The Effectiveness Of Different Glossing Languages And Formats In Enhancing Non-English-Major Students' Incidental Vocabulary Learning Through Reading

Incidental vocabulary learning (IVL) is considered as an essential part of both native language and foreign language vocabulary acquisition. IVL means the learning of new words as a by-product of a meaning-focused communicative activity, such as reading, listening and interaction. It occurs through multiple exposures to a word in different contexts. Research has confirmed that language learners can obtain vocabulary knowledge incidentally through reading but the learning rate is relatively low.In the past two decades, much research has been conducted to explore the effectiveness of various reading text enhancements for enhancing incidental vocabulary learning, among which providing glosses is advocated as a beneficial way. Glosses make the learners pay attention to the target words and thus raise the consciousness and enhance the language input. So far, the effectiveness of different glossing languages and formats in text glosses has been discussed, but no consistent conclusions are attained.The present study further explores the effectiveness of different glossing languages and formats in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning through reading, aiming to draw more reliable conclusions with stricter control over the experimental variables and to provide some useful suggestions for English vocabulary learning and teaching. Three research questions were mainly discussed in the present study. They were:(1) which glossing language (Chinese, English or Chinese plus English) and which glossing format (single or multiple-choice) are most favored by Chinese non-English-major students? (2) which glossing format is more effective in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning through reading from the perspectives of word gain and word retention, single gloss or multiple-choice gloss? (3) which glossing language is the most effective in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning through reading from the perspectives of word gain and word retention, Chinese gloss, English gloss or Chinese plus English gloss? These research questions were addressed through both theoretical analysis which mainly based on involvement load hypothesis and bilingual lexicon, and experimental study.132 non-English-major freshmen from Lanzhou University whose vocabulary sizes were no less than 3000 word families were selected as core subjects. They were randomly divided into five groups and assigned to read the material under one of the following five conditions:single Chinese gloss (SC), multiple-choice Chinese gloss (MCC), single English gloss (SE), multiple-choice English gloss (MCE), single Chinese plus English gloss (SCE). After reading, they took a comprehension test which was informed in advance as the main task. Then an unexpected vocabulary test and a questionnaire were conducted. One day later, an unexpected delayed vocabulary test and an informal interview were administered. After the data collection and analysis with SPSS11.5, the following conclusions were arrived:(1) according to the questionnaire, the majority of subjects preferred Chinese plus English glosses and multiple-choice glosses; (2) concerning the glossing format, multiple-choice glosses were better than single glosses in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning in both immediate vocabulary test and delayed vocabulary test; (3) concerning the glossing language, Chinese and Chinese plus English were significantly better than English in enhancing incidental vocabulary learning in immediate vocabulary test while in delayed vocabulary test, Chinese plus English lost its significant superiority over English.The significance of the present study mainly lies in:(1) enriching the research on glosses and incidental vocabulary learning through reading; (2) providing some useful suggestions for vocabulary learning and teaching and reading material compiling.