Effect Of Glosses On The Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Extensive Reading

Learner's incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) in various language learning activities, especially through reading, has become a new focus of interest in second language vocabulary acquisition (SLVA) research. Abundant studies concerning the influence of reading on IVA have been made, many of which stress much on a reader's ability to guess the meaning of unknown words from context. However, as the author of the present thesis observed, in natural reading, the inference strategy may not work successfully due to a number of factors, and the vocabulary knowledge attained incidentally in this way is usually very superficial and scarce. As far as vocabulary development is concerned, the inference strategy alone is by no means a good answer.In the author's opinion, glosses or dictionary use can better help English learners acquire vocabulary incidentally in reading practice, yet research in this aspect is relatively insufficient. So he decided to conduct a study to compare the effects of two different learning approaches on IVA in L2 reading (in the current case, English reading): referring to glosses and inferring word meaning from context. The objectives of the study are: 1) to see whether the former results in better gains of vocabulary knowledge than the latter; 2) to find the interaction of various factors in the process of IVA through reading; 3) to find its pedagogic implication to the English reading and vocabulary teaching practice.The 6-week-long study was composed of two questionnaires, a reading program, a few tests, and the final data analyses. It was conducted on two parallel classes of non-English-major college students. One class served as the experiment group, who could refer to glosses when the 17 target words were encountered in the reading practice, and the other served as the control group, in whose reading passages no glosses were provided for the same target words and who therefore could only infer their meanings from context.Based on the results of data analyses, the author had the following findings: 1) Most subjects held a positive view towards the role of glosses in reading practice, thinking that glosses were more helpful in extending new vocabulary as compared with the method of inferring word meanings from context. 2) The experiment group outperformed the control group by a plain edge whether in overall vocabulary gain or gain of individual target words. On average, the subjects in the experiment group learned more word knowledge in the reading practice, and the learned word meaning is more precise. 3) There is some correlation between the word gains and the factors of frequency of exposures and time elapse, but it is not significant. The two factors exert more influence on the word acquisition of the experiment group than the control group.The findings prove that it is a good option to include glosses in extensive reading practice, given their positive effects on IVA. Designers of extensive reading course may consider employing adequate forms of glosses to facilitate learners'vocabulary development and reading comprehension, and dictionary use should be encouraged. Meanwhile, teachers should play a more active role in reading class to enhance the chance of a word's being acquired incidentally.