Samaneh Yazdani - PhD Candidate Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Isfahan, Iran
Hossein Heidari Tabrizi - Assistant Professor Islamic Azad University, Isfahan (Khorasgan) Branch, Isfahan, Iran

Due to the fact that all language learners and teachers are aware of the fact that acquiring a second language involves the learning of the large number of vocabulary items, investigatinghow vocabulary is learned and what the best ways are to enhance effective acquisition have been important lines of investigation in the field of second language acquisition (SLA). Thepresent study intended to compare the effect of enhancing the quality of vocabularyacquisition by reading, writing, and translation tasks with different degrees of involvement load. To this end, 60 intermediate third grade junior high school students randomly assignedto four groups. In each group a task with a different level of involvement, include twodifferent reading tasks, a writing task, and a translation task was instructed over a six-monthperiod. The results of the descriptive statistics and one-way ANOVA revealed that the group with the highest involvement load task outperformed the other groups in terms of vocabulary acquisition, but the translation task even led to a greater performance in the post-test. These unique findings shed a light on the importance and the practicality of translation tasks in ESL context.

SLA, vocabulary acquisition, involvement load, task