Task-Induced Involvement Load: The Accumulation Effects on Vocabulary Acquisition

College EFL learners in Taiwan are often required to do online reading after school to get more exposure to English. Websites designed for EFL learners often provide some post-reading exercises to help them acquire words. Thus, the purpose of this study was to examine a series of vocabulary tasks from one English learning website by revealing their induced involvement loads and the effects of the loads on learners' vocabulary acquisition. Sixty-four sophomore non-English majors were at intermediate English proficient level. They were randomly assigned to four groups representing four learning conditions doing from none to three post-reading activities, respectively. The results showed that similar increase on the retention of word meanings was observed between any two exercises. Furthermore, the significant difference was found between the first and the fourth learning conditions. This suggests that after doing three post-reading exercises, reaching five involvement loads, the EFL learners could make a difference on word gains.