Machine summary:
"Some studies (Fuente, 2006; Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Joe, 1995; Keating, 2008) support the claim that tasks with higher involvement loads generally lead to greater gains in short-term and, in some cases, long-term word retention.
Materials The materials used in this study were four word-focused tasks (two input-based and two output-based) with different involvement loads based on the ones used in the related literature (Hulstijn & Laufer, 2001; Laufer, 2005; Laufer& Hulstijn, 2001; Webb, 2002), and a translation test for measuring the receptive knowledge of meaning.
Although there was a decline on the DP for all the study groups, none of the groups returned to the same level of performance it was before the task-oriented instruction, showing the effectiveness of the word-focused tasks on the participants’ receptive vocabulary knowledge of meaning over time.
4. Discussion The first finding of the study was related to the relative effectiveness of input/ output-oriented word-focused tasks with different involvement loads on learners’ vocabulary knowledge of meaning.
In investigating the superiority of some word-focused tasks over others and following the ILH, the main goal of the study was to make a comparison between input and output-oriented tasks with identical involvement loads to see which one plays a more determining role in task effectiveness.
Furthermore, the finding that output- oriented tasks with high involvement loads were more effective for vocabulary learning than input-oriented ones with the same involvement load is an encourag- ing finding for instructors and researchers who are eager to know in which ways instructional programs might foster the acquisition of target words."