation, needs reconsideration.

The present study examined the effect of four types of post reading-based tasks with different index of task-induced Involvement Load (Laufer & Hulstijn, 2001) on EFL learners’ recognition and recall of unfamiliar L2 vocabularies. To this end, 88 intermediate EFL learners were randomly assigned to four groups and were instructed to employ four different tasks after reading two narrative texts: (1) simple sentence writing; (2) text summary writing; (3) creative sentence writing; and (4) imaginary story writing. A day after the output activity session, the participants took two post-tests: the production test and the recognition test. Three weeks later, the delayed post-tests were administered. Mixed ANOVA (Split-plot) was run to compare the performances of the groups on immediate and delayed post-tests. The results revealed that there were overall significant within-group and between-group differences among four groups of the study both in immediate and delayed posttests. The creative sentence writing group outperformed in comparison to the other three groups. The results of this study turned out to be partially consistent with Involvement Load Hypothesis.

The purpose of the present study was to provide empirical support for the construct of the Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) in an EFL context. To fulfill the purpose of the study, 4 intact groups consisting of 126 intermediate-level students participated in this experiment. In order to ensure that the participants were at the same level of English language proficiency, the Nelson test was administered prior to the treatment. Moreover, the participants were pretested on the knowledge of the target items through the Vocabulary Knowledge Scale (VKS). During the 7 treatment sessions, the 4 groups were treated with different tasks (reading, fill-in-the-blanks, sentence-writing, and composition-writing) varying in the Involvement index according to the ILH. The VKS was administered twice (immediate and delayed posttests) to measure the gain degree at receptive and productive levels. The results indicated the validity of the Hypothesis in receptive and productive learning and receptive retention. In productive retention, however, partial support for the Hypothesis was provided. In addition, vocabulary gain in partially known, receptive, and productive categories could lend support to the effectiveness of each treatment over time.

This study aimed to investigate the effect of task type (i. e., sentence fill-in/sentence writing) and word type (i. e., real/ pseudo) on initial learning and retention of 10 word meanings, taking the predictions of Involvement Load Hypothesis (ILH) and Technique Feature Analysis (TFA) into account. Participants were 59 intermediate-level EFL learners from eight intact classes. Each intact class was randomly assigned to one of the four learning conditions: 1) sentence fill-in with real words, 2) sentence writing with real words, 3) sentence fill-in with pseudowords, and 4) sentence writing with pseudowords. Initial learning was measured by administering a meaning recall test immediately after the tasks and medium-term retention was measured by administering the same test with rearranged items one week after the tasks phase. The results of a mixed between-within subjects ANOVA did not show any significant interaction effect between test time and learning condition. Furthermore, the main effect for learning condition was not statistically significant but there was a significant main effect for test time, suggesting that participants’ scores dropped significantly from the immediate posttest to the delayed posttest. The findings of two independent-samples t-tests failed to show any significant difference between the immediate and delayed posttest scores of the participants who received either sentence fill-in or sentence writing tasks. However, some tentative findings demonstrated that those participants who were assigned to the sentence writing task achieved higher scores on the posttests. This finding indicates that TFA has probably more predictive power than ILH and it also provides some evidence in favor of the heavier weight of the evaluation component of the ILH when compared to its search component.

The present study investigated whether word learning and retention in a second language are contingent upon a task's Involvement Load, i. e., the amount of need, search, and evaluation the task imposes. Laufer and Hulstijn (2001) contend that tasks with higher degrees of these three components induce higher Involvement Load, and are, therefore, more effective for word learning. To test this claim, 64 Iranian intermediate EFL learners were selected based on their performance on the Preliminary English Test (PET). The participants were randomly assigned to two equal groups. Each group completed different vocabulary learning tasks that varied in the amount of Involvement they induced. The tasks were jigsaw task (Group A) and information gap task (Group B). During the ten treatment sessions, recall and retention of the 100 unfamiliar target words were tested through immediate and delayed posttest. Data were analyzed using repeated measure ANOVA. The results indicated that learners benefited more from jigsaw task with higher Involvement Load. This study supported the Involvement Load Hypothesis, suggesting that higher Involvement induced by the task resulted in more effective recall; however, no significant difference was observed between the two tasks in the retention of the unknown words.

This study examined the effects of input-oriented and output-oriented tasks with different Involvement Load indices on Iranian EFL learners' comprehension and production of lexical collocations. To achieve this purpose, a sample of 180 intermediate-level EFL learners (both male and female) participated in the study. The participants were in six experimental groups. Each of the groups was randomly assigned to one of the experimental conditions, namely input-oriented tasks with Involvement Load 1 (True-false), 2 (Matching), 3 (Multiple-choice), and output-oriented tasks with Involvement Load 1 (Short response), 2 (Fill in the blanks), and 3 (Sentence formation). At the end of the treatment period, the researchers administered a 40-item test in multiple-choice format and a 40-item test in fill-in-the-blanks format to assess the participants' comprehension and production of collocations. The collected data were analyzed using two different two-way ANOVAs and a series of independent-samples t-tests. The results showed that the tasks with higher Involvement Load indices were more effective on both receptive and productive knowledge of lexical collocations. The results also revealed that output-oriented tasks were more beneficial than input-oriented tasks at all three indices of Involvement Load. These findings can have theoretical and pedagogical implications for language teachers, researchers, and learners.

Capitalizing on Hulstijn and Laufer’ s (2001) notion of Involvement Load Hypothesis, this study aimed to investigate the impact of task-induced Involvement Load on Iranian EFL learners’ retention of idiomatic expressions. The main concern of present study is to explore if principles of Involvement Load Hypothesis hold true when applied to learning idioms. The research questions formulated to achieve the objectives include: 1. What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the reading-comprehension task with Involvement index 1? 2. What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the fill-in-the blanks task with Involvement index 2? 3. What is EFL learners’ retention rate of idiomatic expressions for the composition task with Involvement index 3? 4. Does Involvement Load play any significant role in the retention of idioms of Iranian EFL learners? Given the fact that the depth of processing a word is the key component in vocabulary learning, it could be assumed that composition tasks designed to develop idiomatic expressions in EFL learners, enjoy much greater retention rate, hence attesting to the effectiveness of Involvement Load on the retention of idiomatic expressions. To this end, 60 female upper-intermediate Iranian EFL students in an English language institute in Tehran took part in the study. Twenty idioms were taught to three groups of students through tasks that induced different levels of Involvement Load, namely reading comprehension, fill in the blanks and composition tasks. To conduct the statistical analysis, fifteen idioms were picked from among the ones presented in the pretest, so that learners’ prior knowledge of some idioms was taken care of. The retention of the chosen idiomatic expressions was then tested via an immediate and a delayed post-test. MANOVA was run to compare the groups’ performance on the three tasks on the posttest and delayed posttest. Scheffe’ s test was then used as a post-hoc comparison test to compare the groups on posttest and delayed posttest. The results pointed to a direct relationship between the Involvement as induced by the tasks and participants’ retention of idioms, implying the fact that the higher Involvement Load of a task, the higher the retention of the task will be. Accordingly, the findings indicated that retention rate was the highest in the composition task, lower in the fill in the blanks, and the lowest in the reading comprehension task. The study has implications for task analysis, task instruction, and task design; Curriculum developers may benefit from the findings of this study when engaged in designing courses related to idiomatic expressions. English teachers could be more cognizant of varying Involvement indexes in tasks and their effect on the retention rate of their learners. Eventually, language learners will be informed of the optimal amount of time and effort needed for mastering idiomatic expressions.