A Study Of Effects Of Different Modes Of Glossing On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition

Vocabulary is the basis of sentence-forming and passage-forming, soresearches on how to accumulate vocabulary have aroused a lot of attention onthe part of researchers both home and abroad. It is no doubt that intentionalvocabulary learning is indispensable to vocabulary acquisition. Apart fromintentional vocabulary learning, incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) shouldnot be neglected. In some circumstances, there are not enough clues for readers toguess the meaning of the unknown words. Therefore, proper glosses on someunknown words can to some extent enhance IVA.The purpose of this dissertation is to explore which mode of glossing can bethe most efficient in IVA.98subjects, who were first-year majors of automationfrom Qingdao Technological University, participated in the study. They weredivided into three groups, designated as Group1, Group2and Group3respectively. Before the experiment, another group of10students, who were alsofirst-year majors of automation, were asked to read a passage from theWashington Post and circle the words unfamiliar to them, and altogether10wordswere selected as the target words for the experiment. During the experiment, thepassage was presented to Group1, Group2and Group3with the10target wordsexplained in definition glossing, double-choice glossing and multiple-choiceglossing respectively. After reading the passage, all the subjects were required towrite down the main idea of the passage, and an immediate vocabulary test wasadministered to them. One week later, all the subjects took a delayed vocabularytest.The analysis of the data, by using SPSS.16, shows that in the immediate vocabulary test, the double–choice glossing is the most efficient in IVA and themultiple-choice glossing is the least efficient with the definition glossing going inbetween. In the delayed vocabulary test, the multiple-choice glossing groupperformed best followed by the definition glossing and the double-choiceglossing.The findings can make some implications for the teaching and learning ofEnglish vocabulary.