The Effects Of Multiple-choice Gloss And Single Gloss On Incidental Collocation Learning

This study investigates whether L1multiple-choice gloss and L1single gloss can facilitateincidental collocation acquisition and retention in terms of receptive knowledge andproductive knowledge respectively. Also, it is our concern whether L1multiple-choice glossgenerates better effects on collocation acquisition and retention than single gloss does.The participants in this study were168non-English major freshmen from three intactclasses in SCUT. Each class was randomly assigned to one of the three conditions: themultiple-choice gloss group, the single gloss group and the control group. The treatmentswere that, when reading two passages, participants of the multiple-choice gloss group weregiven three alternatives of each target collocation in L1while those of the single gloss groupwere given single L1translation of each target collocation. The control group received twopassages in which the target collocations were boldfaced, not glossed. Both the receptive andproductive knowledge of collocation were tested and analyzed. Two weeks later, theparticipants received the same tests.The results of this design analyzed by one-way ANOVA are generally confirmatory to theresearch hypotheses. Multiple-choice gloss was found to be facilitative to incidentalcollocation acquisition and retention either in terms of receptive knowledge or productiveknowledge. Single gloss was also beneficial to collocation acquisition in terms of bothreceptive knowledge and productive knowledge and retention only in terms of receptiveknowledge. The positive effects of single gloss on productive knowledge of collocation onlymaintained in short run. Furthermore, multiple-choice gloss significantly outperformed singlegloss on all the tests. These superior results are discussed in light of the Noticing Hypothesisand the Involvement Load Hypothesis.This study proves the effectiveness of gloss, especially multiple-choice gloss on incidentalcollocation learning and provides practical guidance for college English teaching and learning.