Effects Of Glosses And Vocabulary Sizes On Incidental Vocabulary Acquisition Through Reading

Incidental vocabulary acquisition (IVA) has attracted the attention of the researchersboth at home and abroad. IVA means the acquisition of new words as a by-product of ameaning-focused communicative activity, such as reading, listening and interaction. Ithappens when language learners expose to a word in different contexts. Research hasconfirmed that language learners can acquire new words incidentally through reading butthe efficiency is low.In the past few years, glossing has also caught attention of researchers both at homeand abroad as a way of improving incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading.Glosses make the language learners pay more attention to the glossed words compared tothose without glossing. Glosses are used as a text enhancement to raise the consciousnessof the language learners. So far, not consensus has been achieved on which gloss issignificantly better than others. And There is still little discussion for the question ofwhich gloss is more beneficial for a certain group(such as, language learners with about2000words or5000words).The present study is to discuss the effects of both different glosses and differentvocabulary sizes on incidental vocabulary acquisition through reading for languagelearners based on Noticing Hypothesis, Depth of Processing Hypothesis and Task-inducedInvolvement Hypothesis. It aims to get a more reliable conclusion and to provide somemore useful suggestions for language learners, language teachers and producers ofreading materials. Two main research questions were discussed in the present study. Theyare:(1) Among three kinds of glosses, Chinese gloss, English gloss and Chinese-Englishgloss, which one is more effective on incidental acquisition of unknown words inshort-term memory and long-term retention for EFL learners with different vocabularysize than the others?(2) What are the different effects of EFL learners’ vocabulary size onincidental acquisition of unknown words in short term memory and long-term retention?The present study conducted among146English learners,85of them are with about2000words and61of them are with about5000words. They formed Group A and GroupB respectively. And each group was divided into another three groups. They are Group A1(29subjects), A2(27subjects), A3(29subjects) and Group B1(20subjects), B2(20subjects), B3(23subjects). They were assigned to read the same reading material with different glosses. That is, Group A1was to read reading material with Chinese gloss,Group A2was to read reading material with English gloss, and Group A3was to readreading material with Chinese-English gloss. Group B1was to read reading material withChinese gloss, Group B2was to read reading material with English gloss, and Group B3was to read reading material with Chinese-English gloss. Before reading the material,they were asked to do questionnaire about gloss. Then, it was the reading time, afterreading; they were required to take a previously informed comprehension test. Then, theytook an unexpected vocabulary test, we call it immediate test. One week later, anotherunexpected vocabulary test was conducted. After collecting all the data, a analysis withSPSS16.0was conducted. And the results showed that the effects of glosses is significantin both immediate test and delayed test, while the effects of vocabulary sizes is notsignificant in immediate test but significant in delayed test. And the Chinese-Englishgloss is more effective on incidental vocabulary learning than other two glosses. Theretention of the new words for learners with5000words is significantly better than thosewith2000words.