The Effects Of Glosses And Language Proficiency On High School Students’ Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

In recent years,many scholars have carried out a large number of empirical studies on whether text plus picture glosses can promote incidental vocabulary acquisition.However,due to the differences in reading materials,experimental subjects and other factors,there was still no consensus on this issue.On the basis of the dual-coding theory and noticing theory,the author examined the effects of adding picture to textual glosses and learners’ language proficiency on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.There were two variables in this study,namely,language proficiency(high proficiency and Low proficiency)and glosses(L1+P glosses and L1 glosses).Following the research design of Kost(1999),this experiment,lasting for three weeks,was divided into pretest,the main test including reading comprehension and immediate vocabulary test,and the delayed vocabulary test.After the experiment,all the data were collected,analyzed and discussed.The experimental results showed that:Firstly,there were significant differences between L1+P glosses and L1 glosses in the two vocabulary tests.In other words,L1+P glosses were superior over L1 glosses on incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention.Secondly,adding picture to textual glosses had different impacts on the vocabulary acquisition and retention of different language proficiency students.For the high proficiency students,L1+P glosses contributed to incidental vocabulary acquisition,while there was no significant difference in the retention of vocabularies.For the low proficiency students,the results indicated that there was no significant difference between the two glossing groups for incidental vocabulary acquisition,while in the vocabulary retention part,L1+P gloss group performed significantly better than L1 gloss group.Thirdly,the interaction effect between the glosses and language proficiency was significant in the retention of vocabularies but not in the short-term memory of incidental vocabulary acquisition.