The Effects Of Different Types Of Glosses On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition In Reading

“Words are basic building blocks of language, the units of meaning fromwhich larger structures such as sentences, paragraphs and whole texts are formed”.While, for most EFL learners, vocabulary is one of the difficulties they meet intheir English learning. Until now, it’s agreed that there are two modes ofvocabulary learning,: one is intentional learning and the other is incidentalvocabulary learning. The term of incidental vocabulary learning was firstlyproposed by Nagy, Herman and Anderson in1985. And then it has been the hottopic for linguists and researchers home and abroad.As the researches went deeper, a lot of researchers began to focus on theeffects of glosses on vocabulary incidental learning in reading. They conductedexperiments on the languages of glosses (L1and L2), the styles of glosses (singleand multiple-choices), and the positions of glosses (footnote, margent andendnote). In China, in recent ten years, the effects of glosses on incidentalvocabulary acquisition in reading have been concerned by more and morelinguists and researchers. Because of the differences in subjects, reading materials,duration and some other conditions, not all the conclusions of the presentedresearches were always the same, which supplied spaces and chances to the newfollowing studies.Based on the presented theories and researches, this thesis focused on theeffects of different types of glosses (Chinese, English and Chinese plus English)on incidental vocabulary acquisition in reading with theoretical support of the models of L2lexical acquisition, Depth of Processing Theory and InputHypothesis Theory. The experiment was conducted in120sophomore collegestudents of preschool-major in Zibo Normal College. These subjects came fromthree parallel classes, and were requested to read one same passage respectivelywith one of the three types of glosses: Chinese glosses, English glosses andChinese plus English glosses. After reading the passage and finishing thequestions after the passage, an immediate vocabulary test and a one-week laterretention test were held. Besides vocabulary tests, an interview was employed in43sophomores of preschool major. With the researching methods of interview,reading tests and vocabulary tests, the author compared and analyzed the differenteffects of three types of glosses (Chinese, English and Chinese plus English) onincidental vocabulary acquisition in reading. The purpose of this research was tohelp the EFL learners with low English proficiency level to find out a type ofglosses which would be more suitable for them, so as to improve their vocabularylearning in reading after class.After analyzing the experiment, the author got the following conclusion:among these three types of glosses (Chinese, English and Chinese plus English),Chinese plus English glosses performed a bit better than the other two types ofglosses in vocabulary acquisition, and Chinese glosses became the most efficientone in words retention. Unexpectedly, English glosses did not show anysuperiority in both immediate vocabulary test and retention test. This finding wasmuch different from those of the previous studies. But it also proved that thestudents’ English proficiency levels could influence the effects of glosses on incidental vocabulary learning in reading. To those EFL learners with lowproficiency level, English glosses would not be the ideal choice, but Chineseglosses would be more helpful. Therefore this finding led us to rethink ourguidance in students’ choice of reading materials with glosses.This research was of both theoretical and practical significance. It not onlyconfirmed the feasibility of incidental vocabulary acquisition again in theory, butalso practically supplied reference for English learners in choosing Englishreading material, and improving vocabulary learning efficiency. What’s more, italso supplied guidance for teachers both to choose teaching material in class andto supervise students’ reading after class for a better effect. At last, it offered somereferences to those compilers and editors of English reading materials so as tocompile more suitable reading materials for readers at different Englishproficiency levels.