The Effect Of Multimedia Glosses On EFL Learners’ Vocabulary Learning And Reading Comprehension In Three Learning Conditions

Vocabulary learning is one of the most important parts for foreign language learning,and also it can be a challenge for foreign language learners.Reading materials are crucial sources where learners acquire the new vocabulary.As a result,how to efficiently learn new words and maintain a long memory comes to the fore.Given the widespread of multimedia equipment in classrooms,a lot of computer technologies have applied to instructional strategies.Besides,the application of multimedia equipment has been an important carrier and has greatly contributed to language learning.The study aimed to investigate the effect of three learning conditions,namely the incidental learning condition,the intentional learning condition as well as the explicit learning condition,on English foreign language learners’ vocabulary learning along with the retention and reading comprehension in multimedia glossed passages.Ninety participants who were first-year non-English major college students were selected and then read three passages on the computer screen.Some target words were chosen based on their pre-test and were unknown to learners.They were glossed with multimedia forms of text-picture-audio.Having finished the reading materials,the learners completed the vocabulary tests followed by the reading comprehension tests.According to the varied learning conditions,90 learners were randomly divided into three learning groups,that is,the explicit learning group,the intentional learning group and the incidental learning group.Learners in the explicit learning group received a copy of word list with the native language translation before reading passages,and they were instructed to learn and memorize the vocabulary.In the intentional learning group,learners could look up these multimedia glosses while they were reading.Finally,the participants in the incidental learning group gave the priority to the meaning of the passages without particular attention to the unknown words.However,they were still informed of the existence of glosses.After reading,they started finishing a series of tests.The vocabulary tests included the vocabulary knowledge scale proposed by Paribakht and Weshche(1997)to check learners’ ability to recognize words in a decontextualized environment as well as the word recognition test to investigate how learners perform in a contextual environment.As for reading comprehension tests,how learners comprehended the passages was measured through the multiple-choice test and the written recall task where learners had to write down the contents of the passages as much as they could.Based on the results,it is indicated that all the three learning groups have improved in vocabulary learning and the effects of the three learning conditions on learners were different.The learners performed significantly better in the explicit learning condition and then in the intentional learning condition than in the incidental learning condition.As for reading comprehension,the results in the two kinds of tests varied.In the multiple-choice test,the participants in the intentional learning condition and the explicit learning condition had a better performance than those in the incidental learning condition.The former two groups had a significant difference from the latter group.However,in terms of the written recall task,the explicit learning group significantly outperformed the incidental learning group,whereas there was no significant difference between the intentional learning group and the other two learning groups.The current study investigated how different learning conditions affected learners’vocabulary learning and reading comprehension in the multimedia glosses passages.The results revealed that different levels of attention intervention to the unknown words could facilitate learners’memorization and retention to them.At the same time,different attentions to the vocabulary exerted a different influence on reading comprehension.The implications from the study could bring the reference and enlightenment to college English instruction especially the vocabulary learning,and provide the reference for learners to efficiently obtain the vocabulary in the reading process.